The Amazing Shrinking (and Sideways-Moving) Car!

CNN - 5/8/15 by Lauren Said-Moorhouse

"It is able to reduce it's own size by about 80cm, which makes it almost as small as a bike in length. And with this kind of feature you can go into very tiny parking spaces," he says. "You are still able to turn on the spot, you are still able to drive sideways and you are still able to connect to charging stations, for example."

As cities continue to grow at a dizzying rate, commuters are constantly battling ever-increasing congestion on the roads and a lack of parking, just to get to work.

But now a team of German engineers have come up with an ingenious solution -- a "flexible" electric vehicle capable of shrinking, driving sideways (think like a crab) and turning on a dime.

The EO Smart Connecting Car 2 is an innovative design from DFKI Robotics Innovation Center, based in Bremen, Germany, where a team of software developers and designers, as well as electronics and construction engineers, have been refining the smart micro car project for the last three years.

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Pushing the Humans Out of the Driver's Seat

Time - 10.21.14 by Sam Shank

Roughly 10 years from now we will see the End of Human Driving — a seminal moment of the first half of the 21st century. I’m guessing my young sons will not need to learn how to drive.

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of technology replacing human drivers.

Let’s be honest: people aren’t always great drivers. They get distracted, tired and make mistakes. Technology can simply do a better job. This is a subject I’ve thought about deeply for the past 20 years. I believe it will have as much impact on the world as the switch from horse transport to automobiles.

The consensus opinion is that safe and reliable driverless cars will be available within a few years. Tesla just announced “Autopilot,” which will be available soon via a software update, and will allow for autonomous driving on freeways – an amazing first step.

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Are You Ready for Self-Driving Cars?

c|net - 5/29/14 by Seth Rosenblatt

Google's new self-driving car prototype surprised even robo-car experts and suggests the company is further along than expected.

Although the Google self-driving car prototype revealed Tuesday night may look cute on the outside and strange on the inside, it signals that Google will soon face tough questions about ownership, insurance, and what it means to try to take the wheel of the urban mobility revolution away from Big Auto.

To be sure, the self-driving car technology is far from road ready. By Google's own admission, it sucks in inclement weather, it can't drive anywhere without a pre-made map, and to keep it on the right side of the law, it's only allowed on the streets with two human operators ready to take over.

But they've already racked up more than 700,000 miles in nearly two dozen Toyota and Lexus vehicles that they've bolted their autonomous technology to, and the cars can successfully navigate freeways as well as the busy downtown suburban streets of Google's hometown in Mountain View, Calif.

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Best Singularity Stories of 2014, Week 15

What is the world is a Multiverse?

When you think about our Universe, the scale of it is hard to conceive of. Each of us is just a simple human being, a little under two meters tall; a collection of just under 10^28 atoms.

Yet our Earth is — literally —more than a million times larger than us in all three dimensions: a nearly perfect sphere more than 10,000 kilometers in diameter.

But what we have access to is so much more than just the Earth. Just going another factor of a million larger than Earth — in all dimensions, again — we encompass all the bodies we know of in the Solar System. The Sun, all the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, centaurs and man-made probes are contained within a sphere of 10^10 km, a million times larger than the size of the Earth in every direction.

Supersonic Air Travel - Windows, Out. Screens, In

No matter what perks airlines take away from you, the one thing you can still count on is a genuine peek at the clouds at 35,000 feet. That might go away, too, one day, replaced with a virtual reality version of the iconic airplane window.

Spike Aerospace, a Boston engineering firm that’s developing a small supersonic jet, recently caused a stir when it announced its plane wouldn’t have any windows in the passenger cabin. Instead, thin screens installed on the walls of the aircraft would display live views captured by cameras mounted outside.

Machining Ethics

For the French philosopher Paul Virilio, technological development is inextricable from the idea of the accident. As he put it, each accident is ‘an inverted miracle… When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution.’ Accidents mark the spots where anticipation met reality and came off worse. Yet each is also a spark of secular revelation: an opportunity to exceed the past, to make tomorrow’s worst better than today’s, and on occasion to promise ‘never again’.



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2014's Most Important Futurism Stories, Week 13!

Autonomous cars start to take shape

We've heard a lot of chatter about autonomous vehicles over the past several years and seen a variety of hardware. So far, most autonomous cars are rough, experimental versions of current models, with all kinds of added sensor hardware. The recent Geneva Motor Show flipped the autonomous vehicle inside out, showcasing several futuristic design studies that peeked inside the car cabin of the future.


What happens to life sentences if our lifespan is radically extended?

Even in my most religious moments, I have never been able to take the idea of hell seriously. Prevailing Christian theology asks us to believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing being would do what no human parent could ever do: create tens of billions of flawed and fragile creatures, pluck out a few favourites to shower in transcendent love, and send the rest to an eternity of unrelenting torment. That story has always seemed like an intellectual relic to me, a holdover from barbarism, or worse, a myth meant to coerce belief. But stripped of the religious particulars, I can see the appeal of hell as an instrument of justice, a way of righting wrongs beyond the grave. Especially in unusual circumstances.


The future of mobile: Less phone, more operating system

It’s still early in 2014, and news from the Mobile World Congress talks about a next generation of smartphones that will blow people’s minds, with dazzling hardware advances, great software, and new features that will make life easier, healthier and more fun.

Or will they? What if the Galaxy S5 is just as good as the S4 for 99 percent of our needs? After all, recent history has shown that the “revolutionary” 64-bit chip in Apple’s iPhone 5S has generated less than 1 percent of real value to 99 percent of its users.


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The End of Rush Hour Traffic?

Motherboard - 11.07.13 by Meghan Neal

Even beyond that, the fast-approaching internet of things could mean a networked infrastructure sending a torrent of real-time data that knows where the next stop sign is, when the light up ahead will turn green, that the truck five cars in front of you just slammed on his breaks. Suddenly a little geolocation app seems oversimple even, but it's a start.

Flickr

It's probably safe to say that in the near future, all cars will have some sort of GPS system, right? Which means theoretically, a technology that's tracking the location of every vehicle on a certain road or even town should be able to use that data to manage the traffic and avoid jam-ups. Like air traffic control, but for highways.

Soon, researchers in the Netherlands will put that theoretical scenario to a test. A team from the Dutch IT firm Technolution is developing a GPS navigation system that tells drivers what lane to move into and when, and how fast to drive, so that traffic is dispersed as efficiently as possible to avoid congestion.

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Six Awesome New Life-Simplifying Car Technologies

TechHive - 6.6.13 from Edmunds.com

 You drive your Audi to a specially designated car lot, leave the car at a drop-off area, choose an open space with a smartphone app and then let the car do all the work.

Technology is supposed to make life simpler and better. Cars cover greater distances than horses. The automatic transmission spares us the task of shifting gears. Cruise control gives feet a rest on long road trips.

Here are six new car technologies that continue in that tradition. They might not be offered on all vehicles, and some will take time to make their way to the mainstream car market. But at the very least, this list can serve as a glimpse into the future of some cool, make-it-simple car technologies.

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Augmented Reality Coming to Your Windscreen

BBC Future - Dec. 2, 2012 by Jon Stewart

The Mercedes Dice concept allows car passengers to call up information about passing landmarks (Copyright: Daimler AG)

The dangers of talking on a mobile phone or texting whilst driving are well known.  So adding what, on first glance, look like added distractions may not seem like the best idea.

But researchers and car firms are increasingly looking to give drivers enhanced, or augmented reality (AR) that adds extra information ranging from directions to social media feeds to the view through the windscreen. And, perhaps the most unintuitive part of it is that it is designed to make the roads more secure for all of us.


“The biggest way augmented reality can be useful is in supporting safe driving,” says Professor Anind Dey, of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. “The ability to enhance information around us that might otherwise be opaque to us is invaluable.”

AR is usually considered to be a live view of the real world, onto which extra data – usually pulled from the internet - is layered or superimposed. It is similar to the view of the world that Arnold Schwarzenegger had in the Terminator movies.

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One of Your Next Cars May be Smarter Than You

ars technica - October 12, 2012 by Jonathan M. Gitlin

In some ways, the arrival of the car around 130 years ago represented a dumbing down of transportation. I'm not saying those early cars weren't impressive engineering feats; they were, and continue to be. But your average horse possesses a certain intelligence that your average horseless carriage lacks (and that's before we get to Mr. Ed). But the seeds of change were sown in Silicon Valley, and decades of Moore's Law has worked its magic to bring us to the current day. Ultimately, the future of more fuel efficient cars is going to be a future of more intelligent cars—everything from autonomous vehicles to engines that navigate traffic better than we do.

Combining internal combustion engines with electric motors might be all the rage now, but the idea goes back further than you might think. Back at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) created the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid. It used batteries and a Daimler engine to power electric motors mounted in each wheel hub. This arrangement, known as a series hybrid, uses the engine to run a generator, which in turn powers the electric motors and/or charges the car's batteries.



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Star Trek Propulsion Becomes Real - Dilithium Crystal Fusion

WIRED.COM.UK - October 5, 2012 by Ian Steadman

Humanity has been in space for a while, but we really haven't managed to go very far. Carl Sagan once said that "the surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean, and recently we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle deep" -- that was in 1980, and we haven't risked testing the water any deeper since then.

