Brad Ideas - Robocars - Comments

Robocar?

Bob Dunning — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:10:36 -0800

One of our members' websites: http://www.autoroadvehicles.com/. I can't send you email so it is all up to you to decide whether you want to support us. It is likely that you will fit right in, based on our demographics.

Away from coal

brad — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:47:30 -0800

Coal generated electricity is indeed a problem that must be solved. But using 1/10th the energy is still a win. Instead of 10 gallons gasoline it means the coal equivalent of half a gallon of gas and the NG equivalent of 1/5th of a gallon of gas.

And how do you generate

drill now — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:44:59 -0800

And how do you generate electricity? The efficiency of generation is about 60%, plus variable losses in transmission. Over 50% of electricity is generated by coal, so don't give me all this crap about "saving the planet".

robotic towing vehicle for planes at airports - as discussed

Brian Wang — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:07:49 -0800

http://www.aerospace-technology.com/news/news70619.html

Ricardo has delivered a demonstrator robotic, pilot-controlled towing vehicle known as TaxiBot to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

The demonstrator, a six-wheeled vehicle, is capable of towing Boeing 747 and Airbus A340 airliners.

The Taxibot is based on a Krauss Maffei PTS-1 aircraft towbarless tractor that has been redesigned, modified and rebuilt by Ricardo to install IAI's idea of a turret and energy absorption systems and controls.

On engaging with the TaxiBot, the nose wheel of the aircraft enters the vehicle turret that can rotate freely and hence take steering and braking requests directly from the nose wheel.

With the TaxiBot engaged the flight, crew can manoeuvre the aircraft around the taxi-ways of the airport, relying solely on auxiliary power units for on-board power and air conditioning needs.

The towing vehicle has the potential to reduce fuel costs and emissions, since at present aircraft taxiing to and from the airport terminal gate and runway is a major source of CO2 emissions, fuel consumption.

Ricardo has been involved in the project for IAI for 15 months and in June 2009, IAI and Airbus signed a memorandum of understanding for development of the Taxibot concept.

At present, the prototype assumes an operator in the vehicle, however, the control architecture of the vehicle allows for autonomous tug operation, so in future no tug driver would be needed for taxiing.

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/06/29/can-taxibot-deliver-airpor...

IAI’s Taxibot is a a tow-bar-less robotic tractor that would allow both wide and narrow body commercial airplanes to taxi to and from the gate and the runway without using their jet engines, while remaining under full pilot control at all times and removing all hazards to ground vehicle drivers. Unlike systems like Wheeltug, the system requires no modifications to airliner fleets. It does share the advantage of letting the pilot move and steer the aircraft on the ground, using the same controls and motions they’ve been trained to use during full engine maneuvers.

The Taxibot demonstrator is currently powered by 2 diesel engines, which drives 6 hydraulic motors in a typical “one in each wheel” hydrostatic drive architecture. For the prototype and serial production, IAI says that other hybrid electric solutions will be considered.

EADS and IAI report that an initial evaluation of this concept has shown promising results. IAI believes “Taxibot” could reduce annual fuel costs from $8 billion to less than $2 billion, CO2 emissions from 18 million tons to less than 2 million tons per year, and noise emissions by a significant margin. That last component is a less attention getting environmental component, but its significance will rise. The US Department of Transportation-led study “Trends in Global Aviation Noise and Emissions from Commercial Aviation for 2000 to 2025? predicted that despite noise level improvements in next-generation airplanes, the number of people forced to deal with serious aircraft noise will rise from 24 million in 2000 to 30.3 million by 2025.

A June 2009 Memorandum of Understanding between IAI and EADS aims to take the next steps, and validate Taxibot’s potential. Airbus will participate in the feasibility studies, using an Airbus-owned A340-600 long haul airliner as the test subject. In addition to the ground tests in Toulouse, France, the MoU assessment phase will also cover regulatory, legal/product liability, environmental, and financial evaluations.

If all goes well during those 2009 assessments and subsequent operational demonstrations, IAI and EADS would look to a 3-way partnership with a vehicle manufacturer, in order to certify, produce, and sell Taxibot tractors to airports. Under current plans, Taxibot would be ready for first deliveries by the Q3 2011.

Electric Cars

Giochi di Ben 10 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:33:42 -0800

Do you guess that in the future will be used only cars with electricity power? Or will be there a regulation for only electric cars?

Nick Jacob's Defense!

