Another transportion item, because last night the train I was on hit a car stalled on the tracks (the occupant is OK, though was hit by the car when the train bashed it.)
Since trains do hit things, why aren't solutions to this more common in our data network world? A laser detector over the grade crossings would be simple enough.
At dinner, my friend Kurth Reynolds made a suggestion that I have improved. How about a small robot, equipped with camera and other sensors, which travels far enough in front of the train that if it sees a problem on the track, can send a signal back to the train in time to stop it. Trains take a while to stop, which is one of the reasons they can't do anything when they see a car or person ahead on the tracks.
You can't be too far ahead or you enter the "space" of the earlier train on the track, though during any tight conflicts you can of course give up this "foresight" and bear through (or slow down.)
If you have a human driving the train, you can show them video of what's ahead of the robot and give them time for a decision. Some decisions (Robot hits something or derails) would be automatic. Of course the robot might hit the car stalled on the tracks (though it can stop much, much faster than a train) but do far less damage.
The robot would be tall enough to go over the suicides who are "sleeping" on the track, but light enough so a car hit by it would survive.
Simpler for shorter runs like commuter trains would just be cameras along the track beaming to the oncoming trains. The engineer could be seeing a mile ahead at all times. Hey, if x10 can sell 2 broadcasting video cameras for $80 (WARNING: Don't buy from their web site, you will be spammed to death) I bet this can be made affordable.
This is important because some people don't think we should have rail with grade crossings. Without grade crossings, rail becomes vastly more expensive.
Moreover, a swarm of robot rail escorts would be a good way to prevent collisions with anything, not just stalled cars. This would be especially good for avoiding high speed train collisions which have the most fatalities. It would also be effective when a signaling system was faulty or an operator asleep or the track was damaged. I'm thinking that the swarm would communicate directly with the train it was escorting to detect objects in the path. A very simple logic could be employed--if the swarm of escorts are in contact with the train, integrate over their distances to determine the window of safety. If some percentage of escorts cannot be contacted, reduce speed, assess situation.
tall enough?
Are you proposing a robot with legs that would step over "sleepers"?
An additional optimization
An additional optimization would be for such a robot to maintain a variable distance depending on the speed and stopping distance of the train. That way it can stay near by when the train is at stations so as not to trip the automated crossing guards, but stay well ahead when the train rarely tips 80mph.
I'd also like to give credit to Keith Henson for the original idea, putting a giant sticky airbag/cow-catcher on the front of the train. We then discussed how long it would take thrill seekers to start jumping in front of trains for fun.
Keith was a founding member of L5, and now on the run from Scientology persecution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson
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