I couldn't agree more, Beth. It always amazes me to see people riding without helmets or even with bare arms and legs (I grew up in Southern NH). Riding in car is dangerous enough these days, so it's nice to see all of the safety options that are available.
The appeal of the motorcycle airbag will probably be minimal among serious bikers, which is hard to understand given how dangerous riding can be. I live in Mass. where there is a helmet law, but there isn't one in New Hampshire, which is right over the border. I'm always amazed at the riders blazing across the highways without any kind of protective gear, and especially being bare-headed. I get the thrill of speed and the wind in your hair and all that, but it seems to me to be astoundingly short sighted given your dependency on other drivers for your safety.
You're right, Rob. Safety sells. And when it doesn't sell, it occasionally gets mandated, as is the case with electronic stability control and airbags.
I agree, Naperlou. The forward collision avoidance is the most impressive and it's likely to have the most effect down the road. It's one more piece of the autonomous puzzle. As for the motorcycle airbag, it works very well, I'm told, but I wonder how great its appeal will be among serious bikers.
This is quite a show, Chuck. I didn't realize the wide range of safety technology that's getting developed for mobility. I would guess this isn't happening in a vacuum. Seems that safety technology is becoming a competitive factor.
Chuck, there are lots of interesting new technologies in your slide-show. I was especially impressed by the forward colision avoidance system. In the video it was pointed out that the system stops warning when the driver takes evasive action. That is a good feature and shows that the designers were really thinking about how the decive would be used.
While many of the innovations listed involve electronics for control, or are primarily electronics, there are some that are passive safety systems, such as the vehicle structure examples.
One thing I find counterintuitive is the motorcycle example. The safety vest is nice, but the trend these days, at least where I live (Illinois) is that bikers are dispensing with even the most basic safety equipment (e.g., helmets). In Europe, I noticed when I lived there, there was much more use of safety equipment, such as full body crash suits. So, I wonder how much up take there would be. Really, motorcycles are inherently dangerous (I know).
Nice slideshow, Chuck. Shows a mix of what's cooking up in the development labs that can have a major impact on reducing highway fatalities. The motorcycle suit is pretty amazing. You hear about so many fatalities on bikes and something like that could really reduce the risk. Is that something that the biker wears or is it part of the motorcycle like an airbag?
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
On April 21, NASA launched a novel project, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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