cars technologies

Cars with auto-pilots have been suggested since at least 1970. Computers are only fairly recently getting small, fast, and cheap enough to make this a possibility. Also digital camera technology is only recently getting good and cheap enough to make adequate sensors.

Speed control is a comparatively trivial undertaking. Socks

Control could be mediated through a signal strip in the highways. Only those cars that respond positively to input signals would be permitted to move on the highways, so free moving cars would have to be excluded.

Railways have been running (essentially) diverless trains for decades. For example, the drivers on the Washington D.C. Metro are there as window dressing for the public. They do not do squat. The computers drive the trains. Digital vision devices are not required for this system to work.

Bob Kolker

| Cars with auto-pilots have been suggested since at least 1970. | Computers are only fairly recently getting small, fast, and cheap | enough to make this a possibility. Also digital camera technology | is only recently getting good and cheap enough to make adequate | sensors.

I don't want to even be on the road with, much less in, any vehicle running on auto-pilot if any Microsoft code is involved.

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool, snipped-for-privacy@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

You're basically talking about an Expert System inserted in between the manual controls and the roadway. Sounds good to me; I've always wanted a car at leasr as smart as a fish. Fish manage to perform complicated maneuvers en masse without colliding. I'd prefer to be able to just "herd" the car ("go that way, and handle the details") if I felt even slightly distracted (or distractable) instead of having to focus all my attention on the driving process fulltime. Now, which "expert" do you model the system after, some Grand Prix speed demon, or your spinster aunt Betsy? Or maybe a rainbow trout?

Of course, if the thing starts losing competence, I want full manual control on demand.

I can't wait for the inevitable Windoze- and Apple-based autodrivers' incompatibilities. They used to call cars "buggies"; that could come back with new meaning.

If you break a job into small enough tasks, and have fast enough processors, decent hardware interface, etc, I agree. _IF_.

Electric. But the least stupid idea I've ever heard is to tax every driver to support a system involving power conduits in the roadway itself, and fairly short-term storage capacity in the car to handle system glitches. If you are licensed, you use it. If you aren't, you don't need it.

For longer interstate stretches it wouldn't be economical, and you'd need a special endorsement (competency test-driven) and independent power.

It'll take some major infrastructure rearranging, but that's coming slowly anyway.

Works for me. Get together with Feerguy.

Mark L. Fergerson

Sure thing. Anyone here ever check out "DeathRace 5000"? Jaywalking will be a thing of the past if I ever get a crack at that software.

Cheers, Tony.

There was recently a demonstration project of this type of techology in California (see PATH AHS). It included a demonstration stretch of highway restricted to AHS vehicles. Several vehicles would be platooned (following each other) and driven hands off.

One interesting sidenote--a video was taken showing the platoon cars driving by with all the drivers hands up ( like on a roller coaster). The funny thing was adjacent was the regular highway, and the cars there were driving faster and spaced closer together. So much for technology!

Spaced closer together? I don't think so. DO you have a link to share?

Probably the platooned cars were going the speed limit and properly spaced by the "three second" rule. Real traffic routinely spaces itself so closely that there's no room for a lane change and no room to stop, although there always should be.

Sorry, no. I saw the video at work. Some people I worked with were involved in the project and they brought back the video and played it.

Incidently, I think one of the big challenges of this technology is the determination in real time of the characteristics of the tire-road interface, i.e. how does the system know if it's on a dry road or slick ice?

ABS systems do this but you have to be braking at the time. Is there technology to measure this continuously?

It's probably limited by policy reasons. The technology can generally cope with seperations of well under a meter. You may be talking about over 10 cars/second, for a convoy going at speed.

You've got to consider problems of course.

For identical cars, if the cars are autocontrolled, whatever one car encounters, the next one will too.

If the first car got round a bend, then all the rest will. There are a very few faults that would cause problems.

Any uncontrolled braking of any vehicle in the platoon will have minimal effect, as it can brake no harder than the vehicle behind it.

There are problems.

Bob, while that may be true of the Metro Trains which run and are guided by steel rail, it sure isn't true of WMATA's bus system which have no equivalent constraints imposed on their vehicles' paths.

While working at General Railway Signal Company, I was the senior system engineer in charge of control system design for Washington's WMATA rail system, so I'm still pretty familiar with the technical details of its operation. I also performed the same function for Atlanta's MARTA system and parts of the Frisco's mainline rail system.