Nick Jacobs — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:23:39 -0800

Hey brad, rather than spamming great blogs like yours, I always try and provide legitimate, on-topic and meaningful responses in order to earn the link in the response. I wasn't trying to hide the link, but was trying to provide a legitimate response and add to the discussion. My site is on-topic and relevant, and I hoped that talking about green initiatives where I live would have earned the link, but I realize that I fell short. I believe that blogging does not happen in a vacuum and requires a bit of marking, and commenting on great blogs like yours is one way to market a new site, regardless of any search engine benefit (no-follow links do help, and moreover, by linking out to trusted sites without the no-follow attribute, you will actually help your website become more trusted in return...). I like your blog, and have done search engine marketing professionally for years. If it makes up for it, feel free to email me any questions you have about search engine marketing and I will answer them for free.

Wait

Eugene Kerner — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:03:51 -0800

Wait, the rest is to come.

I believe prediction is not prediction but actually authoring.
Everything we think up and share with the world eventually gets done - because we thought it up.
For example say Im the worlds leading authority on war, and I say "I know my business and I can tell you all that coutry a will invade country b and defeat them".
Now country a gets all heady and starts to think about owning country b, and since the worlds leading authority on war declared that they will win they eventually they give it a go.
And country b encourage country a by starting to build their defences, but in doing so they have already admited to themselves that they agree with the prediction and cant win, so when the battle goes down their disheartedness causes them to lose.
Say I predict that country b will win.
Country a must act to save face otherwise they admit that country b are stronger than them and in doing so some their economic wealth can be - or now is being - taken by country b by standover tactics.
Country b eagery await coutry a's attack believing that soon they will own country a.
Say Im not the worlds leading authority but just average Jo going around speading the rumor.
Same circumstances, just takes much longer to spread.

Any other kind of prediction is just gestimation based on history and experience.

This is just my surmise so if it doesnt seem right, well Im pretty sure I dont know everything.

Great video, glad I watched it.

Thanks,
Eugene Kerner.

The Way the Future Was

Phillip Helbig — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:34:39 -0800

Fred Pohl entitled his autobiography "The Way the Future Was".

Electric Highway

Joel Upchurch — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:52:19 -0800

I actually blogged on this topic here: http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2009/09/electric-highway-part-1.ht...

I got started on the idea by a South Korean project that was running the cars by inductive power transfer and actually quite safe. There was actually an extensive discussion about it here: http://www.energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1843&st=0&sk...

I kind of ran out of enthusiasm for the idea after I calculated how much power all the electric cars would consume during afternoon rush hour. Assuming 10kw per car, I came up with 170GW. Since afternoon rush hour coincides with peak electrical power consumption, there is no way to supply that much power without building a lot of new power plants. I guess I should post parts 2 and 3 and close out the topic, but I discuss all the details over in the Energy from Thorium forum. The trouble was the power plants would have cost 10 times what the road would and that was using the cheapest Natural Gas peaking power.

From an environmental point of view it wasn't clear to me that this would actually be beneficial compared to running the cars off CNG in the first place.

I'm now interested in development work on the lithium-air battery. If we can develop a reasonably priced battery that store 1 KWh per KG, then it is a whole new ball game. That would use similar amounts of electricity, but using off peak power, wouldn't require new power plants immediately, although in the long term you would want to build nuclear power plants to reduce CO2 emissions.

Acceptance hurdles

brad — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:13:32 -0800

While I think it’s possible to design it safely, people will actually be pretty scared of electrification of roadway, even roadway that pedestrians are not allowed on.

I also don’t think you could do it for $200/foot. That’s just a million per mile and highway work tendsd to be way north of that.

Not too big, though

Iain McClatchie — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:52:13 -0800

According to Rough Guides, the US road system has over 5.7 million miles of roads. Doing anything to a system that size is, as you say, big infrastructure, and takes forever.

But look at this, especially page 2: http://downloads.transportation.org/Kane-2006-03-10.pdf

There are just 15,300 miles of urban interstate highway. 24% of travel in the US occurs on just 1.2% of the road system. Some very high fraction of longer trips use the interstate system along part of the length. This is a huge lever.

At $200/foot, it would cost just $16 billion to put electrical track into the whole system. And note that there is no reason to do it all at once. 250 miles ($264 million) would open a large market in the San Francisco Bay Area. Twice that would open a much larger market in Los Angeles.

