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."

Mama mia thatsa cleana windshielda!

[MeditationSensation (1121241)]

Now I want one that has adjustable levels of tinting for privacy and blocking out the sun.

Ice?

[DebateG (1001165)]

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.

Re:Ice?

[edwardpickman (965122)]

I installed a Trunk Monkey with a scraper. I also got the accessory crowbar for those annoying hip hop fans with a sub woofer next to me.

Your so lucky

[Plazmid (1132467)]

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.

Durability

[contraba55 (1217056)]

Is this any stronger than a standard windshield, or will the rogue baseball do it in?

How would this work for snow

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

5 Layers?

[weighn (578357)]

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 [wikipedia.org].

Permeable first layer?

[s4m7 (519684)]

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.

Dare I ask...

[Wuhao (471511)]

Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?

Re:Dare I ask...

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Apparently they weren't expensive enough.

Re:Dare I ask...

[PapayaSF (721268)]

Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?

Apparently they weren't expensive enough.

Good point and funny reply, and this seems to be a good spot to reveal one of the great secrets of auto maintenance: you can sharpen your windshield wipers and make them last many times longer. All you need is a small piece of fine sandpaper. Get the wiper blade wet (if it's not already), fold the sandpaper into a V shape, and pull it along the edge a number of times. You want to take off the stiff and cracked edge and expose a fresh layer of rubber. I get extra years out of blades this way, though YMMV.

I use a little gadget I bought at a flea market for a dime decades ago, a little piece of sheet aluminum that's mostly handle to hold an inch-long groove like two sides of an inside-out triangular file. Forget the "100 mile-per-gallon carburetor," it's the windshield wiper blade sharpener that's my candidate for great suppressed invention.

Re:Dare I ask...

[ShaunC (203807)]

Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?

They inevitably wear out, lose curvature, smear, start squeaking, cause distraction, are a pain to replace, etc. Some more quickly than others. I bought a new car in September and realized a couple days later that I'd made a mistake going car shopping on a clear sunny day. The stock wipers work in such a fashion that after each pass, a thin film is left behind, evaporating a moment later unless the wipers are going fast enough (or the water's coming down hard enough) to prevent that. Fine during the day, or during heavy rain, but I almost had a wreck the first time I drove that car at night in a drizzle. The glare from streetlights and opposing traffic diffusing through the film left behind by the wipers made it almost impossible to see.

I've been using Rain-X for years and as long as the application is fairly fresh, it's easy to drive in the rain without wipers. I have to say, if I could get a windshield with those repellent properties built in, and the effects were proven to last, I'd happily pay a premium for it.

Re:Dare I ask...

[muridae (966931)]

Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?

Yeah, they don't make wipers for motorcycle helmets.

Re:Dare I ask...

[timeOday (582209)]

You beat me to it. I am really curious whether it will work for motorcycle visors, side mirrors, and maybe the windows on my office so they don't dry all spotted with dirt :)

I wonder...

[theJavaMan (539177)]

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?

What about non-water stuff?

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Like bird poo, smashed butterflies, roadkill blood, garbage, mud, tree leaves, etc?

Will this ultimate wipeless windshield be able to clear it away?

Re:What about non-water stuff?

[Gumbytwo (68015)]

Maybe he's driving a Canyonero.

How much fuel would be saved annually...

[distantbody (852269)]

...if every new vehicle had this, along with rear-view cameras to replace external mirrors?

Great for motorcyclists/cyclists.

[gnuman99 (746007)]

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 for one...

[mwilli (725214)]

welcome our new windshield wiperless car overlords.

C.O.P.S.

[MikeUW (999162)]

Cool - this totally reminds me of that episode of C.O.P.S [wikipedia.org], 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 more toilet paper

[TheMiddleRoad (1153113)]

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.

But without windshield wipers...

[by Anonymous Coward]

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!"

Familiar...

[Fweeky (41046)]

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 [nytimes.com] 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.

Forget the windshield...

[954 (692271)]

use this technology on the body so I don't have to wash my car as often.

One of the most informative summaries on /.

[zen-theorist (930637)]

In sharp contrast to the usual high-school essays that submitters come up with.

The Real News

[jeremiahbell (522050)]

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.

Comparison? Safety record?

[syousef (465911)]

I'd like to see a comparison of advantages and disadvantages of using this mechanism instead of what is essentially a DC motor, an arm, and some gearing. If there's no advantage and it costs more why do I want it? In any case it better be proven before I use it because if there's even a small chance I'll be unable to see while doing 110km/hr down the freeway I won't touch it.

Nanotechnology

[professorfalcon (713985)]

But does it stop bullets [nbc.com]?

Cutlery

[tinkerton (199273)]

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.

Makes absolutely no sense

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

At first glance this article makes absolutely no sense.

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".

A related technology?

[argent (18001)]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=440893&page=1 [go.com]
http://www.nanoxchange.com/NewsNewsstand.asp?ID=283 [nanoxchange.com]

Why?

[whitroth (9367)]

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

Forget mud...

[AdamHaun (43173)]

What happens when it gets hit by a pebble at 75mph?

Yeah, but ....

[PPH (736903)]

... what will one of these cost to replace every time some truck tire flings a rock through it?

Or, you can spend a few bucks on RainX

[yppiz (574466)]

Cool that someone's thinking about Nanotech, but it sounds like what RainX [rainx.com] does, and RainX is a really simple, fairly inexpensive solution.

Re:Windshield Dust

[Himring (646324)]

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....

Re:Windshield Dust

[Scutter (18425)]

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.

Re:Windshield Dust

[gnick (1211984)]

I'm happy to pay them *not* to crap up my windshield.

I assume that you either haven't spent much time in a large city or just give in to these folks, but that's the standard scheme. You pay the guy before he squirts your windshield so that it doesn't get crudded up. It's more blackmail/mugging than providing a service.

Re:There's quite a good article

[Scutter (18425)]

DO NOT CLICK THE ABOVE LINK

Yeah. That oughta do it.

/shiny red CANDY button...

Re:Windshield Dust

[eonlabs (921625)]

also, I wouldn't drive it in upstate NY

snow?

I challenge your nanotech with my ICE SCRAPER!

Windshield treatments

[A nonymous Coward (7548)]

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.

Re:fixing it?

[Cederic (9623)]

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..

Re:Windshield Dust

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

Don't breathe this.

Why not? I'd love to have clean lungs again.

Re:Windshield Dust

[jameskojiro (705701)]

Will it blend my hand if I put it on the windshield?