npts2020

Maybe they are prejudiced against engineers and didn't like your answer.

waitforufo: The winners of the DARPA challenge for automated vehicles used a radar sensor similar to what you describe, so it is technologically feasible. Furthermore, those vehicles ran off-road over pretty rugged terrain and had no other human input once the race was begun. A transit system, even with many more vehicles, should have fewer variables to consider and keep track of. A guidance sensor can but need not be the same as a detector for foriegn objects on the roadway. IMO an imbedded grid using optical or electromagnetic sensors for travel (a relatively inexpensive way of doing it) and a separate radar for hazards is the way to go. On an enclosed system stray objects should be rare and if the vehicles self-monitor for performance breakdowns should be as well.

Lightness is one of the $1.99 books you can get for joining Sientific American's Book Club this month. You get 3 for $1.99 and have to order 2 at regular price within the next year.

They stole them and hid them up their sleeve for next election.

On an automated system, such as I have described, an event like this should be exceptionally rare and not as bad as many of the pileups that frequently occur during bad weather and some other times on the current system. For one thing a computer will automatically make all vehicles that might be affected react uniformly and faster than any human. Furthermore, a computer will make the "right" (whatever was programmed to be correct anyway) decision every time and without hesitancy. The situation you describe happens many times every year on our current highways, i would think once a year on an automated system to be an unacceptably high rate.

Unfortunately, I moved from State College in 1989 and only got to hear second hand about the events you describe surrounding Mr. Ashtekar. Isn't it amazing with all of the advancements and good news in the world, how little of it you actually find out about without searching for it?

I disagree. That is what abstract thinking is about, concieving of something that must be imagined. I would agree that our conception is likely to differ from reality because of our three dimensional existence but I believe many people can and do concieve of other dimensions. When was time first posited as a fourth dimension? IMO somebody was fathoming higher dimensions.

Especially when there seems to be different versions of what constitutes "the facts".

No options for improving our highway system will be cheap. The sentiment about not wanting to turn over control for automation is fairly common as well. However, as anyone who has driven around a major American city during rush hour can attest, the highways are basically bursting at the seams. The biggest problem isn't that there aren't enough roads, it's that the roads are inefficiently used in large part because of the extra safety margins required by human drivers. It is not possible to automate every highway at the same time, either, but once begun should be done as quickly as possible. I would be happy to discuss the politics and economics of such a project on another thread if anyone is so interested but I would like to try to restrict this discussion to the technical aspects. The reason the thread was started in reference to control systems is that this is the main untested part of automated traffic control. If I had unlimited resources I would actually test as many control regimens as could be thought of but it seems that just building a scale model is going to be no easy task for what I have access to at present. The reasons I think such a system is both necessary and feasible at this time mostly have to do with safety and environmental concerns and the fact that the control system that would be required no longer needs new technology. A bonus for an automated system is that you can power the system from any source, affording the opportunity to substantially convert about a quarter of our national energy use to renewable sources. If the system is to be high speed it will need to be enclosed, current interstate highways are approaching the limit IMO of what an open system can safely achieve. Enclosing most of the system will enable higher speeds by not having to react to obstacles or being affected by weather. Solar panels and wind mills enough to completely run the system can be erected on top and a new utility grid on either side, this should reduce noise as would better aerodynamics for vehicles using the system. It should be possible to use retrofitted vehicles as well with an optic or electromagnetic, guide system making such more versitile, but those vehicles would never likely use the fastest lanes of the system, only freight and merge lanes. My leanings are toward imbedding magnets/wire/optical sensor in the pavement and/or ceiling and/or walls over guidance by rails but nearly everything I read about "advanced" transportation talks about rail/light rail.

This was enough to get me started on a rant about you not having observed the American government at work.......til I saw this.

Well I have never seen a third party in charge of much of anything in America to see any theories about their rule to be proven or disproven.

I'll give you that one even though I gotta believe that Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, and John Edwards probably feel they would be a better choice. Still you see the point though.

How many of those several billion cars are going to still be operating in another 20 years anyway? The whole point is to make the system safer, faster, more efficient and convenient and to replace those cars with a more sustainable means of transportation. But that is a whole other discussion. Any system I can envision will need more than one lane of traffic to handle peak volumes even with automation. Rails are very good for close tolerances and efficiency (i.e. rolling friction) and might have better fail-safe capabilities but they are very inflexible and expensive. For those last two reasons it would be better to have some sort of optical or electromagnetic guide for control if the fail-safe and close tolerance problems can be brought to a level similar to rail.