One of the main reasons for that, though, is that space is so frustratingly massive. Voyager 1 is the fastest manmade thing ever, but 17 kilometres per second is a piffling fraction of the speed of light. Even getting to one of our nearest neighbours, Mars, would take six to eight months using conventional spaceship engines. Ideas like warp drives are still theoretical, and unlikely to be seen within our lifetimes. However, it might be possible to cut that trip to Mars down to as few as three months using a form of fusion fuel -- "dilithium crystals". Yep, just like Star Trek.



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California Constructing the Legal Framework for Driverless Cars

MercuryNews - August 30, 2012 by Mike Rosenberg

SACRAMENTO -- California on Wednesday stepped on the accelerator toward a futuristic highway filled with robot cars as the Legislature sent to Gov. Jerry Brown a bill that would allow driverless vehicles to hit the road later this decade.

If signed by Brown, the legislation would shift technology being mastered at places like Google and Stanford from test courses to public roads. Since 99 percent of all traffic and fatal accidents are caused by some form of human error or imperfection, supporters envision a world of computer-controlled cars that would zip around quickly and safely.

SB 1298 from Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, was passed unanimously by the Senate Wednesday night following the Assembly's 74-2 approval Tuesday. It's among dozens of bills under consideration during a flurry of activity as the Legislature wraps up its session this week.

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Driving in a digital city

techradar - July 25, 2012 by Jamie Carter

Travel and settlement has always been fuelled by the latest tech known to man. Steam power, coal, electricity and the humble combustion engine have propelled humans around cities and across the seas.

But forget fossil fuels; now it's data that's helping shape the next generation of smart cars and cities where 'intelligent mobility' is the next big thing for drivers.

Over half of all humans – 3.5 billion of us – live in cities. By 2050, that will double, which means we've got to find a way of making our cities work much more efficiently – and that means transport.

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Driverless Cars - As usual, Japan gets them first!

Tech-On! - June 128, 2012 by Naoshige Shimizu

Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) had a discussion in the aim of the practical use of automated driving technologies in Japan June 27, 2012.

MLIT plans to clarify the issues related to automated driving and compile an interim report by March 2013. This is the first time in the world that a ministry or an equivalent government organization has started to seriously consider the introduction of automated driving, MLIT said.

On the same day, MLIT organized the "1st Discussion on Autopilot Systems." In a report that the ministry published in March 2012, it said that it aimed to put automated driving into practical use in the early 2020s. And the discussion took place based on the report. The ministry plans to have a discussion on this issue bimonthly.

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Cadillac may introduce "Super Cruise" soon

PhysOrg.com - 4.23.12 by Bob Yirka

Cadillac is reportedly joining the crowd working on features that it says should reduce car accidents by allowing the car to drive itself under optimal conditions, relieving the driver from fatigue, making road trips safer for the driver and passengers. Currently, Cadillac is already offering features that intercede on the driver’s behalf should the vehicle “sense” a dangerous situation. The new technology, which GM says likely will make it into showrooms by the middle of the decade, should make cars even safer by removing the hazard caused by human fatigue.

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Driverless cars are closer than you think

PHYS.Org - 4.13.12 by Alisa Priddle


Cars that drive themselves are not just the stuff of sci-fi movies. The technology is real, the cars can now drive legally and the debate is starting on whether society is better off when software is behind the wheel.

Automotive supplier Continental is testing a self-driving car that, by month's end, could be among the first licensed for use on public roads in Nevada, the first state to pass laws governing driverless vehicles.

Continental, which has its U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., removed brake and steering controls in a Volkswagen Passat and replaced them with sensors and advanced technology to read the surroundings and drive accordingly.

To qualify for Nevada's special license, Continental engineers have racked up and documented almost 10,000 miles of autonomous driving. That included a recent trip from Las Vegas to Brimley, Mich., where Continental has a development and testing center. More than 90 percent of the journey was without a hand on the wheel or a foot on a pedal, said Ibro Muharemovic, lead engineer of Continental's Advanced Engineering unit and one of three engineers riding shotgun.

A final trip is being planned to hit the 10,000 mark in the next few weeks.

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Self-Driving Cars Coming to Nevada First?

New York Times - May 10, 2011 by John Markoff

Google, a pioneer of self-driving cars, is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state where they could be legally operated on public roads.

And yes, the proposed legislation would include an exemption from the ban on distracted driving to allow occupants to send text messages while sitting behind the wheel.

The two bills, which have received little attention outside Nevada’s Capitol, are being introduced less than a year after the giant search engine company acknowledged that it was developing cars that could be safely driven without human intervention.

