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"Road Trains" Ready To Roll
clickclickdrone writes to mention that "road trains," a system linking vehicles together via wireless sensors, could soon be rolled out in Europe. The system is designed primarily for cutting fuel consumption, travel time, and congestion. "Funded under the European Commission's Framework 7 research plan, Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) is aimed at commuters in cars who travel long distances to work every day but will also look at ways to involve commercial vehicles. Tom Robinson, project co-ordinator at engineering firm Ricardo, said the idea was to use off-the-shelf components to make it possible for cars, buses and trucks to join the road train."
Actually, the vehicle in front also benefits from the drafting. Not to the same degree as the trailing vehicles, but it gets a significant benefit none the less. See http://www.livescience.com/technology/070215_nascar_aero.html for details.
A generic couple were standing by the side of road, which was basically a piece of flat pavement cut into the side of a mountain. They were watching a garage inventor/scientist type explain his latest invention, a motorized luggage carrier. Sort of a motorcycle sidecar or luggage unit for people who didn't want to change the visual impact of their motorbike. It was an independent unit, had its own motor and fuel, and required only a slight modification to the motorcycle in the form of a radio transmitter. After that, it basically mimicked the motions of the "master" motorcycle.
Garage inventor gets on his bike, fires it up, and drives off. Sure enough, the other device (which I recall looking a lot like a large cooler on wheels) fired up by itself and followed. A few minutes later, the garage inventor loops back and drives by. Getting cocky, he waves at the couple. Unfortunately, he hits a rock and with only one hand on the handlebars, can't recover. He loses control, and drives off the side of the cliff. An unpleasant "crunch" is heard below.
Moments later, the motorized luggage holder comes along and dutifully throws itself off the cliff as well. A second "crunch" is heard.
The couple look down at the carnage and then leave.
Why is my first thought of someone playing 'crack the whip' on one of these long trains??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I mean, it'd basically be a packet-switched network, but with cars instead of pieces of data.
Hey! Here on /. we use car analogies to explain computer technology - not vice-versa!!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Except that with this system, they don't need to be jammed. If everybody in the train presses the accelerator at once, knowing that the car in front of them will as well, everybody gets to move. You're not as limited by the following distance required by an unpredictable human driver and the unpredictable circumstances ahead.
Reducing inter-car distance reduces the amount of road you need because you put more cars on the same amount of pavement, and the same highway functions as a much larger road. But it only works if you get the humans out of the loop.
Of course it also provides opportunities for truly spectacular failures.
I'm just sayin, every /. article with new ideas gets swamped by people stating absolutely obvious problems as if the people working on that project were all functionally retarded. I said the same thing just a few days ago but this article really brought the geniuses out of the woodwork like I haven't seen in some time.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Well considering the internet evolved from a government project I'd say there isn't going to be any heads exploding over this. Especially if it has military applications which it probably does. Reducing fuel expenditure is a tactical advantage and the vast majority of free market types still support the idea of the government fulfilling the role of national defense to some degree.
I doubt the military would use this, at least not overseas. Decreased fuel consumption isn't worth turning a bunch of small targets into one large target. An IED or RPG would go from hitting 1-2 Humvees to 3-6.
The national security benefit from reducing our domestic oil consumption by even 1% is pretty significant, though.
The US Army is already looking into something similar to this but not with the high-speed tailgating effect. They're using one lead driver to lead a group of radio-linked trucks so they can get several times the supplies moved with less exposure of personnel to hostile forces. I only did a quick search so here's what I came up with: http://www.controleng.com/blog/AIMing_for_Automated_Vehicles/14540-Robot_Convoy_Truck.php
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin