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Ford Disguised a Person as a Seat to Test How We React to Driverless Cars

16 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

A Ford van zooming around the Washington D.C. area last month, seemingly without a human in the driver’s seat, wasn’t self-driving after all: it was a man in a ‘seat suit.’ A fake driverless car might seem like a weird experiment, especially considering the fact that there’s an entire fake town for testing self-driving vehicles at Ford’s disposal. But as it turns out, they have their reasons: observing how people react to seeing it. While Virginia Tech has already been testing autonomous vehicles in the area, they’re still using human overseers to take over the wheel in case something goes wrong.

In the video above, a few people muse aloud, “Is that a self-driving car?” Slow-motion shots show the vehicle passing by with a seemingly empty driver’s seat. But the fact that there’s a man camouflaged as a car seat is almost more interesting, anyway. After learning of the stunt, Adam Tuss of NBC Washington followed the car around until he could pull up next to it at a red light and get a shot of the interior, revealing the driver’s hands and legs. “Brother, who are you?” he asks in the video. “What are you doing? I’m with the news, dude.”

This is one of the strangest things I've ever seen @nbcwashington @ARLnowDOTcom pic.twitter.com/8ipKEnkeiq

— Adam Tuss (@AdamTuss) August 7, 2017

John Shutko, a Ford self-driving researcher, divulges some answers in a piece on Medium.

“We’re teamed up with [Virginia Tech] to test our communications method and to explore how pedestrians and bicyclists react to self-driving vehicles with no human in the driver’s seat. Of course, we do need someone in the seat right now, so we dressed a human up in a seat suit to make it appear as though there was nobody inside our simulated self-driving Ford Transit Connect. This seat suit allowed us to collect real-world reactions to an autonomous vehicle driving on miles of public roads in northern Virginia, without actually using an autonomous vehicle.”

Six different drivers wore the suit throughout August, reporting that they started out on a test track before moving onto the streets, and that the suit was definitely uncomfortable.

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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Autonomous Trap: Artist Uses Ritual Magic to Capture Driverless Cars

28 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

car trap

Somewhere between pagan magic, modern science and quirky satire, this installation project uses salt circles but also the logic of traffic lines to lure in and ensnare unsuspecting autonomous vehicles.

salt trap car

James Bridle‘s Autonomous Trap 001 employs familiar street markings found on divided highways – per the rules of the road, cars can cross over the dotted line but not back over the solid line. It sounds a bit absurd, but consider: driverless cars with various degrees of autonomy are already hitting the streets, and these do rely on external signals to determine their course. As these technologies gain traction, it is entirely likely that serious attempts will be made to spoof and deceive their machine vision algorithms.

“What you’re looking at is a salt circle, a traditional form of protection—from within or without—in magical practice,” explains Bridle. “In this case it’s being used to arrest an autonomous vehicle—a self-driving car, which relies on machine vision and processing to guide it. By quickly deploying the expected form of road markings—in this case, a No Entry glyph—we can confuse the car’s vision system into believing it’s surrounded by no entry points, and entrap it.”

autonomous vehicle trap magic

“The scene evokes a world of narratives involving the much-hyped technology of self-driving cars,” writes Beckett Mufson of Vice. “It could be mischievous hackers disrupting a friend’s self-driving ride home; the police seizing a dissident’s getaway vehicle; highway robbers trapping their prey; witches exorcizing a demon from their hatchback.” It has elements of cultural commentary that stem from acute awareness of real conditions, bordering on the absurd but also quite sobering.

mountain pass

In fact, Bridle made his trap while training his own DIY self-driving car software near Mount Parnassus in Central Greece. “Parnassus feels like an appropriate location,” he says, because “as well as [having] quite spectacular scenery and [being] wonderful to drive and hike around, it’s the home of the Muses in mythology, as well as the site of the Delphic Oracle. The ascent of Mount Parnassus is, in esoteric terms, the journey towards knowledge and art.” Meanwhile, Bridle continues to work on other pieces related to contemporary technology, tackling subjects from machine vision and artificial intelligence to militarized tech and big data.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Mobility Vision: Hyundai Concept Connects Smart Home to Driverless Car

12 Jan

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

mobility-vision-1

Who needs a garage when your autonomous vehicle could simply pull up into a port inside your home and seamlessly integrate itself with the interior? Hyundai wants to give us all another reason to spend hours inside our cars by effectively turning them into furniture when they’re not in use. Its ‘Mobility Vision’ concept, unveiled at this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, blurs the lines between architecture and automobiles more than ever.