Well, a large number of derivitives are mortgage and property value based........need I explain the bearing that has on the discussion at hand? The similarities between financial institution leveraging now and in the 1920,s is pretty amazing to me. Does it bother anyone else that in one financial instrument (derivitives) there is supposedly $500 trillion? That is something like 8 times the annual world GDP, quite a hefty sum of debt I think.

I meant one thing that everyone in either party believes that the other disagrees with. I would be willing to bet you can't find an issue of substance that fits that description.

For the moment I think we need to give up the concept of having them in widespread use but I am all for developing the technology.

The system I would like to see designed should be able to exceed 300 kph and therefore ought to be enclosed (one of the main things that would also make it safer). I would think efficiency, reliability, and safety would best be served by having a large main computer telling on board computers what to do (any other opinions about this?). Onboard computers would only control car functions, taking all speed and direction orders from the main. Ithaca, New York is set to start planning for a similar system to the one in Morgantown, W. Va. but IMO they have set their sights too low and should have smaller faster cars. I like the idea of sensors imbedded in the road for flexibility and cost but don't really know enough about them to know how practical they would be at higher speeds. Rails are proven to be safe and effective but are also expensive and more limiting. GPS would likely be used as a status check more than control unless some way of being in constant contact and control of millions of vehicles is constructed and accuracy further improved. I know little about the hardware for GPS but could the current system even handle that much information traffic? Back in the mid-1970's the U.S. DoT did a study about automating the highways and concluded that the main technological (and almost only real) obstacle was a control system. Fast forwrd 30 years where many hand held devices have more computational power than the best computers of the time of that study and you have overcome the main hurdle for effective controlling tools. The only thing that has to be done today is apply that computational power to the required use. That is the current question, what is the best control system in terms of cost, reliability, compatibility with retrofitting current vehicles etc.? I am as interested in your reasoning as your opinions.

Yes, but they both agree on that. They just have access to the biggest fund ever created and will fight tooth and nail to keep anyone else from having that same access.

Basically by going from an agrarian dependent economy to an industrial dependent economy, which is usually more diversified. We are about to undergo a similar change. Three of the biggest components of our economy are in need of major overhaul, namely defense spending, automobile manufacturing, and financial services. The problem is how far can you leverage the financial service sector to prop up the other two and for how long?

Every year America's highways kill 10 times the number of people who died on 9/11, and in every bit as gruesome a manner. The overwhelming cause of this carnage is the fact that a human operator is easily distracted and unpredictable. The obvious solution would be to take the human driver out of the equation and automate the system. My question is what would be the best system of automation? Two possible solutions are to use tracks (like rail, monorail, or overhead systems), which are expensive to build, or imbed an optical or magnetic grid in the road (or beside or above) for onboard sensors to follow and translate for directional purposes. I would appreciate any feedback about the practicality of either system and ideas for other types of control.

That is the whole purpose of automation. The same roads we use now could easily handle at least several times the current traffic volume. Instead of hijacking this thread I am going to start one on automation of the highways.

Ok, but how do you get any work out of it without attaching it to something? If you have eliminated the friction between gears, that something becomes the main frictional drag in the system. Levitation is the easy part, using it to do useful work a little harder.

C'mon now its taken many years of tuff negotiating to get the "deal" we now have in America. All those who think American health care doesn't cost too much raise your hands.

It seems to me the "opposition" parties have provided little opposition when it comes to spending our money. The one thing that neither have done is to define an ethics framework for business and by which they themselves are willing to be judged and pass it into law. Just one question, can anyone define a single concept that every single member of one party or the other agrees upon?

Isn't business cycle just a kind term for when the latest business ponzi scheme gets out of control? Before the depression of the 1930's banks were so highly leveraged they couldn't even cover their depositors money, much less any investors. This led to the creation of the Federal Reserve to oversee the banks and insure small depositors. Now we have a similar situation where there is something like $500 trillion in leveraged debt, known as derivatives. Where has all of this money gone? Wellllll, it wasn't ever really there to begin with (only financial instrument to guarantee debt,etc).............the only real question is how far the lever can be extended before breaking? My impression is that the economy is more highly leveraged than it was in the 1920's before the crash. My biggest hope for avoiding a repeat is that todays economy is much more diversified and flexible. My biggest pessimism is that politicians will still find a way to screw it up, the recent Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 looking like a positive sign of it.