The velocoptor2 displayed in this year's CES , which has support from Intel, is interesting. An 18 propeller two seater drone like machine with a range of 27 miles and half an hour duration . 3kw motor per prop. The intelligence from the Intel software makes the device simple to operate and the lack of a central rotor means they can have a parachute... Low weight machine 650 kg all in.
Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
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??? Extreme left or Labour.? They could have had massive influence 97 to 2010 but kept quiet..didnt want to rock Tony's boat ???
Lots of snags though, some examples:
The maximum permitted altitude of 400' would need to be drastically increased to enable parachute use, but that would put this slow machine in conflict with much faster aircraft and create an air traffic control impossibility with a number of these in use. So forget the parachute.
Half an hour flight, four hours minimum then to fully fast recharge the 27kW battery. (Ultra fast only fills to 80% maximum)
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The intelligence from Intel makes the device easy to hack would be my first thought...
Not really, true Labour members tried but were repressed by the fake labour Blairite control and not allowed to use their party's publicity machinery.
That's an important cause of today's left wing anger.
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I'm sorry flecc, but I'm with woosh on this topic. We already have driverless vehicles, . What added value a train driver brings is questionable. In a era when we can send non human controlled vehicles to the edge of the solar system, it is feasible . The requirements to segregate traffic depending on size, stopping distances is well understood, but political reluctance is what is stopping progress, not technical prowess.
I can see a day when there is a Transworld railway system, possibly in tubes aka hyperloop, with high speed goods transfer from China, through Russia, across the straits to Alaska and down to the tip of south America. With links into mainland Europe and a connection from Spain via tunnel into Africa. .
I think they would assume a bank of batteries at each depo and a quick drop in replacement... Just the job to bring bankers and tycoon media publishers from Heathrow to the Shard or wherever they go...
The parachute isn't actually a problem, think more like giant airbag. Apparently 100 ft deployments of quasi normal parachutes have been successful.
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I fully agree with all that, railways are dead easy, so is space since it's full of - - - space!
But robotics won't cope with much of what we do with our road vehicles and the circumstances in which we do that. That is what you and Woosh don't seem to understand, the infrastructure that we use our vehicles on won't allow fully robotic control.
Such a robotic car would take me to the outer entrance of a builders merchants I visit, but then it would be utterly baffled by variable situations that only I or another human could deal with. Even on the way there's a very congested and difficult section that often could not be dealt with by two robotic vehicles meeting, there would just be an impasse for a human to sort.
No accidents yes, but sometimes no forward progress either.
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Agreed, but as I've remarked with robotic surface vehicles, only on prepared suitable infrastructures.
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Agreed.. but that is just a matter of organisation or lack of it. Single flow path, robotic dispenser of package of grit etc. People like Amazon can construct full logistic warehouses with robotic handlers. As with everything else, planning and compromise are necessary. I have visited Intel manufacturing plants where all the processes are automated, including internal transpirt of wafers. As I was recently telling my incredulous adult children, there once was a trade of grocer assistant, where tea and sugar came in big boxes lined with zinc, where butter came in creels and the role of the assistant was to make up bags .. literally from sheets of sugar paper and then fill them and seal them.Ditto with butter and parchment paper and cheese and bacon and ham sliced before your eye... I actually saw all this done on a daily basis. Just organisation!! .
It's because their ideas and ambitions are totally unworkable, benefit no one and are easily exposed as rubbish. Their response is aggression, shouting down, bullying, secrecy and extreme censorship. It's the only way they can work because they never have majority support.
If the bridge doesn't get backing, he could always move France closer to the UK. It would probably be cheaper and less complicated.
And selling off public services and buildings to mates that back your political interests.
then we change the infrastructure. Motorways weren't built 100 years ago.
Motorways will be first to allow driverless vehicles, then dual carriage ways and so on. We'll fit sensors to the roads to warn driverless vehicles of humans or cows wandering onto the roads (or driving a vehicle)..
some inventions (monorails, foil suits and personal flying cars) are not necessary.
Removing human drivers will reduce death toll due to traffic accidents.
Yes, I'm familiar with such grocers, and customers helping themselves bare handed from tins of unwrapped biscuits etc!
But many things simply cannot be on an Amazon and Intel scale, my builders merchants dealings for example. They use all the tech they can, as do I and many of their customers, but their internal goods handling processes cannot be automated since they are mainly one offs of very variable goods. Nor is the space available to even attempt that if it were possible. It's actually rarely possible for a robotic vehicle to drive into their yard, but I won't attempt to explain those complex circumstances.
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Again agreed, and I've already said as much for major roads, but most infrastructure is built to last for at least a hundred years, often much longer, so it cannot simply be changed quickly enough. Also some of this is prohibitively expensive, detection sensors to spot anything at any point on any road when we can't even afford to fill in potholes!
Much if not most driving time is in cities and towns, and it's there that we will never see vehicles operating fully robotically. For economic and practical reasons it's neither desirable nor necessary. Since a driver will be necessary anyway, there'll be no sense in not using them in many circumstances. So robotic control for major sections of straight forward roads, including city arterial routes, but overriding driver control for all the slower, unpredictably variable portions of journeys.
Not only is this more economic and practical, it overcomes the immense, some think insuperable legal hurdles that full robotic vehicle control brings. With a driver on board able to override, any liability is easy to sort out.
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