Fall asleep at the wheel of the right prototype car and it will steer you around obstacles. That’s what Ford’s demonstration of an obstacle avoidance system at its proving ground near Lommel, Belgium, this week implies. But it won’t be ready for a long time. Ford took advantage of the attention its prototype drew to announce its full parking-assistance technology, which is mature enough that it might be in your next car and wins hands-down against the autosteering for clever advertising.
Both obstacle avoidance and the more mundane parking assistance are part of the larger trend toward greater autonomy in road cars, as IEEE Spectrumnoted at the Frankfurt Motor Show last month. The technologies exist along a spectrum from the simplicity of 20th-century cruise control to features that take over momentarily from bad drivers to the sort of autonomy that would turn drivers into passengers, able to sleep or read an issue of Spectrum without worrying about traffic.
Read the rest of this blog post at IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog: [html] [pdf]
In a laboratory on Norway’s fjord-laced coast, Jane Feste bubbles some carbon dioxide gas through a liquid for a crowd of visitors. “I will take an amine—that’s a base—and that will absorb…the CO2. So [that’s] what’s happening out in the plant, just shown for the eye here,” the laboratory technician explains. She’s referring to Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM), the US $1 billion, 350-megawatt power plant and test facility that the Norwegian government and several energy firms built. The assembled journalists cannot seem to decide if they should applaud the spectacle or if they’re witnessing a modern case of the emperor’s new clothes. Continue reading Inside the World’s Largest Carbon-Capture Test Facility→
Dutch students today shaved 20 percent off the record time for an electric car to reach 100 km/h. The Delft University of Technology Racing Team first prepared the ground by blow-torching the rain-soaked runway at Valkenburg Airport, says team manager Tim de Morée, and sweetened the deal by drizzling a little sugar-water on the strip. “Drag racers use actual glue,” he said when questioned about the sportsmanship of the tactic.
The car, driven by the team’s lightest member, Marly Kuijpers, repeated the run about ten times. The team tweaked the traction control and tire slippage for each run. The Dutch press declared victory when the car hit 100 km/h in 2.15 seconds, but de Morée told IEEE Spectrum that a later run achieved the target speed in 2.13 seconds.
Read the rest of this blog post at IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog: [html] [pdf]
A fleet of cars and drivers whisks visiting journalists around the Frankfurt Motor Show’s sprawling, 144-hectare site. Judging by the number of exhibits of self-driving car technology this year, future visitors can expect their courtesy cars to lack drivers. It’s a matter of putting together many existing technologies in an affordable, safe system.
One piece of that future system nearly clobbered a two-dimensional cutout of a child last week on a fenced-off piece of asphalt outside Hall 10. There, Bosch employees led by Werner Uhler were demonstrating a stereo optical camera system Uhler says could be cheaper than combined radar and optical systems used for collision avoidance today. The device is mounted on the front window of a testbed car, adjacent to the rear-view mirror. As the testbed approached a parked car, Uhler, seated in the backseat, said, “We will drive along…and suddenly a child will turn up and we will brake.”
Read the rest of this post at IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog: [html] [pdf]
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.
Fall asleep at the wheel of the right prototype car and it will steer you around obstacles. That’s what Ford’s demonstration of an obstacle avoidance system at its proving ground near Lommel, Belgium, this week implies. But it won’t be ready for a long time. Ford took advantage of the attention its prototype drew to announce its full parking-assistance technology, which is mature enough that it might be in your next car and wins hands-down against the autosteering for clever advertising.
