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Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield
fab writes "Italian car designer Leonardo Fioravanti (who worked for Pininfarina for a number of years) has developed a car prototype without windshield wipers. This amazing technological feat is made possible thanks to the use of 4 layers of glass modified using nanotechnology. The first layer filters the sun and repels the water. The second layer, using 'nano-dust' is able to push dirt to the side. The third layer acts as a sensor that activates the second layer when it detects dirt, while the fourth layer is a conductor of electricity to power this complex mechanism. I haven't been able to find an English article, but there is always a google powered translation of the Italian article."
The first layer filters the sun and repels the water. The second layer, using 'nano-dust' is able to push dirt to the side. The third layer acts as a sensor that activates the second layer when it detects dirt, while the fourth layer is a conductor of electricity to power this complex mechanism. I haven't been able to find an English article, but there is always a google powered translation of the Italian article....
The fifth layer is a bum who skirts the windshield with a windex bottle filled with gutter water, wipes it with a clothe he found, and then you hand him some change from your pocket....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Now I want one that has adjustable levels of tinting for privacy and blocking out the sun.
That's pretty cool if you live in a climate when your main problem is dirt / rain. But what about ice/sleet/freezing rain, which is the bane of my existence now that I'm living in the Midwest.
Is this any stronger than a standard windshield, or will the rogue baseball do it in?
This sounds like a good idea but I live in an area that gets a lot of snow and the windshield wipers help clear the snow off the window when it is coming down heavy, and I don't see how this would work in that situation.
so how long until an executive at a rival company demands that they produce one with 5 layers?
One more is always better, just ask Gillette and anyone with a guitar amp.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Maybe I'm stupid, and being your typical /.er I didn't RTFA, but how does a second layer deal with dirt? Is the first layer permeable? That's just... weird.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?
I wonder how well the lack of wipers cope with snow, frost, chunks of dirt, and various other things. How will it handle little stone chips on the windshield? Will that spot simply remain dirty?
The fifth layer is a bum who skirts the windshield with a windex bottle filled with gutter water, wipes it with a clothe he found, and then you hand him some change from your pocket....
I'm happy to pay them *not* to crap up my windshield.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Like bird poo, smashed butterflies, roadkill blood, garbage, mud, tree leaves, etc?
Will this ultimate wipeless windshield be able to clear it away?
...if every new vehicle had this, along with rear-view cameras to replace external mirrors?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930
welcome our new windshield wiperless car overlords.
My sig beat up your sig.
Cool - this totally reminds me of that episode of C.O.P.S, when a chemical mishap produces some sort of dirt-repelling cloth that the Big Boss uses to make a super clean suit. I don't remember if there was anything else to the plot though...
No. It will cost 0. Yes, 0. Just like always-on lights we have in Canada cost, yes, 0.
The gas engine wastes so much power anyway and never runs at optimal that the so called loses are meaningless. 100HP engine can generate 100W of power without any additional fuel costs. Heck, on a bike you generate 100W of power without too much effort. You can only speak of loses with some *efficient* hybrids or electric cars. But then the windshield doesn't need to be powered all the time anyway.
Regardless, this technology may be most helpful in places where wipers are currently not used. For example, motorcycle helmets. Or cycling glasses.
I thought they just spit on it and wiped it off with the newspaper they sleep under.
DO NOT CLICK THE ABOVE LINK
/shiny red CANDY button...
Yeah. That oughta do it.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
If you're in a warmer climate, try bird-crap and bugs. Try driving down I-5 from Redding to Sacramento CA in the late spring sometime. Bugs coming at you like a freakin' hailstorm. Grasshoppers, dragonflies... Big juicy bugs that leave splats. Or, if you're relay lucky, you might get hit by a stray tomato flying off a truck. Let's see a nano-wiper sweep away that!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
also, I wouldn't drive it in upstate NY
snow?
I challenge your nanotech with my ICE SCRAPER!
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
You're so lucky, I live in Texas where it gets so hot, it rains molten metal. If we are lucky, it rains solid metal, in the winter of course. Well, I have to go, its night now, which means that the temperature is low enough to venture out of the life support module to repair the ceramic radiators.
Someday you'll spray nano-particles on your ass and you won't have to wipe for a whole week. Of course, you could try petroleum jelly today, but it's uncomfortable, unless you like that sort of thing.
Now I need one to wipe the beer I just spat all over my monitor. Thanks for that.
FairTax baby!
