Think Tank

Smart Roads

2009-03-09T02:45:00.000-05:00

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One more thought before I call it a night. There are two technologies I think people need to put together, and I don't know if it's occurred to anyone but me. Let me know what you think.

For years, research teams at various colleges and institutions around the world have been working on vehicles capable of self-automation. Cars that can drive on their own, adjusting for road conditions, weather, obstacles, movement, etc. Most of these pursuits have seen only moderate success at best. One (I think it was in California a year or two ago, I saw it on TV) had a vehicle that could actually drive unaided around campus and offroad. However, it looked like a paramilitary vehicle with cameras, lasers, sensors, and antennae springing from every inch of it.

They used a variety of sensors and lasers to detect movement of objects in front of and around the vehicle, and cameras hooked to computers running algorithms against GPS data to determine routes around obstacles.

In another realm of research, sensors have been developed that utilize a sort of WiFi daisy chain network to broadcast data to other sensors. I can't remember what they're called now (somebody help me out here), but I remember reading about them somewhere. They're being used in industrial applications to monitor things like temperatures of equipment and to detect the presence of gases in hazardous environments. Essentially, each sensor broadcasts its data to the next two or three sensors away from it in every direction. That way, if one sensor in the loop fails, malfunctions, or is destroyed, the other sensors can pick up the slack and even notify an operator of the location and cause of the failure.

Interestingly, I seem to recall that these were either being used (or being researched for use) by the U.S. Border Patrol to detect motion and heat when people crossed the border in the middle of the desert. They can be placed far enough apart to still broadcast to one another to cover miles of territory without wires, and they can be powered by small solar cells.

So why aren't we putting these together with the automatically-driven vehicles to make that dream a reality? If we could just line the streets in major cities with sensors broadcasting data such as movement, speed, road conditions, and temperature to other sensors down the road and even to our vehicles, the burden of gathering driving data would shift from a moving vehicle to stationary solar-powered devices embedded in the roadway.

Maybe we start with the freeways, so when you merge onto the freeway, your car goes into autopilot and drives itself at a cruising speed the road tells it is okay. Such a smart road could let your car know what kind of traffic was ahead of it, behind it, or even right next to it. You could travel at a speed optimal to the condition of the road and the traffic around you. The road would tell your car when to speed up for long straight stretches, when to slow down for tight corners, and even if the warmth of a person or animal was in or near the roadway a mile ahead.

We could all get discounts on our car insurance if we agreed to have the autopilot receiver installed in our vehicles so our cars could interpret the data sent from the road. I'm sure some premium brands would install it as a standard feature, like OnStar now, but OnRoute perhaps.

Think of it. You wouldn't have to stop at stop signs if your car knew there was nothing coming three before you got there. It could automatically slow you down in certain neighborhoods at certain times of day - school zones for instance - so you physically couldn't exceed the speed limit if children were present. Crosswalks could be integrated into the datastream to automate driving and stopping when people were in the street. Turn signals would be a thing of the past, because you'd just tell your car where to go, and it would indicate its intentions to the cars around it passively, without further interaction from the driver, via the datastream in the smart road.

Of course, you could also integrate the system into parking lots so that your car knew where the available spaces where, and could even safely drive itself to a space after dropping you off at the door. It could even stop on its own for little old ladies and women with baby strollers, because the sensors in the parking lot would be able to detect where those people were and transmit that info to the vehicles.

I'll post some links to some of these technologies as I find them. But don't feel like you have to wait on me. If you know what I'm talking about - regarding either vehicular automation or wireless autonomous sensors - please post some notes here and save me the trouble of digging around looking for them.

I'm excited to hear thoughts on this one. Is it already being pursued? Does anyone know somebody in either field? And, perhaps most importantly, what do we (collectively) think the odds are that we'll reap the benefits of such a marriage of technology within our lifetimes?

Origins of Life on Earth

2009-03-09T01:59:00.001-05:00

Wow. This sounds like a big one, doesn't it? Hopefully it's not so weighty a topic that it scares anyone off.

So, I've been seeing a lot of shows on various cable channels (Nat Geo, History, Science, etc.) about The Universe, or The History of Earth. And they all seem to agree that life started here in the oceans, went through several "ages" in the seas, progressed to land, etc., etc.

At the same time, I'm aware that there are massive craters on Mars that seem to indicate the planet incurred some pretty nasty impacts from large bodies. Probably got hit by a "planet-killer" asteroid or comet or other such body at some point in its distant history. There is also evidence of bodies of water on the surface: lakes, rivers, oceans.

