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Technology Science

Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield 178

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the plenty-of-room-at-the-bottom dept.
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."
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Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield More

Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield

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

  • Ice? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DebateG ( 1001165 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @09:35PM (#22523768)
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 )
      Exactly. It's got to be able to move a large quantity of slush off a windshield when the truck next to you hits a puddle and suddenly throws a gallon on your windshield.
      • 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!
        • "you might get hit by a stray tomato flying off a truck"

          Back in the day when bottles were made of glass, following a coke truck in the Aussie summer heat was somewhat hazardous.

    • Re:Ice? (Score:4, Funny)

      by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @11:05PM (#22524268)
      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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by Plazmid ( 1132467 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @11:08PM (#22524284)
      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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by reidconti ( 219106 )

      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.
      Move.

  • Durability (Score:3, Interesting)

    by contraba55 ( 1217056 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @09:35PM (#22523770)
    Is this any stronger than a standard windshield, or will the rogue baseball do it in?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by calebt3 ( 1098475 )
      First things first: Is is as effective as windshield wipers?
    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sumdumass ( 711423 )
      I'm curious if it can even be used in the US. All windshields here have to be tempered safety glass and they place a shatter container around it to stop glass pellets from flying in your face if it is ever damages.

      If you have ever seen a car accident that busted the windshield, you will probably notice that the glass might be shattered by it is all contained and most likely can all be removed in one piece. Now the side windows and possibly the back window, they usually just shatter and fall in a pile of a

  • How would this work for snow (Score:1, Insightful)

    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? (Score:5, Funny)

    by weighn ( 578357 ) <weighn@gmailOPENBSD.com minus bsd> on Friday February 22, 2008 @09:39PM (#22523798) Homepage
    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? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by s4m7 ( 519684 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @09:40PM (#22523808) Homepage

    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... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wuhao ( 471511 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @09:46PM (#22523846)
    Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?

    • Re:Dare I ask... (Score:5, Funny)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @09:57PM (#22523908)
      Apparently they weren't expensive enough.

      • Re:Dare I ask... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by PapayaSF ( 721268 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @12:38AM (#22524702) Journal

        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.

        • Time value of money

          • Well, yeah, but it's not worth five minutes of your time to save $15? Do you make more than $180 an hour? Besides, I'll bet it takes you longer than that to buy and install new blades. And you'll be reducing your carbon footprint like all the trendy people.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by TheLink ( 130905 )
              Takes me a while to find sandpaper someone stashed somewhere years ago, or go out and buy it. Whereas when I send my car for repair I can just tell them "By the way, change the wipers for me, thanks!".

              What I would want is a more permanent sort of rainx coating that's compatible with wipers.

              No matter what you will need wipers to physically move the "big" stuff rapidly. While water will roll off a water repellent screen, if there's a big splash of water, wipers can remove it faster than it rolls off or gets b

    • Re:Dare I ask... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShaunC ( 203807 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @10:18PM (#22524016)

      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: (Score:2)

        by Ctrl-Z ( 28806 )
        Wow. Are you serious? I mean, "a pain to replace"? If you bought a new car, they should not be a pain to replace. It's only after they've been on for a couple of years and rusted and seized up that it's a pain to get them off without breaking them into pieces. I change mine twice a year, before and after winter. It takes me about 10-15 minutes a year to replace them, at the staggering cost of $15 per blade.

        If you want to talk about stock crap, how about those tires that come with your new car? It's a

        • Wait.. how long? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by zippthorne ( 748122 )
          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 t
          • Some places don't even have refills at all any more, wal-mart did that this year (yes, I know, I know.) The explanation I got was that too many people were failing to get the little clip into the little groove, because they are big fucking idiots, and scratching the shit out of their windshields. I guess this last year was either the year the average intelligence of the American consumer finally dipped somewhere below "inbred collie" or it was just the year that the insurance companies finally needed that p
            • Used to be that insurance didn't cover things you could avoid by not being a dumbass. And paying for a replacement windshield if your wiper comes unseated due to not securing it properly, then insisting on running the wipers ANYWAY (you ARE looking through the window they're clearing, right?) for the length of time it would take to actually cause noticeable scratches was a perfectly reasonable "dumbass" tax.

