Uganda test-drives its first electric car

Ugandan scientists and students at Makerere University have built an electric car.

The two-seater Kiira EV ('Kiira' means roaring in Lusoga, a local dialect), which is powered by a lithium-ion battery, was test-driven early this month (1 November) at the university. It can reach a maximum speed of 100 kilometres (km) an hour but needs recharging after an 80km run.

Sandy Stevens Tickodri-Togboa, principal investigator for the project and deputy vice-chancellor at the university, told SciDev.Net that the conceptualisation and design took place between April and August 2009.

"I assembled 25 engineers, electricians and designers. We used a large percentage of local materials to develop the Kiira EV." He said that they imported only the steering wheel and minor accessories. 

The inspiration for the project came from Makerere's participation in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Vehicle Design Summit in Italy, in 2008. 


The inter-university event — in which Makerere was the only African team — led to the development of Vision 200, a prototype hybrid fuel-electric car.

Following the summit, the team decided to return home and build its own electric car.

In December 2009, President Yoweri Museveni expressed confidence in the product and instructed the Ministry of Finance to provide fundilg for the project of 25 billion Ugandan shillings (around US$10 million) for five years (2009–14).

Tickodri-Togboa added that a prominent Uganda businessman and member of the Private Sector Foundation, Habib Kagimu, has pledged to promote the group's work.

With such entrepreneurs, he said, the group expects the Kiira EV to evolve into low-cost cars for Ugandans in the near future. 


The next step is to build an electric 28-seater bus, said Tickodri-Togboa.

Kiira EV project manager Paul Musasizi said the car was tested for road-drive performance including its ability to climb steep gradients and pick up speed.

"It picks speed very quickly, the motor is strong and its reversing [ability] is perfect. It also climbed a 55 degrees incline," he said, after test-driving the car for 4km at a speed of 65km per hour. But he added: "More adjustments still need to be done when it is gaining speed to avoid jerking". 

But David Mulabi, a community development programme coordinator at the Uganda Czech Development Trust, said that Makerere should redirect its energies.

"Farmers are struggling with drougth because irrigation is too expensive … We need [irrigation] technology … not luxury [cars]," he said.


Peter Wamboga-Mugirya
SciDev

Flying robots could help in disaster rescue

Ten of these flying robots could set up a 1.5 kilometre communication line between rescuers

Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne

Swarms of flying robots inspired by insect behaviour could be used to establish emergency rescue networks following natural disasters, say Swiss researchers who plan to start testing their system from April.

In the aftermath of earthquakes and other disasters, when communications infrastructure is damaged or overloaded, the first thing rescue teams do is set up temporary radio or mobile communication networks to coordinate the search for survivors.

But these networks have limited data transmission capacity, take time and specialists to establish, and can suffer interference from existing commercial networks.

Now a team of scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, has developed a quick way to establish a wireless network using 'swarming micro air vehicles' — flying robots.

"The main point is to provide high bandwidth digital communication, for instance to transmit high-resolution images, video streams and voice," Jean-Christophe Zufferey, the project leader, told SciDev.Net.

A fleet of vehicles would hover above a disaster zone with a module in the wing of each robot emitting a wireless signal to enable communication between rescuers.

Each vehicle is made from lightweight, flexible polypropylene plastic, weighs less than half a kilogram and has a wing span of 80 centimetres.

A battery-powered motor enables each vehicle to fly for up to half an hour before visiting a recharging station.

The team is preparing a paper describing how it flew 10 robots — enough toestablish and autonomously maintain a 1.5-kilometre communication line —to link up two rescuers on the ground.

To distribute the vehicles effectively above a designated zone, Zufferey's team took inspiration from the way ants leave chemical trails to guide colonies to sources of food.

Some of the vehicles hover in small circles linked to the location of rescuers and the other vehicles navigate around these markers.

Renzo De Nardi, a robotics researcher at University College London in the United Kingdom, is impressed by the ease with which the system can deliver a high quality wireless signal, a feature that would be particularly useful in developing countries lacking fixed communication networks.

De Nardi warned, however, that the lightweight vehicles would likely be affected by wind and bad weather.

Julian De Hoog, head of the Robotic Search and Rescue project at the UK-based University of Oxford, described the aerial robot swarm as an "impressive achievement", but said the main challenge will be to boost vehicle durability while keeping them light enough to be safe if they crash.

He added that rescuers have many other factors competing for their attention so using the technology "would have to be very simple and straightforward".

The researchers will begin testing the technology in mock rescue contexts this spring.

It will take up to three years to prove the robustness of the technology in real-life situations, according to Zufferey, although a simpler, single-robot system for crop and biodiversity monitoring has already been rolled out through a spin-off company, senseFly.

Meanwhile his team is also working to develop ground-based robots and flying vehicles that can enter buildings and scan for survivors.

See below for a video presentation by the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne:

See below for a video of the deployment of the flying robots in an experiment by the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne:

James Dacey

SciDev