So what if life on Earth actually began on Mars? I know it's a stretch, but so was the process of evolution taking us from single celled organisms to fully functioning humans. Just stick with me a second here.

Say Mars suffered a huge impact, big enough to knock a sizable amount of its crust off of its surface and out of the reach of its gravity. Is there any chance that some of that material could have held fragments of life as we know it today on the journey through space until they struck the Earth. Could that have been the catalyst that set the series of life-building events here in motion? Not to say that any actual life forms made the trip on a slab of space trash, but maybe the building blocks we've come to recognize: cellular structures, carbon-based life, photosynthesizing processes, and so forth.

What if all life on Earth is the illegitimate evolutionary offspring of another planet's disastrous end?

It could explain the pyramids on Mars. The Face. I think we need to do some real exploration on the Red Planet to find out what's really under all that red dust. We may find writings and artifacts not dissimilar from ancient civilizations on our own planet. We could have common ancestry, or at least similar DNA structures.

Hell, what if Martians foresaw their predicament and actually seeded life on Earth? Saw the conditions were ripe for spawning growth, and shot plants or animals to Earth to give evolution some sort of kick start?

That might be even more far fetched, but I don't think it's entirely outside the realm of possibility. I would be far more keen on the idea that we evolved as some sort of accidental Martian afterthought. Perhaps Mars was a colony of some far distant civilization - some society that thinks their colony planet in our small, remote solar system died completely off when it was hit by a comet or asteroid. We could be the forgotten orphans of a long forgotten space-faring people.

It wouldn't even negate religion or God. Perhaps those memories and myths are what we inherited from our common off-world ancestors. Maybe God or Allah or Whomever you choose was purging a corrupt planet, and we were the lucky race chosen to carry on elsewhere. Work it in however you like - I certainly don't think religion can be an argument to dispute the possibility that the origins of life on this planet came from somewhere else.

But this is all probably already a book by L. Ron Hubbard or Piers Anthony. Let me know your take on this topic. Heard it elsewhere? Got a better idea?

Better yet, have you heard of any evidence or findings to suggest the same thing or to support this notion? Do you have a sister-in-law at NASA who's researching the very same possibility?

Give me your thoughts, and don't be stingy with the links to nifty websites with any relevant info.

Pressure-Indicative Brake Lights

2009-03-09T00:55:00.000-05:00

This is a small idea that's been floating around my head for a while. Why not have pressure-sensitive switches, even 1-, 2-, 3-stage style switches, on brake pedals in vehicles that would indicate via the brake lights whether the driver in front of you is tapping their brakes or slamming on them?

I honestly can't believe this hasn't already been rolled out by any luxury brands as an exclusive safety enhancement. You could easily wire LEDs in a variety of patters to trigger in phases as braking pressure increases: concentric circles, enlarging logos, stars, bars, etc. I think the only requirement to keep in mind would be the minimum size of a brake light. That would be the starting point, as deemed by any lawmaking authority. They would just get bigger and brighter from there, the harder the pedal pressure.

This is probably even something you could work with insurance companies on to qualify for discounts to premiums. Get a retrofit, get a discount.

Any thoughts on this? Has anyone seen this on any new model vehicles that I'm unaware of? Does anyone have an uncle in the industry they can pitch this to? I'd be interested in seeing links to articles if anyone knows of any.

I'm sure I could get together a prototype pretty easily with parts from Radio Shack, but I'm not certain the idea actually has any merit, or if it's already been done.

Welcome to My Thinktank

2009-03-09T00:37:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting to get this started for quite some time now. There are a bunch of sporadic, scattered ideas that run through my head from day to day, and I'd like to start getting some of them recorded somewhere.

There are a couple of nifty advantages I gain from preserving these ideas as a blog:

I can share my thoughts with friends. This has some inherent benefits of its own.
- My friends can provide skeptical feedback and further insights.
- They can suggest additional avenues of thought I might not otherwise have considered.
- We can exchange live links to content to support our opinions.
I can post from my mobile to catch thoughts on the go.
I can post directly from webpages with info offering details about my train of thought.

I'm probably going to record a few thoughts here before opening it up for discussion, but I would like to hear from anyone and everyone who has an opinion about anything I post.

I don't know if anyone I'm inviting to view and post here will have any interest in pursuing any of these ideas beyond simply discussing them. But I will certainly encourage any such development if any arises. I only want credit for getting such great minds together.

I'm very anxious to see what sort of discussions we can generate here.

Ever thinking of new ways to procrastinate,

Josef