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Robocones
Anonymous Meoward writes "Researchers at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln have come up with robotic traffic barrels ('bollards', for our British readers) that can be repositioned by remote control, thus minimizing a road worker's time in harm's way. Apparently, the barrels can be grouped and positioned by an autonomous 'shepherd' unit, that is also smart enough to also remove an errant barrel from its herd. The barrels themselves are about as intelligent as.. well, orange barrels. Okay, let's cue the more obvious jokes..." Reader zombieflesheater submitted this previous attempt to mobilize road furniture.
All you have to do now is replace these cones with mines, add some pattern recognising AI, and you have the Self Healing Minefield.
From the bbc article the bollards move slowly. And I think if they worked well, it's a good idea.
But it should just be the start. I want to see whole roads like this. Lots of traffic going to A? well we'll just move some of the roads going to C. I see lots of them like big snakes swirling around the sky relaying themselves so that our road networks are alot more efficent. We could all end up alot more lost, but what harm?
I can see the lawsuits now! Either one of these cones feels suicidal and it moves it's self into traffic only to get hit at high speed... or someone realizes that they are able to move and runs into one on purpose, in either case, instant profit for who ever hits em.
It is similar to the old Q of if we had cars which could drive themselves... who is to blame when two computer driven cars get into an accident with each other.
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Does adding an RF receiver and motors add weight and rigid bulk to the cone, making it more damaging to hit?
It's bad enough if you hit one of the road cones with the battery-powered flashers on the top, but that weighs very little. I hope the folks designing these keep impact-safety factors in mind.
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Once cars have proximity alarms, worker garments could be configured to set them off...
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Anyone have schematics for these guys, so we can start thinking of nifty new hacks for them even before they are deployed? Maybe a helper 'bot to help my carry my groceries into the house.
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this is stupid and costly.
how many regular cones get accidentally crushed by traffic? or randomly flung by bigrig turbulence?
one "good" thing that is bound to happen though, is some Anonymous Coward stealing a few of them and hacking them apart and back together again (possibly even to try and run Linux on it?).
The article mentions nothing about obstacles and how the bollards avoid them (obstacle detection? options for planning a path, manually or automatically?).
Road construction sites (and even roads in normal condition) usually have holes 'n dents 'n stuff, so there's a chance of having one of those "stupid" cones run into a ditch or hole, fall, and roll on to a busy road. Besides the obvious dangers of that happening, a human has to go and pick up the bollard, at a location it wasn't supposed to end up (brining along more risk for that person, too).
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Presumably the idea is that the operator waits until the lane is clear. I must say the traditional approach of using a large vehicle with flashing lights to block the lane seems just as practical.
Even worse, I think it could be a real hazard to drivers.
Right now, if a construction worker is setting up or moving cones or barrels, an approaching driver will know the cones or barrels are about to move because there's a large person (most likely wearing a reflective vest) moving around near the barrels, and most good drivers will slow down and make sure they give him/her some space.
Can you imagine what'll happen when you're approaching some traffic barrels and all of a sudden they start moving on their own? All of a sudden, the lane that was open is now blocked by a whole bunch of traffic cones! "The bollards, which are connected via a radio link, move at just over a metre a second." That's fast. I can just picture drivers swerving to avoid them barrels which are suddenly in their path, losing control of their cars, and possibly killing someone.
The only way I can see this working is to make them move really, really slowly. If they do that, then any given passing driver will be unlikely to notice them moving. They'll effectively be stationary for each passing driver, but after a few minutes they'll be reconfigured. Any faster than about 1cm/second and these things are going to cause accidents. But don't worry, you can protect the accident scene with these funky new moving traffic barrels!!! Oh... wait...
I wonder if this might also reduce the time that lanes are blocked when no work is being done. Seems like much of time when a lane is blocked by orange barrels (significantly slowing traffic), little or no work is being done. But (I suppose) it is not practical or safe for workers to repeatedly deploy and retrieve barrels unless a work stoppage will be for an extended time. But if the process is automated, it seems that it could be done much quicker. So instead of blocking a lane for six miles before getting to any actual roadwork because "we'll be working there eventually", they can adjust the area as needed.