All posts tagged: Engineering

Great Wall Motor: Chinese car giant targets European comeback with new factory and models

Great Wall Motor: Chinese car giant targets European comeback with new factory and models

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get our weekly Drive Smart newsletter for motoring news, reviews and advice from EV editor Steve Fowler Get motoring news, reviews and advice from EV editor Steve Fowler Get our EV editor’s weekly Drive Smart newsletter Chinese automotive giant Great Wall Motor (GWM) has unveiled an ambitious strategy to launch at least 10 new models in Europe over the next two years, signalling a determined second attempt to establish itself in the highly competitive market. GWM was among the first Chinese car companies to enter Europe, making a notable debut with a range of electric vehicles at the 2021 Munich car show. However, the company subsequently struggled to gain significant traction. As part of its renewed European push, GWM plans to commence sales in 13 European markets within the next 12 months. “We don’t want to be the loser in any market in the world,” GWM International President Parker Shi told reporters at the company’s technology centre in Baoding, China. “We’ll come back and we will go with the right product.” While more recent Chinese …

Redefining the future of software engineering

Redefining the future of software engineering

Published by skeptic

This report, which is based on a survey of 300 engineering and technology executives, finds that software engineering teams are seeing the potential in agentic AI and are beginning to put it to use, but so far in a mainly limited fashion. Their ambitions for it are high, but most realize it will take time and effort to reduce the barriers to its full diffusion in software operations. As with DevOps and agile, reaping the full benefits of agentic AI in engineering will require sometimes difficult organizational and process change to accompany technology adoption. But the gains to be won in speed, efficiency, and quality promise to make any such pain well worthwhile. Key findings include the following: Adoption momentum is building. While half of organizations deem agentic AI a top investment priority for software engineering today, it will be a leading investment for over four-fifths in two years. That spending is driving accelerated adoption. Agentic AI is in (mostly limited) use by 51% of software teams today, and 45% have plans to adopt it …

California ocean wind power that floats is forcing engineering firsts

California ocean wind power that floats is forcing engineering firsts

Published by Sam Flores

EUREKA, Calif. — Here along the rugged North Coast of California, there’s little to suggest that Humboldt Bay, with its eelgrass, oysters and osprey nests, will soon become a launchpad for one of the most ambitious clean energy projects in state history: a hub for floating offshore wind. The plan is for major private players to erect hundreds of wind turbines in the bay — each rising as high as L.A.’s tallest skyscrapers — then tow them out to the ocean. Some experts believe the wind project is critical to California’s goal of 100% carbon neutrality by 2045 and represents a key climate change solution. The state has a target of 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by that year — enough to power about 25 million homes — and nearly all of it would come from five lease areas in federal waters near Humboldt and Morro bays. Yet the technology for wind power that floats — as opposed to standard towers permanently attached to the sea floor — is just emerging, and has never been attempted …

The Trajectory of the Artemis II Moon Mission Is a Feat of Engineering

The Trajectory of the Artemis II Moon Mission Is a Feat of Engineering

Published by skeptic

Liftoff. At 6:35 pm ET on April 2, a Space Launch System rocket lifted an Orion capsule from Earth. On board were Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. As of Thursday, they became the first humans to go beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The crew will test technological systems that will be useful on subsequent missions, such as those involving radiation shielding or communication between the capsule and Earth at lunar distances. One of the most fascinating aspects is also the trajectory that Artemis II will follow during its mission. Space Is the Place Contrary to what intuition may suggest, the journey to the moon is not a direct, linear path connecting the Earth’s surface with the lunar surface. After launch, the first stage of the SLS separated from the rest of the spacecraft—the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) upper stage and the Orion capsule. The ICPS carried the capsule into high Earth orbit, but the crew remained orbiting Earth for approximately 23 …

The Fascinating Engineering of the Titanic: How the Great Ocean Liner Was Built

The Fascinating Engineering of the Titanic: How the Great Ocean Liner Was Built

Published by José Betancourt

When many of us first learned of the RMS Titan­ic, it was pre­sent­ed first as one of his­to­ry’s great­est ironies: the “unsink­able” ocean lin­er that went down on its maid­en voy­age. Of course, there’s a great deal more to the sto­ry, as any­one who becomes obsessed with the ill-fat­ed ship (James Cameron being just one notable exam­ple) under­stands full well. Even apart from the many human expe­ri­ences sur­round­ing it, some of them told by the wreck­’s sur­vivors and pre­served on film, the mechan­i­cal aspects of the Titan­ic hold out con­sid­er­able fas­ci­na­tion for any­one with an engi­neer’s cast of mind. Put aside, for the moment, the mat­ter of the sink­ing, and con­sid­er just what went into mak­ing it one of the most glo­ri­ous cre­ations of man launched into the ocean to date — or rather, one of the three most glo­ri­ous. The Titan­ic was one of a trio of sim­i­lar White Star Line ships com­plet­ed in the ear­ly nine­teen-tens. In the video above, Bill Ham­mack, known on YouTube as Engi­neer­guy, tells the sto­ry of not just the Titan­ic, but also …

