Google throws down $1 million design gauntlet

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27 August 2014 News

Internet giant Google, in keeping with its expanding efforts in electronic hardware development, has issued an open challenge to engineers across the globe to develop a power inverter.

With a $1 million grand prize on offer, the catch is it has to be small. Really small. Laptop sized, to be more specific, while being able to deliver at least 1 kW of AC power.

Dubbed the ‘Little Box Challenge’ the competition is open for registration until 30 September 2014 – with a closing date of 22 July 2015 for submission of a technical approach and testing application – via the website www.littleboxchallenge.com. A limited number of funding grants are available to academic applicants.

After that, up to 18 finalists will be selected, with the grand prize winner to be announced in January 2016. The biggest catch, as far as South African hopefuls are concerned, will be the fact that finalists are required to travel to the US. From the website: “[Finalists] are required to bring their inverters in person to a testing facility in United States by October 21, 2015.”

Technical requirements

Google’s pitch, which can be found on the above website, is rooted in the context of household inverters used to convert DC from sources like solar panels and batteries into AC for consumption by appliances, lighting and so forth.

The shrinkage required is considerable: in layman’s terms this would take a typical inverter which is now roughly the size of a picnic basket, and squeeze it down to the size of a small laptop – a more than tenfold reduction in volume. In engineering terms, this translates to a power density target of 3,05 W/cm³ (50 W/inch³).

All intellectual property for designs will be retained by the designer, but Google does insist on obtaining “a non-exclusive licence to be used only for the purpose of testing the inverter and publicising the prize.” This means that, while no IP will be disclosed, documents outlining the high-level technical approach may be published for the world to see, in order to highlight the techniques currently available to create a new generation of power electronics.

Terms and conditions, as well as a 29-page document detailing the technical requirements and constraints, can be downloaded from the Little Box Challenge website.

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Google throws down $1 million design gauntlet

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