"snow? I challenge your nanotech with my ICE SCRAPER!"
surely they planned for that, right? How much water can these windshields repel? Semi drives by and throws tons of water on my windshield and it'll automatically clear it instantly at highway speeds? My wipers can hardly keep up, i have my doubts about this technology.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
So two nuns are on a road trip, when suddenly a tiny diminutive demon jumps on the hood, and plasters himself against the hood, making scary noises and faces. And the driving nun says, "Ah! What do I do?" So the passenger nun says, "Well, turn on the windshield wipers!" So the driving nun turns on the windshield wipers. But the demon just grabs on to the wipers, and now he's just going back and forth while making his scary noises and faces. And now he's agitated. So the driving nun says, "Ah! What do I do?" And the passenger nun says, "Well, turn on the windshield wiper fluid! It's filled with holy water." So the driving nun turns on the windshield wiper fluid, and it SEARS the demon, and there's all this screaming while there's a huge, thick cloud of steam. But when the smoke clears the demon is still there, going back and forth with the windshield wiper, with his flesh all seared, and now he's REALLY pissed, right? So the driver nun says, "Ah! What do I do?" The passenger nun thinks for a minute then says, "Well, show him your cross!" So the driving nun leans out the window and screams, "Get off my fuckin' hood!"
Not to mention all the dirt, road grime, and bugs you get hit with all the time. I once ran into a swarm of bees that instantly blocked the whole windshield. Only the wipers and washer fluid combo saved me from wrecking. Can nano do bee guts?
I remember some oldish sci-fi book where the protagonist made himself very rich developing something like this. Supposedly it worked by making the surface vibrate slightly so that water, dirt, etc simply wouldn't adhere to it.
I'm trying to think what it was.. something by Arthur C. Clarke maybe? This review of The Ghost from the Grand Banks mentions "a really satisfactory windshield wiper". Ah yes, Chapter 3, "A Better Mousetrap", "[the Mark V Wave Wiper] doesn't merely keep off water -- it shakes off any dirt that's already there".
The blindingly obvious realisation that makes him truly filthy rich is that not only can cars make use of it, but that is has huge potential applications for buildings, skyscrapers especially.
use this technology on the body so I don't have to wash my car as often.
In sharp contrast to the usual high-school essays that submitters come up with.
15 minutes??
It only takes 15 minutes if you count the time it takes to drive to Autozone, which should really be amortized over the other items you're also purchasing. Or you're an auto mechanic working for a dealership doing an inspection and "saving time" by doing that wiper replacement for someone without calling first.
Of the remaining 5 minutes, maybe a minute in total is spent actually removing the assemblies (my wiper arms don't go full up like a normal car, so for me there's a trick to it, but it doesn't take longer than a minute) and the rest is walking into the store and waiting for an employee to get freed up. They have an odd* policy whereby they only have complete assemblies on the floor, the replacement blades are behind the counter for some reason. The employee does thread the refill for ya, though.
This costs between $6 and $10 for a pair of blades, meaning that if your blades are differently sized, you have to keep an extra refill around and do it yourself next time. I don't see why you'd pay for full assemblies every time when the only thing that wears out is the rubber.
*not really that odd when you think about it. They're obviously trying to foster the either the idea that replacing the entire assembly every time is "just how it's done" or that "just the blades" aren't even sold separately.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
One more is always better, just ask Gillette and anyone with a guitar amp. Like Nigel's?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
A brother-in-law talked me into applying an Amway window treatment, and I was amazed at how well it shed water. You could, and I did, drive alongside a semi at freeway speeds and the water just slipped off and out of sight. It was absolutely convincing. Its only drawback was that you had to reapply it every several weeks. At first it worked even down to 25 mph, but gradually wore off as you used wipers at slower speeds, especially if you used the washer fluid, and eventually you had to use wipers as high as, say, 50mph, at which point I would reapply it. That bottle ran out and I tried some others which worked as well.
There was also a mental adjustment period for me; water just streams up and over the car, not to the sides, and it seems so wrong to not have wipers sweeping back and forth. The streams going up the windshield were so different from what I was used to that it was distracting and somewhat headache inducing, and it took several rainstorms to get used to it. But now it's wipers that look wrong.
Until you see it from inside, it is hard to believe how well it sheds water splashed up by the semi alongside you, but it is literally almost as clear as having no water on the windshield. It made a believer out of me.