The automation of rail guided transit is relatively simple, because only one degree of freedom is present. For automobiles this increases to 2, and for aircraft and space vehicles, 6 (x,y,z coordinates, plus roll, pitch and yawl). Hence, the problem of automating automobiles is a considerably more dicey problem. It is currently being addressed by something known as IVHS (Intelligent Vehicular Traffic System) within the DOT, but its problems are no way near a solution.

Getting back to the Washington Metro System, the automatic train control system does not employ computers in controlling train motion, only supervising their operation. The actual train control system is hierarchical, and consists of three key parts, (ATS) Automatic Train Supervision (the computer part), Automatic Train Operation (responsible for nominal starting and stopping of trains at stations), and (ATP) Automatic Train Protection, which has the responsibility for assuring that the train stops safely at all times -- essentially the contemporary equivalent of the older railway signal systems.

Only ATS involves the use of a computer. Both ATO and ATP subsystems are totally implemented in equipment on the train or immediately adjacient to the track. The system is, without operator intervention, completely fail-safe. This means that whenever an unsafe condition exists, the train halts. Sadly, this luxury of system design does not exist with either cars or aircraft! :-)

Not to minimize imporatance of the ATS system, it constantly monitors train locations and compares them with the wall clock scheule showing where they should be, and then factors in real world complications such as existing traffic problems, adjusting train performance accordingly. As you have correctly stated, this system requires only that a train operator depress his "ATO Start" button at the begining of a run, then simply sit back and enjoy the trip! (It was only union regulations that mandated that a train operators presence was required, and then only to monitor and if needed override automatic door operation on the train.)

Hope this helps.

Harry C.

p.s., As a possibly humorous aside, we controls people spent well over two years discussing the operation of "platform edge lights". One group wanted the edge light to indicate where a train was going to stop, while another believed that doing so was a safety hazard. At the time that I left the project, it was decided that all of the platform edge lights should flash in advance of the arrival of an approaching train, giving no indication of the position on the platform that the train would berth. Is this still the situation?

Another humorous aside is that the bronze tablet on the outside of the WMATA OCCB has a switch in back of it to detect its removal, and post an alarm in the train control room! Go figure this one out, since that bronze tablet cost far less than did the alarm circuity and programming needed to detect its theft! Also, when you pass though Smithsonian Station, note the switch in the tracks. I'll leave you to guess where that spur leads, and why. :-)

Well ... yes. But it couldn't be any worse than being on the road with human pilots who are drunk, fatigued, emotionally distraught, distracted, super-annuated, or just plain incompetent.

Since in much of the country bars are in places only conveniently accessible by car, and since people will continue having parties from which their guests will drive home, driving under the influence, not to mention all the other influences, will not be solved until cars at least have the intelligence of Dobbin.

In the midwest they will also have to have the intelligence to leave the motor running and the heater on until the passenger revives or is collected; or else we will replace freezing deaths for traffic accidents.

The "traction control" built into the anti-lock brake system in my '93 Eagle Vision TSi. The TC sensed wheel slip and applied the brake (pulsating) to the slipping wheel. This not only allowed the slipping wheel to remain in contact with the surface, but delivered more power to the opposite wheel. It worked great on snow, but IMO got a tad dicey on ice. There was a switch on the dash to disable the TC function.

I'd call it a draw.

Yes well, everyone knows that greater distance between cars is safer - if something go wrong with one car, gives the others more time to react.

I don't think you'd want the cars closer together and driving faster, just because its automatically computer controlled. I think it more a case of, you could sit back and watch TV that drop down onto in front of the dashboard, listen to music, close the windows even (you don't have to look out any more if you don't want to know about the traffic jam up ahead that could still exist after all, its the humans that all decide to leave at the same time and during rush hour), catch up on some work on the way there.

Maybe they should stagger working hours, to finish between 3pm and 7pm instead of all finishing at 5pm.... but it is convenient to all finish at

Actually I think communication technology is going to make offices no longer required (after all, I.T. contractors work from home sometimes for example, over the network). But we'll still like offices, or common meeting places, because its good to get together in person. Just you won't have to do it as often.. maybe once a week.

So then the load on the roads might decrease somewhat.. in theory.. enabling us to sustain a greater population that still seems to keep going up, but without impossible levels of road infrastructure.

How are we going to do it in the year 3000.. ? what's the projections I wonder..

Maybe we'll all just need to invent amazing flying vehicles so we can occupy all the available airspace as wel as groundspace, like in scifi..

JP