mobility-vision-2

The driverless car essentially plugs into the house when you’re done with a trip, and then the driver’s seat, which is mounted on a pivoting arm, can slide right into the living space for use as a chair. The idea is never having to stop what you’re doing and metaphorically shift gears between travel time and home time; stuff you leave in the car is easily accessible, babies can continue sleeping in their carseats, and there’s no fumbling for keys.

mobility-vision-4

A single door, almost the height and width of the entire car, opens upward to delineate the space between the car’s interior and the living room. You can even run the car’s heat or air conditioning to adjust the temperature of your house, and use the car stereo to play music at home. Perhaps the most important detail: the car is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, so it’s quiet, and there’s no danger of breathing unhealthy fumes.

mobility-vision-7

mobility-vision-6

It’s just a concept, and not likely to become a reality anytime soon – but could it be a glimpse into what mobility will look like in the not-so-distant future? It seems entirely possible, but it’s not clear how many people want to just sit around in their cars for no reason when there’s probably a perfectly good couch just a few feet away.

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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Rolling Landscape: Driverless Geodesic Garden Hits the Streets of London

10 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

geodesic-mobile-garden

As robotic cars take to the streets, designers are beginning to see possibilities for urban mobility that go beyond human and cargo transport. What if plants, for instance, could be moved around automatically, seeking out sun, filtering dirty air and providing fresh greens within cities?

Inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, the Interactive Architecture Lab at the University College London has designed and built Hortum Machina B (the last letter short for Bucky).

rolling-garden

An aluminum core houses the technology’s robotics, monitoring plants on the periphery and changing rotation and position to accommodate their needs. On-board water storage supplies moisture for growth while the ball stays in motion.

garden-sphere

This novel mobile ecosystem is solar-powered, so its search for sunlight fuels not only the plants on board but the system itself. With efficient water reclamation, the garden could stay on the move indefinitely.

garden-module-prototype-plan

The internal computer system not only keeps the plants healthy but serve as part of a larger set of smart-city initiatives. For instance, sensors can detect and seek out areas with poor air quality, letting the plants provide filtration on demand.

urban-farm-rolling

The sphere could also roll itself through urban food deserts, allowing people to pick edibles as it winds its way through a city. Of course, this shape may not be the most efficient manifestation of the idea, but as a conceptual model could inspire similar and more sustainable typologies.

solar-garden-london

street-garden-design

Presumably, in a future world of autonomous vehicles, there will be both mechanisms and space to accommodate driverless gardens as well as cars. Freed-up streets could be used to transport all kinds of things, not just conventional goods and people but also micro-ecosystems and other stuff we have yet to think of. For now the, the robotic garden has been tested in London and remains prototype. It might not be as productive per square foot of space as many new urban farm designs, but perhaps it makes up in novelty and mobility what it lacks in terms of strict productivity.

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Spherical Tires: Magnetic Levitation for Driverless Vehicles

19 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

magnetic levitation sphere tires

The Eagle 360, a new tire design concept from Goodyear, is a rounded sphere held in place by magnetic fields and designed for a smoother ride in your future driver-free car.

The biggest advantage, of course, is omnidirectional steering capabilities, since the wheels have no orientation, unlike their forward-or-backward circular predecessors.

goodyear tire concept

An organically-patterned, 3D-printed tread is designed to adapt like a sponge to different road conditions, while built-in sensor relay surface measurements to the onboard computer. Faster response times and immediate reaction capabilities in multiple directions all work toward improving passenger safety and comfort.

goodyear tire diagram future

“By steadily reducing the driver interaction and intervention in self-driving vehicles, tires will play an even more important role as the primary link to the road,” said Goodyear’s senior vice president Joseph Zekoski.

goodyear maglev tires

“Goodyear’s concept tires play a dual role in that future both as creative platforms to push the boundaries of conventional thinking and test beds for next-generation technologies.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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Robot City: Entire Fake Town Built to Test Driverless Vehicles

23 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

7/15/15 2015 UM Aerials -July MCity, North Campus, Munger Grad Residency,Campus construction.