Infuriate left and right
Time value of money
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The real news is that Google just dropped an almost perfect machine translation of an Italian article and nobody noticed. I surfed all over the articles website amazed buy one article after another, not by their content, but by the translation. Hasn't anybody else noticed? Perhaps it is a fruition of Google scanning and comparing those thousands of U.N. Documents they said they would use a year or two ago.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
...The 6th always tells the truth, the seventh always lies....
This signature is esoteric
But does it stop bullets?
MadTV's Spishak razor skit predates that Onion article by about 5 years.
Are those people that annoying where you're from?
In my town they're fun. They come in groups of three or four, provide a little show (mostly juggling with strange objects) and do an okay job cleaning the windshield.
In another, highly mercantile, town I've lived for a while they skip the show and sell useful stuff like little electric fans and maps.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Sounds like a good reason to aim your windshield squirters 90-degrees to the side. Let them have it in the face with real windshield cleaner before they get too close.
I bought some plates with that treatment, and finally I manage to keep the gravy separate from the potatoes. It does a nice "Moses and the red sea" trick too with the soup.
Now you've made me want to click it. There's candy!
And after the baseball does it in, the cost of replacing the super-duper high-tech nanotechnology four layer glass windshield will do you in.
I've more than once had problems seeing past a DC motor, an arm, and some gearing, while going 110 km/hr down the freeway. If it means I don't have to peer through a rapidly moving wedge of clear glass I'll consider it.
A top layer that repels water. Swell. But how long does that layer last when subjected to your typical environment?
A second layer of microscopic dust that somehow pushes dirt to the side. Can anybody fathom any mechanism for this?
A third layer that's a sensor for dust? WTF?
A fourth conductive layer?
One possible mechanism might be that the fourth layer is charged up to several thousand volts, charging the unwanted dust, then it reverses polarity, repelling the dust. Which might have a chance of working at 0% humidity and very fine dust.
Also note that the gratuitous reference to nanotechnology, which in this context probably refers to what we normally call "powdered ingredients".
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=440893&page=1
http://www.nanoxchange.com/NewsNewsstand.asp?ID=283
Nothing. They'll break the side window instead, that's easier.
Replacing a windscreen costs £50 - I ring the insurance company, they ask me where the car is, a short while later a van turns up, someone gets out, replaces the windscreen and drives off again. I get charged £50. No reason this would be any different..
Damn kids...
And how does it do with snow, sleet, or freezing rain?
For that matter, since he's in Italy, how 'bout volcanic ash, should Vesuvius go up?
And how much does it cost, and how complicated is it to build, install, and maintain, in comparison to a DC motor and the mechanism for wipers?
Note to developer: KISS is the acronym of the day for engineering.
mark
Good point, but forget snow and ice.
What about ROCKS? How expensive will these things be to replace. You can replace a current windshield for about $200, add in a couple dollars a year for Wipers, a few bucks more for fluid and that's it, just a minor set of replacment and maintenance costs. Replacing one or two windshields during the life of a car isn't too big a burden, but what about when they cost $2000 a pop, and a is a single rock chip capable of disrupting the power flow to the entire or even a substantial portion of the windshield, thus requiring a new windshield.
So again I ask what about Rocks?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
What happens when it gets hit by a pebble at 75mph?
Visit the
... what will one of these cost to replace every time some truck tire flings a rock through it?
Have gnu, will travel.
Cool that someone's thinking about Nanotech, but it sounds like what RainX does, and RainX is a really simple, fairly inexpensive solution.
Why not? I'd love to have clean lungs again.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
In my book, punching such bastards is fair game. Winding up in the street is proof enough that they have poor judgment, running around spraying people with shitwater just confirms their worthlessness as human beings.
On one hand, we need better help for homeless people, but they need to be deserving of our help.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Pointing out that a old trusted method is better vs a new untested one for something safety critical is apparently now flamebait. I smell a minor slashdot bitchslap afoot.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
Well now, have _YOU_ ever found yourself homeless, running around harassing everyone who happens to have a pulse ?
I wouldn't have such a big problem with "career bums" if they didn't instigate so much shit in the first place. Bumming change at the intersection isn't going to turn their life around.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
Will it blend my hand if I put it on the windshield?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Excuse me but the only time I even think about windshields and wipers is when it's raining cats & dogs and the old wipers are dangling useless from the old blades, which for the life of me I could be an able-bodied Stephen Hawking and still not figure out how to remove and replace them with the new ones in time before the whole damn rain storm for which I bought them had already passed! Believe me if I could afford a windshield that didn't need useless set of wipers that always deteriorate before I need them I'd buy it. -Bozo_de_Niro-