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.

Comments

Self Healing Minefield

[SmackCrackandPot]

All you have to do now is replace these cones with mines, add some pattern recognising AI, and you have the Self Healing Minefield.

This should just be the start

[Deag]

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?

Lawsuits

[DaHat]

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.

What about the physical characteristic changes?

[idontgno]

Normal road cones weigh about nothing. (A couple of pounds of soft plastic. Designed to fly out of the way or crush down when struck by a vehicle.)

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.

I wonder

[be951]

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.