I came across this article on the website TRANSLOGIC. It was posted on Jan. 17 2011 by Damon Lavrinc. It features a video demonstration of a project Volvo is working on in collaboration with the EU and several other business entities. It is the latest in a long series of experiments featuring self driving vehicle caravans.
What I found interesting about it was that the head of the caravan was a Big Rig tractor trailer with a human driver behind the wheel. As soon as I was done watching the video and the initial excitement of watching a batch of cars drive themselves one behind the other while their "drivers" were busy sipping coffee and reading the daily newspaper had worn off, I began to wonder why in the world they would think it useful to put a human being in a tractor trailer at the head of this caravan of cars.
I believe that the very structure of the project renders it almost pointless. There is validity in refining, studying, and fine tuning the behaviors of the cars behind the big rig, after all, the cars, as pointed out in the video and the article, have to communicate with the sensors in the tractor trailer and mimic them , while also communicating with the car they are behind in order to maintain the proper distance from it. All those factors are extremely useful and are going to add to the knowledge base necessary to make driver-less tech a reality, but the whole reason we are headed in the direction of automation is to eliminate or at least minimize human error.
For those of you who do not follow Translogic, another Blog that gives relatively timely updates on the latest in Automotive gadgets and new technology, it is an excellent site and I definitely recommend checking it out sometime. You can find it as an extension of Autoblog.
http://translogic.aolautos.com/2011/01/17/watch-this-sartre-self-driving-auto-train-hits-the-road/#continued?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment