Brad Ideas - Two wheeled robocars and the Twill - Comments

The video is cybercar operation

brad — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:28:44 -0800

In the video, the pumas are running in a private right of way though it is not isolated from pedestrians. This is close to a working technology today, known as cybercars, though they don’t have pedestrian detection so they need a total private ROW. They read markings in the road or magnets buried in it. Heathrow airport’s new parking shuttle does this with ULTra and Masdar is going to use magnets in the roadbed in the hidden ground level.

There is very little

Joel Upchurch — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:09:01 -0800

There is very little explanation of how it will work. The most I found was here:
http://www.infoniac.com/hi-tech/project-puma-a-new-creation-of-gm-and-se...
If you watch this video, it has some simulations of how it will work. The simulation kicks in at about 25 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hynbWQK-tAk

Autonomous operation

brad — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:56:51 -0800

Where do they talk about that? It would be interesting. I proposed a self-delivering Segway (robosegway) in my essays. I thought this might make the Segway much more marketable. I don’t want to haul one around, but if I could summon one up and it would arrive at my door quickly I would find that quite useful. Today that could even be done with tele-operation, or a mixture where the robot moves itself unless it gets confused and if it does, a tele-operator fixes the problem and lets it go back to autonomous. Then you only have to get it to the point of doing basic navigation and never hitting things and especially people. But LIDAR is good enough for that.

Segway PUMA

Joel Upchurch — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:59:06 -0800

I notice that the Segway PUMA talks about Autonomous Operation. It sure looks a lot like a Robocar and it can seat two.

http://www.segway.com/puma/

three wheeler

frnz — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:14:44 -0700

look at this one

http://www.infomotori.com/moto/2007/05/02/piaggio-mp3-test-ride/

Not quite

brad — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:32:35 -0700

The segway is definitely designed to be controlled by an active driver who is leaning not just to lean but to give guidance to the scooter. The segway is designed to have a really tiny footprint — no problem taking those on an elevator.

I don’t think you could make a robot segway, in that if it turned, you would likely be thrown if you were not expecting it. Same for stops etc. I do write that a segway that can deliver itself to you in robotic mode, so that you can drive it, is a quite useful concept. Imagine being able to haul out a cell phone and push a button and see a Segway or similar pull up next to you in seconds, then ride it, get off and let it scoot off to the next user, or to a charging station.

That sort of vehicle would bring about Dean Kamen’s vision of the new pedestrian better than the way the Segway actually did. And it’s even closer than the Robocar, since we already tolerate slow robots wandering hospitals an factory floors. A LIDAR equipped Segway that would never hit people and could go 5mph to deliver itself seems doable today. Of course, people might try to steal it.

Twill in a nutshell

Alison Chaiken — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:12:31 -0700

It's a recumbent Segway!

Two wheeled robocars and the Twill

brad — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:29:18 -0700

I have mostly written about 3 and 4 wheeled Robocars, even when the vehicles are narrow and light. Having 3 or 4 wheels of course means stability when stopped or slow, but I have also been concerned that even riding a 2 wheeled vehicle like a motorcycle requires a lot of rider participation. It is necessary to lean into turns. It’s disconcerting being the stoker on a tandem bicycle or the passenger on a motorcycle, compared to being a car passenger. You certainly don’t imagine yourself reading a book in such situations.

On the other hand 3/4 wheeled vehicles have their disadvantages. They must have a wide enough wheelbase to be stable because they can’t easiliy lean. In addition, for full stability you want to keep their center of gravity as low as you can. The extra width means a lot more drag, unless you have a design like the Aptera Motors entrant in the Progressive 100mpg X-prize, which puts the wheels out to the sides.

I recently met Chris Tacklind, who has a design-stage startup called Twill Tech. They have not produced a vehicle yet, but their concepts are quite interesting. Their planned vehicle, the Twill, has two wheels but uses computer control to allow it to stay stable when stopped. It does this by slight motions of the wheels, the same way that pro cyclists will do a track stand. They believe they can make a 2 wheeled electric motorcycle that can use this technique to stay stable when stopped, though it would need to extend extra legs when parked.

This is intended to be an enclosed vehicle, both for rider comfort and lower drag. The seat is very different from a motorcycle seat, in that you do not sit astride the vehicle, but in a chair similar to a spacecraft’s zero-G chair.

In addition, the vehicle is designed to have the rear wheel on a lever arm so that it can stand almost upright when stopped and then slope down low, with the rider reclined, at higher speeds. The reclined position is necessary for decent drag numbers at speed — the upright human creates a lot of the drag in a bicycle or motorcycle. However, the upright position when slow or stopped allows for much easier entry and exit of the vehicle. As everybody knows, really low cars are harder to get in and out of. Twill is not the first company to propose a vehicle which rises and lowers. For example the MIT CityCar plan proposes this so the vehicles can stack for parking. Even without stacking, such designs can park in a much smaller space.