Pragmatic by design: Engineering AI for the real world

Pragmatic by design: Engineering AI for the real world

Published by skeptic

Drawing on data from a survey of 300 respondents and in-depth interviews with senior technology executives and other experts, this report examines how product engineering teams are scaling AI, what is limiting broader adoption, and which specific capabilities are shaping adoption today and, in the future, with actual or potential measurable outcomes. Key findings from the research include: Verification, governance, and explicit human accountability are mandatory in an environment where the outputs are physical—and the risk high. Where product engineers are using AI to directly inform physical designs, embedded systems, and manufacturing decisions that are fixed at release, product failures can lead to real-world risks that cannot be rolled back. Product engineers are therefore adopting layered AI systems with distinct trust thresholds instead of general-purpose deployments. Predictive analytics and AI-powered simulation and validation are the top near-term investment priorities for product engineering leaders. These capabilities—selected by a majority of survey respondents—offer clear feedback loops, allowing companies to audit performance, attain regulatory approval, and prove return on investment (ROI). Building gradual trust in AI tools is …

Scientists use “dream engineering” to boost creative problem-solving during REM sleep

Scientists use “dream engineering” to boost creative problem-solving during REM sleep

Published by José Betancourt

A recent study has found that dreaming about a specific problem can help people find creative solutions the next day. By playing specialized sounds while participants slept, scientists were able to guide dream content toward unsolved puzzles and improve subsequent problem-solving success. These findings were published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. Scientists have observed that taking a break from a difficult problem tends to help people find a solution. When a person steps away, their fixation on incorrect approaches begins to fade. At the same time, the brain can form new, unexpected connections between the problem and existing knowledge. Sleep appears to be an ideal state for this kind of creative restructuring. Historical anecdotes and survey studies suggest that dreams act as a source of creative insight. This seems particularly true for dreams occurring during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the phase of the sleep cycle most closely associated with vivid dreaming. Despite these historical accounts, finding direct proof that dreaming causes creative breakthroughs has proven difficult. Previous studies largely relied on observational data. …

EY hit 4x coding productivity by connecting AI agents to engineering standards

EY hit 4x coding productivity by connecting AI agents to engineering standards

Published by skeptic

Coding agents can generate thousands of lines of code in minutes. The problem: most of it can’t be deployed. It breaks internal standards, fails compliance checks, or creates more cleanup work than it saves. “You can generate a ton of code, but it doesn’t mean really anything, right? It’s got to be code that is integratable, that is compliant, and you don’t want to create more work on the back end just because you sped up the code generation process on the front end,” said Stephen Newman, EY Global CTO Engineering Leader. EY’s product development team solved this by connecting coding agents to their engineering standards, code repositories, and compliance frameworks. The result: 4x to 5x productivity gains across teams building EY’s suite of audit, tax, and financial platforms. But the gains didn’t come from just turning on a tool. Newman’s team spent 18 to 24 months building the cultural foundation and technical integrations that made semi-autonomous coding work at scale. The first step was cultural. EY started with GitHub Copilot-style tools, letting engineers get …

UK family-run engineering firm crashes into liquidation after 92 years | UK | News

UK family-run engineering firm crashes into liquidation after 92 years | UK | News

Published by Sam Flores

A Scottish family-owned engineering firm has collapsed into liquidation after operating for nearly 100 years. Tullibardine Smiddy Limited has been in the family for four generations, but the owners decided that “the company be wound up voluntarily”, with George Lafferty of Begbies Traynor appointed as liquidator. Companies House notes the business as performing jobs including the repair of fabricated metal products, the wholesale of agricultural machinery, equipment, and supplies, and other engineering activities. In 2022, the company underwent a rebrand, changing its name from Robert Aitken and Sons to Tullibardine Smiddy Ltd. It was reported at the time that the chairman, Craig Aitken, said the business, which has been operating for 92 years, has “always been about having a chat and understanding the customers’ needs”. The company was also known for supporting local farmers within the Perthshire and Kinross region since 1934, while specialising in blacksmithing and agricultural engineering. According to The Herald, Tullibardine Smiddy Ltd is now in a “members’ and creditors’” liquidation process. The liquidation comes amid thousands of closures happening across the …

The Ingenious Engineering of Silk: How the 2,000-Year-Old Pattern Loom Powered the Silk Road and the Wealth of Ancient China

The Ingenious Engineering of Silk: How the 2,000-Year-Old Pattern Loom Powered the Silk Road and the Wealth of Ancient China

Published by José Betancourt

The Silk Road’s long peri­od of high activ­i­ty spanned the sec­ond cen­tu­ry BC and the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry AD, but its name was­n’t coined until more than 400 years after that. Schol­ars have argued it prac­ti­cal­ly ever since, giv­en that the ref­er­ent was­n’t just one road but a vast and ever-chang­ing net­work of them, and that silk was hard­ly the only com­mod­i­ty car­ried by its traders. Yet the name per­sists, and not only due to Mar­co Polo-type roman­ti­cism. Silk may not have been the high­est-vol­ume item on its epony­mous road — more busi­ness was sure­ly done in every­day tex­tiles, to say noth­ing of spices, grains, or dyes — but it was per­haps the most vis­i­ble, and sure­ly the most glam­orous. From the per­spec­tive of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion, it can also look like the most impor­tant. In the new Pri­mal Space video above, you can hear the sto­ry of “the machine that made Chi­na rich”: the pat­tern loom, that is, a mod­el of which was unearthed in 2017 dur­ing sub­way con­struc­tion in the city of Cheng­du. At some­where between 2,100 and 2,200 …