Consider the size of the market. The Bay Area population is 7 million people. A the average rate of US car ownership, that's 5.7 million vehicles. Vehicles have a life of around 16 years, so that's 356,000 new vehicles a year required in the Bay Area. If 10% of the market purchased cars with electrical pickups, the infrastructure would be serving over 260,000 vehicles in 8 years, at an infrastructure cost of under $1000/vehicle. For comparison, the minimum avoided cost of a 16 kW-hr battery (minimum for all-electric government designation) is $3600 (lead-acid, 100% of cycle, totally impractical).

I think your vision of the future of transportation being a lot like the present (individual cars) is compelling, and I agree that increased robotics in the car is inevitable. I think the powered roadway idea solves some of the biggest transport problems that we have (pollution, oil imports, global warming), on a shorter timeline and with less acceptance hurdles than robot cars.

Big infrastructure

brad — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:58:28 -0800

While such things are possible, I doubt they will happen because they require “big infrastructure” and anything involving that happens very slowly and is rarely highly innovative. It’s one of the reasons I think robocars are the likely answer because while they require lots of impressive innovation they require no infrastructure. Once you have a robocar one person can buy it and use it to go anywhere that it’s legal to take it. Magic highways only work where you raise the billions to build the magic highway for those with the special car.

Infrastructure changes do happen of course, but so slowly that anything that can be done by small but clever innovative teams wins.

Powered highways

Iain McClatchie — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:21:20 -0800

Most trips over 10 miles involve the use of highways.

Highways are a tiny fraction of the road miles in the United States.

The power and energy storage requirements for electric vehicles are dominated by the problems associated with highway driving.

Highways almost never have people walking around on them. People walking around on highways are already at very high risk of being killed, and this risk is widely understood.

Therefore, it would be reasonable to deliver electricity from metal strips flush with the surface of the highway to the cars on the highway. Cars with pickups underneath (similar to the overhead pantographs on electric trains) would not need batteries anywhere near as large as cars without, and would have unlimited range.

The same pickups would be used in garages where users would install charging devices into the floor.

An APS system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply) could be used in a few areas where pedestrians are possible, but either cars need large amounts of power (San Francisco's hills?) or range boosting (El Camino Real, down the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula).

emergent road trains

Dean — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:45:27 -0800

Road trains will appear "by magic" once we have a critical mass of vehicles equipped with adaptive cruise control and active lane tracking like that found in the 3G Toyota Prius. The easy part will be tuning the adaptive parameters to escape accordion oscillations; the hard part will be figuring out what to do at freeway entrances and exits. What happens if a non-adaptive vehicle attempts to merge into an existing train? How much time does the dozing driver of the lead vehicle in the new second train have to wake up and recover his situational awareness?.

This is getting close to reality on a number of routes already. Of the ones that I drive regularly, I-45 and I-35 in Texas south of Dallas are often bumper-to-bumper at 65-70 MPH for hundreds of miles on end, with the left lane drifting past the right lane at just a few MPH faster.

Software updates

Overmod — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:36:29 -0800

I cannot imagine 'continuous' Internet-based updates to critical software systems on an ongoing basis.

VPNs, perhaps -- if combined with very robust testing and exercise of the update at several levels, and preservation of the entire 'replaced' codebase locally (so it can be restored, perhaps dynamically, without external connections of any kind).

My own systems approach to updates requires a HARD enable; the railroad systems utilizing a physical keylock. The key must be inserted and turned to permit any changes to the code, and additional forms of 'system security' and assurance (individual codes, cards, biometrics, etc. to identify the person authorizing the change) are also active.

"Presumably" vehicular software will not have immediate or common-mode failure across a wide range of instantiations. I can't think offhand of an emergent issue that could not be handled as if it were a 'recall' -- e.g. taken to a service point, or having a procedure run on it. In severe cases... a manufacturer's rep or trained serviceperson goes to the vehicle's location, accesses the software with appropriate hardware security, and verifies the installed base before buttoning up the system.

Now, I can easily see online VERIFICATION of the installed code, perhaps via wireless (e.g. the quick compatibility check needed to permit access of robot vehicles to modern automated highways). I can (perhaps) see dynamically-downloadable applets for non-critical parts of the operating software... 'skins' for the various nonessential UIs in the vehicle being one example... but certainly no part of the guidance, to say nothing of collision avoidance.

I freely confess to being very old-womanish (with no disrespect at all implied toward senior members of the female gender) regarding critical-systems software. That does not extend, however, to making the very common mistake that the 'cure' for systems failure in an autonomous vehicle is to provide some sort of 'hold everything' emergency brake lever accessible to any of the passengers! (Picture what would happen if you hit your brakes as hard as possible without working brakelights in any lane of the 405... any more questions? I thought not...)