Talk:Automated transport systems
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Contents
Current situation
Severe injuries from road accidents = 36,000 jumbos crash landing — this is reality of road transport. Likelihood of being killed on the road is something like 1 in 200 (need to find ref). Number one killer of young people [1] and by far the leading cause of accidental death [2].
- 28% of greenhouse gas emissions [3]
- Land use in cities. Roads cover a huge percentage of urban land (need to find figures, probably about a third). A more space-efficient transport network (like PRT) would allow for more greenery
- According to Wikipedia, within the EU, 44% of goods are transported by roads and 85% of people
Financial cost of road traffic accidents estimated at over $120 billion in the US and over $193 billion in the Europe Union. (Found in slideshow from Delphi Automotive Integrated Safety Systems - need to find source).
Options
- Trains
- Light rail
- Maglev
- Gravity vacuum maglev (almost no energy required)
- Possibility of shared vehicles. (Similar to the schemes that exist with bicycles in many cities - DublinBikes etc.) The winner of the 2009 Buckminster Fuller challenge was a system of small electric cars and scooters which would be docked at points around a city (where they could charge). You swipe a card and one of the vehicles unlocks and you drive it and drop it off at another dock. There are plans to bring this in for several cities [6].
- Aircraft
- Personal aircraft. Flying cars
. VTOL would be best - Sub-orbital passenger craft
- Autonomous helicopters already exist like this mini-helicopter designed at MIT. Impressive video of small, autonomous, quadrotor helicopters. Think of the possibilities of little helicopters to deliver packages; like an automated FedEx. Hummingbird Unmanned Rotorcraft is autonomous and has a much better fuel-efficiency than any other helicopter and also goes at a higher altitude, which would be better for solar power. Other unmanned helicopters include the RQ-7 Shadow. Bell Eagle Eye is an unmanned tilt-rotor vehicle.
- Spacecraft etc.
- Personal aircraft. Flying cars
- Human powered - International Human-Powered Vehicle Association is a dynamic organization of hobbyists designing and testing human powered land, air and water vehicles and even submarines. Some of the stuff there is pretty amazing: somebody flew 74 miles in a pedal-powered plane, somebody else broke 82mph in a recumbent bicycle. What's more, the community of people doing this are very much in favour of free and open design. Human powered vehicles will probably remain something people do mostly for fun, rather than as part of an economic infrastructure.
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/skycat/
Cars
We now have the technology to make self-driving, very light, electric cars that use a fifth the energy of conventional cars. These can be much safer than normal cars.
Efficiency
Most cars get less than 40 miles per gallon. Well-designed electric cars can get up around 200mpg [7]. The Aptera gets 330mpg
Electric/fuel cell vehicles are finally catching up with the performance of petrol cars. The Tesla Roadster proves this: cheaper to run than an ordinary car, 125mph top speed, 0-60mph in 4 seconds, 244 mile range, 3.5 hours to charge.
energy storage: Batteries are getting lighter because of nanoengineering. Ultracapacitor technology is getting better, but still is nowhere near the density of petrol. Hydrogen fuel cell, electric battery and hybrids with motors have all outperform standard cars, and the gap will continue to widen.
Fuel cells have high energy density; ultracapacitors have high power ddensity, so perhaps a hybrid (like the one Riversimple are working on) is the most promising.
Regenerative braking technology can reduce energy needs 10%. Carbon fiber is 4 times lighter than steel and 5 times stronger. It is 14 times more expensive, but you would make that back in fuel costs coz it's lighter. Carbon fiber is progressively getting cheaper and being used more and more in cars.
Third generation photovoltaics in windows and paint will allow cars to produce their own energy on-the-move.
Open-source cars
- OScar
- "c,mm,n"
- Riversimple's open-source, carbon fiber, fuel cell Urban car (plans here)and their much sexier LifeCar.
- http://p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking#Mobility:_Vehicles
Self-driving cars
A lot of progress was made on autonomous cars in 2010. The technology exists and is fully tested; it just needs to be introduced on the ground. 4 unmanned cars drove from Italy to China delivering goods [8]. Google has a fleet of modified Prius cars that have driven 140,000 miles without incident, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car#Fully_autonomous
Center for Automotive Research Stanford (CARS) doing a lot of work in this area, including cars that are driven by humans, but have smart systems so they "cannot crash"
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80MlnZcXCwo
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdUD02JryI
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YUjlKA6tVU
Impressive video of an autonomous car doing controlled high-speed parking
Safety
Computer-controlled cars will have less accidents.
Stronger materials will make cars safer.
The huge reductions we can achieve in the mass of the vehicles will make a collision a much less serious event.
Vehicles that tilt (like the Audi Snook concept or the [http://www.monotracer.com/index.php?lang=en X-Tracer) can take corners much tighter
