Robots Can Help Move to Hydrogen Economy

Posted 11 Nov 2005 at 18:48 UTC by steve

A pollution-free hydrogen-based economy has been a goal of forward thinkers for years. The increasing threat of islamic terrorism and other factors are making the move away from an oil based economy a national priority for everyone else as well. One of many technical hurdles is the high cost of assembling and testing hydrogen fuel cells. According to a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute news release, researchers at the New York university believe that using robots to assemble and test fuel cells could greatly reduce the cost. Instead of taking a full day to build a fuel cell, robots may be able to do it in minutes, making fuel cells commercially viable. Handling the materials used in PEM fuel cells is considered to be an order of magnitude more difficult that tasks normally performed by industrial robots. Additional information about Rennsselaer's fuel cell initiative can be found in a recent online article.