I live in the land of 100+ temperatures in the summer. I don't care so much about parking in a spot closest to where I'm going. I want a car that will park itself in the shade.
Call me a Luddite, but I'm not sure I want my car wandering around without me. I'd prefer a GPS type of application that would verbally direct me to a open space.
Herein lies the biggest obstacle of autonomous vehicles: Human's inability to come to terms with the fact that we are not better than computers at many tasks. It turns out, that computers are now incredibly good about seeing objects like children and other cars. They (computers) are never distracted like a human, their sensors watch constantly and don't turn away when they are looking for (or at) their cell phone, children, or any other of many distractions that Americans have in their vehicles. Computer systems have reaction times are far better than human reaction times. I only wonder why collision avoidance systems aren't more popular. The technology on the top of the line Prius is where the future needs to go on all automobiles, these systems would solve many of the easy to avoid accidents that are caused by distracted drivers. Granted, it will be some time before cars go completely autonomous, we love to be in control, but systems that prevent distracted driver errors would save the insurance industry huge amounts of money.
@TJ: That's the kind of imagery that could potentially throw this technology right off the map. Imagine the chaos, what's akin to autonomous road rage, of self-parking cars. Yikes. I'd want to steer clear.
Hi Beth, I agree. To have automonous vehicles driving on roads and neighbor streets seems dangerous. I wonder if the car has the ability to detect kids darting out into the steet to retreive a ball and stop immediately? Also, to drive in hazardous conditions like snow and rain storms requires an experience driver. I wonder how much AI can be programmed into these vehicles to handle such driving conditions. But like you, I'm kind of digging the find a parking spot in a crowded mall garage scenario.
I've been a little leery of the self-driving car concept, but I have to say, the idea of a car that would cruise crowded parking lots by itself and find me a spot--now that has some merit, in my book. Of course, there's always the paranoia about the car taking off and never coming back, but I suppose those concerns dissipate as people get more accustomed to what initially seems like out there technology.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
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.
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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