Opening this week, Mcity is a completely artificial village for self-driving cars, bringing the future of automobiles back to Michigan, the historical home of Motor City. Taking lessons from military testing facilities like Gravesend in England or Yodaville in the US, the complex is made to simulate a wide variety of conditions.

fake town driverless cars

Featuring 32 acres of roads, intersections, sidewalks, streetlights, signals and building facades, Mcity is part of a statewide effort to advance connected technologies and test autonomous vehicles. More than a simulated combination of urban and suburban environments in their ideal forms, these experimental grounds also incorporate stress-testing defects like graffiti and faded lane markings as well as different street terrains, tunnels, roundabouts and multi-lane freeways on a combination of pavement, cobblestones, gravel, grass and dirt.

fake city autonomous vehicles

Given that all crashes to date involving autonomous cars have been caused by human error, it is critical not only to test the vehicles themselves but also the people they will interact with on the road. In addition to its proximity to Detroit, a key benefit of the Ann Arbor area is the varied weather in the area, with everything from hot humid midsummer days to serious rain, snow and hail in the winter. The test area can be reconfigured on demand to simulate complex intersections, blind corners and other real-world challenges.

fake city university michigan

The project represents a $ 10,000,000 private/public partnership between the University of Michigan, local governments and various industries, including but also beyond regional and international automotive powerhouses (Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, Toyota but also State Farm, Verizon, and Xerox).

7/15/15 Aerials of UM Campus and Ann Arbor.

“We believe that this transformation to connected and automated mobility will be a game changer for safety, for efficiency, for energy, and for accessibility,” said Peter Sweatman, director of the U-M Mobility Transformation Center. “Our cities will be much better to live in, our suburbs will be much better to live in. These technologies truly open the door to 21st century mobility.”

“In addition to Mcity, MTC has three on-roadway connected and automated vehicle deployments underway. With the help of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, MTC is building on a nearly 3,000-vehicle connected technology project launched three years ago by the U-M Transportation Research Institute to create a major deployment of 9,000 connected vehicles operating across the greater Ann Arbor area. MTC is also partnering with industry and the Michigan Department of Transportation to put 20,000 connected vehicles on the road in Southeast Michigan. The third piece of the plan calls for deploying a 2,000-vehicle mobility service of connected and automated vehicles in Ann Arbor.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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Driverless Living Space: Future Car Envisioned as Mobile Room

14 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

driverless car in city

Blending elements of rigorous automotive and interior design, this concept car may look like a streamlined vehicle but is more akin to a communal living room on wheels on the inside.

driverless car conversing commuitng

driverless car dash board

driverless car test model

Unveiled by Mercedes-Benz at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, features include swiveling seats for conversing and viewing, individual touchscreen displays and interactive gesture-based interfaces for driving and recreating alike.

driverless car sitting relaxing

driverless car seating interface

driverless car exterior view

The exterior presents as a classy and aerodynamic sports car with carbon fiber-reinforced plastic, aluminium and steel. Within, walnut, leather and glass make for a a likewise-luxurious but human-oriented set of materials and finishes.

driverless car interior view

driverless car doors open

Of the design and its direction, Dieter Zetsche notes that “Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society. The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a mobile living space.”

driverless car sleek look

futuristic driveress car design

The open question remains: how much will cars of the future even look like cars on the outside? As platooning and other hive-like concepts are further explored, we may find vehicles look far different down the line than we might imagine.

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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View Forward: Driverless London Train Cars Arriving in 2020

13 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

new tube train car

Called the New Tube, the next phase in London’s Underground system will feature partially and entirely automated cars, including ones that let passengers sit up front in the space heretofore reserved for drivers.

new tube front face

new tube train design

This forward-looking plan calls for 250 driverless trains for the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines, rolling out in the year 2020 and beyond, each with larger doors for faster entry and exit capabilities.

new tube london design

new tube continuous interior

These new models will not be segmented in traditional cars but instead be continuous and segmented (able to be walked from front to back) and feature built-in wifi as well as passive air conditioning. The newly-freed front ends of these will feature emergency egress doors as well.

new tube driverless trains

new tube side doors

An LED lighting system will glow to show the speed and direction of travel and light up to let passengers know when doors are opening or closing as well. Digital displays will replace paper advertisements inside the cabins, too.

new tube sleek sides

new tube day view

These sleek new machines are being made to operate 24 hours a day with a projected lifespan of 30 to 40 years so their technologies must, as much as it is possible, take into account existing issues as well as population growth and other future-proofing concerns.

360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Driverless’

Ford Disguised a Person as a Seat to Test How We React to Driverless Cars

Autonomous Trap: Artist Uses Ritual Magic to Capture Driverless Cars

Mobility Vision: Hyundai Concept Connects Smart Home to Driverless Car

Rolling Landscape: Driverless Geodesic Garden Hits the Streets of London

Spherical Tires: Magnetic Levitation for Driverless Vehicles

Robot City: Entire Fake Town Built to Test Driverless Vehicles

Driverless Living Space: Future Car Envisioned as Mobile Room

View Forward: Driverless London Train Cars Arriving in 2020

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Robot City: Entire Fake Town Built to Test Driverless Vehicles

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