      • 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.

        Rain-X makes windshield wiper fluid. You can pay a premium for that.
        http://www.rainx.com/Products/Windshield_Washer_Fluids/De-Icer_Bug_Remover.aspx [rainx.com]

    • Re:Dare I ask... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by muridae ( 966931 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @11:16PM (#22524332)

      Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?
      Yeah, they don't make wipers for motorcycle helmets.

      • Re:Dare I ask... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @12:31AM (#22524678)
        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 :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Atario ( 673917 )
        Are you sure? I'm sure there's no reason they couldn't.

        From a quick Googling, it looks like some work has been done in this area [freepatentsonline.com].

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

        Not a problem; CERN is already working on it [slashdot.org].

      • Sure they do -- the wiper is a strip of suede or similar material on the back of thumb of the left glove. Works pretty well in mist; in heavy rain you don't need to wipe at all. Something about the orientation of the visor and its proximity to the eyes makes the water not obstruct vision significantly. I've ridden in rain so hard that every car pulled off the road because their wipers couldn't keep up, but I could see just fine.

        Anyway, this new four-layer conductive glass technology certainly would not

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by muridae ( 966931 )
          Rain isn't so bad, I agree. But I got stuck out one night in a bad combination of rain and fog. Thick fog that stuck to the outside of my visor, and the inside misted up because it was so cold. Cracking the visor open a little didn't work, then my glasses fogged up too. Something like this that would actively repel water would have been great that evening.

          Just because it is on glass now doesn't mean the same idea can not be applied to plastics later.

          • Sounds like what you really need is a heated visor. It would be easy enough to have a resistive-wire sticker that runs around the perimeter of the visor, and a breakaway power cord...
  • 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?
  • 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?
    • I'm guessing it will cost more fuel. Instead of running one motor intermittently, you have to power an entire windshield, plus sensors, plus your rear view camera, plus the display unit, continuously. A silvered piece of glass doesn't use any fuel.

      • Great for motorcyclists/cyclists. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gnuman99 ( 746007 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @10:15PM (#22524006)
        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.

        • Regardless, this technology may be most helpful in places where wipers are currently not used. For example, motorcycle helmets. Or cycling glasses.

          Yeah somebody up the page [slashdot.org] was talking about something called RainX. Making the outer layer hydrophobic seems to be the main trick here.

        • A 100 HP gasoline engine needs about 400W of fuel flow to make 100W of extra electrical power. That comes out to about 1 gallon per 90 hours of operation.

          While it might be essentially unmeasurable in your fuel bill, so is a single 100W bulb in your electric bill. It doesn't mean that it doesn't count.

        • You're really wrong. Back when they first came out, and gas was, iirc, 59 cents a canadian gallon (and not the $1.24 /liter it is today - $4.91 / US gallon or $5.64 / canadian gallon),it was calculated that running lights would cost an extra $25/year in fuel consumption.

          Today's running lights take less energy; however, we also drive about 50% more per annum than we did back then, so we still end up consuming at least . Of course, with the hgher price, you're now looking at annual costs easily over $100.0

  • welcome our new windshield wiperless car overlords.

  • C.O.P.S. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Friday February 22, 2008 @11:14PM (#22524322)
    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... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22, 2008 @11:44PM (#22524444)
    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!"
  • 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 an
    • Except for the fact that the ultrasonic sound generated by such a device will also break down structures in the human bodies. No thanks.

  • The Real News (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeremiahbell ( 522050 ) <jeremiahbell@yahoo. c o m> on Saturday February 23, 2008 @01:30AM (#22524900) Homepage
    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.
  • 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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @09:34AM (#22526552)
    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".

  • Why? (Score:2)

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

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

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