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Airport Security Screening Protest - Why it Flopped

Or, "Quit your crying, you ninnies!"

The entire time news sites were reporting on the horrible, despicable, execrable, evil TSA and their new security screening procedures, I thought: Give me a xxxx-ing break. The cries of foul play were clearly being hyped by the media, who never saw a dispute they didn't want to create, the Republicans, who will miss no opportunity to make the current administration look bad, and a few idiots who have too much time on their hands.

So someone "calls" for a protest day. Right. Travelers who don't want to be blown up on their way to visit grandma and just want to get there as quickly and comfortably as possible are deliberately going to shoot themselves in the foot by jamming up the lines and making themselves and everyone else miss their flights. Not gonna happen.

Live Science - 11.24.10 by Benjamin Radford

Complaints about airport security recently triggered calls for a consumer-led "Opt-Out" day (boycotting full-body scans) that would hopelessly snarl travel plans and force the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to rethink its intrusive methods. Airline and government officials worried that there would be nationwide travel disruptions today.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Despite threats of protests from passengers angry at new security rules, it was relatively smooth sailing — and flying — at O'Hare Airport Wednesday. Lines at ticket counters and at security checkpoints were moving freely throughout the morning and early afternoon. 'There are no delays, no lines, no protests that I know of,' said Karen Pride, spokeswoman for the Chicago department of aviation."

In fact, reports so far have indicated no significant delays, protests, or slow-downs at any major airports, from Los Angeles to New York — beyond, of course, being the busiest travel day of the year. So what happened to the thousands (or tens of thousands) of angry airline customers who weren't going to take it anymore?

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Driverless cars already on our streets

thespec.com - 10.9.10 by John Markoff

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving.

The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.

With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.

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Holy flying hotel, Batman!

I Look Forward To - 10.4.10 by Christian H.

An Australian aeronautics company is developing a 150 meter wide discus-shaped helium balloon with a payload capacity of 150 tons. Among other things, the Skylifter will have the ability to move multistory buildings to remote locations and serve as a new generation of airborne luxury cruise ships.

You’ve seen hot air balloons, maybe been in one. Now imagine one that has a hotel strapped to it. This is exactly what Australian company Skylifter is developing. Using a round, flat, helium filled balloon, it will cruise at a speed of 83 kph, at distances up to 2000 km. This innovative technology opens up a confounding array of possibilities, and the Australians are already planning for a whole host of applications:

The Skylifter can move objects of any shape – a house, a boat, a hospital, a statue - to anywhere – rainforests, deserts, islands, mountains – without ever having to land. If you want a house in the middle of the Amazon, you can have it shipped there in its entirety. If a village in an inaccessible part of the Himalayas needs a hospital, the lack of overland connections to it is no longer an obstacle. You can bring a concert stage to the top of Ayer’s Rock, if you please. G20 summits causing too much commotion in the city? Why not set up a secure village in the Gobi desert where you know demonstrators won’t reach you. I could go on, but I think you get the gist of it.

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Ready for a 7,000 km/h train?

Who wouldn't like to travel from LA to New York in 45 minutes? I've never had to travel from LA to New York, or the other way round either, but I'd want to do it just for the rush. The article below introduces ETT (Evacuated Tube Trains) that run at thousands of miles per hour in underground tubes that contain a vacuum.

The idea is that it's high time for a paradigm shift in transportation and that shift will be ETT:

..Such as a global network of maglev trains that travel faster than planes in air-less vacuum tubes. We’re talking about a mode of transportation that will take you from LA to New York in 45 minutes, cruising at six times the speed of sound.

I've spent the last couple of days getting from Norway to the Philippines. The total flight time amounted to 23 hours, on top of which came countless hours of waiting, standing in line, taking taxis and shuttles etc. There’s got to be a better way.

Over the last 50 years, a vast array of tech-intensive industries has seen tremendous progress in efficiency, both in terms of cost and time (two factors that often have a directly positive correlation). Mobile phones have become smaller, cheaper and more powerful. Internet is faster, cheaper and more prevalent than ever. There's a pattern here. Catch my drift?

In his book, the Singularity is near, Ray Kurzweil discusses the concept of paradigms and how once a technology’s potential is exhausted and cannot be further improved, a new technology takes its place, marking a paradigm shift. Computers used to run on simple transistors, which were in the beginning very big and slow, but as the technology evolved, they became cheaper, smaller and more efficient, until finally all the potential for improvement had been squeezed out of that particular technology and any further development to it was marginal. So a new technology, microprocessors, took its place with transistors on an integrated circuit. This technology too follows a similar pattern and each two years microchips become twice as powerful.

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