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Autonomous Cars? How About Autonomous Bikes?
R3d M3rcury writes: So we've all heard about the brave new world of autonomous cars which will be at our beck-and-call. But how about an autonomous bike? The i-Bike (not to be confused with the iBike computer) is the winner of KPIT Sparkle 2016, the All India Science and Engineering Student Contest. It started off as a bicycle suitable for use by people with disabilities. If you could use a smartphone, you could ride a bike. But the developers realized that this could be part of a bike-sharing system. You could rent a bike at the train station, ride to work, and then have the bike automatically return to the train station for the next person. Of course, the obvious question is: Will the bike stop at stop signs?
I can't believe how long it took me to notice the training wheels.
This reminds me of that app called 'Yo' that got funded.
All it did was send the word 'Yo' to the recipient. That was the app. No joke, the developers claimed the Israeli Military wanted to use a version of it to alert citizens of possible rocket attacks.
Thank you Dave Raggett
A vehicle can go from 30 mph to 0 in 14 meters (46 feet).
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
there was no incident were a bicycle was hit by a car at a red light.
The database used was a personal injury database for a city of 1.5 million. So there might very well have been incidents just nothing were you went to the hospital or called the police.
I'll finally realize my dreams of playing card games on motorcycles.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Bicycles and pedestrians do not need traffic lights, so I think cycling and walking past traffic lights is something good.
Try visualizing yourself as a pedestrian at an intersection with say about 20 bicyclists approaching you in parallel at 30 kmph; what it would be like getting hit by them? It won't be fatal of course but could still cause considerable injury. Traffic signals are needed because not everybody cares about driving etiquette; bicyclists are not an exception.
The reason cyclists are treated like cars rather than pedestrians in traffic law is not because of the danger they pose, but because they move quite a lot faster than a pedestrian (even a running one).
There are plenty of situations where pedestrians are given right of way based on the idea that they are slow enough for a driver to see them coming from far away. If a driver had to expect a fast-moving cyclist in the same location, he would have to slow down in advance, leading to chaos and congestion.
If cyclists were treated as pedestrians in traffic law, we'd need traffic lights at every crosswalk.
This argument? Really? Yes, and every person driving an automobile stops at each and every stop light and always yields to peds...oh wait, they don't.
And guess which one kills more people every year?
In urban contexts the sight of autonomous bicycles stopping at signals, not blasting through crowds of pedestrians, and not darting through traffic from unexpected directions is going to feel downright weird, especially if they are being used for courier deliveries. We're going to have to program in some Bay Area behavior so they blend in more. It would be like having a "BMW mode" on your autonomous car.
It would also make collisions less of a problem because a lightweight bike without a passenger travelling at slow speeds is not likely to hurt someone even if it hits them.
This thing uses TRAINING WHEELS for "balance" (can it really be called balancing if it relies on training wheels?).
Who cares if this thing hits someone. What about all the people that will be running into this thing?
To put it in perspective, imagine an autonomous car driving *very* safely down the highway at 10mph, perfectly avoiding any obstacles it comes across. Now imagine a bunch of these spread about the highways.
Unlike the highway, bike lanes don't have a minimum speed (AFAIK), so there may not be a good legal reason to force these to go with the speed of traffic. There ARE, however, rules that exclude any motorized vehicles from utilizing many bike paths - so this would need to work on the streets, not the bike paths, for its return trip. Even if they were able to ride on the bike lanes at speed, doing so requires significantly more situational awareness than driving a car. Braking will also be a problem at speed... to brake quickly on a bike, you use the front brake and shift your weight to the back, but this thing has no rider or extra weight - I suspect that would be a major issue. They were obviously not planning on using the features at any significant speed - it's meant to aid in getting a bike from a tight spot over to someone that could ride a bike but has a disability (like missing one arm).
I live in New England, haven't owned a car in roughly a decade and have been commuting 20 minutes each way every day for work by bike in addition to whatever other daily transportation i need, and own/use snow tires for said bicycle. I also own a nice road bike which gets ridden on weeknight group rides and weekends. I started out on a $350 hybrid I bought from REI on special, and it lasted me several years and thousands of miles, until I decided I wanted something better.
So yes, I do actually know what I'm talking about. And incidentally, Minnesota has more bike commuters per capita than many much warmer locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There have been dozens of studies over the years showing that riding a bicycle for transportation, even slowly, brings health benefits over people who sit in their cars for transportation: https://www.google.com/search?...
Oh, and which is it? Everyone flying along so fast they'll fatally injure pedestrians they smack into? Or people who "toddle around with their heartrate under 100bpm so slow it doesn't do them any good"? Hmm?
Please, save the "you want to put grandma on an iceberg" crap. I wasn't advocating forcing people onto bicycles. I'm saying driverless cars aren't going to fix problems with congestion and pollution.
Please help metamoderate.
Sure. A crappy, heavy, low-quality bike, with a no-name component groupset, that you likely won't get your moneys' worth out of before something on it fails, then at that point you may as well chuck it in the recycle bin and get another one. You need to spend more like $1000 to get something of decent quality that, properly maintained, will give you your moneys' worth.
$500 is a common tier 2 bike that involves change of material for frames and upgraded components. Sure touring bikes are $1000~$1500 but the $500 will do commuting just fine with minimal changes
How about the mother of three, one of which is still in diapers? You expect her to, what, stick the baby in a pannier, or in a backpack?
T-R-A-I-L-E-R Worked great for when my son was 1 year old. See also: bakfiet, Emily Finch http://bikeportland.org/2012/06/28/with-six-kids-and-no-car-this-mom-does-it-all-by-bike-73731
it's raining out
Trailers are covered, and bakfiets have them as well
parts of the country where it's below freezing during the winter, and there's snow everywhere? Ever ride in the snow?
Studded bike tires, and if needed a fatbike.
You ride 200 miles a week and don't know about any of these things? Wait a minute, you must be a roadie. Good troll sir, good troll.
A bicycle costs $500
Sure. A crappy, heavy, low-quality bike, with a no-name component groupset, that you likely won't get your moneys' worth out of before something on it fails, then at that point you may as well chuck it in the recycle bin and get another one. You need to spend more like $1000 to get something of decent quality that, properly maintained, will give you your moneys' worth.
I bought the cheapest bike I could find that seemed able to support my needs - 300lbs including luggage/groceries. It was $200, and I have put over 10k miles on it. I needed to replace my rear wheel after about 5k miles and a new chain since I am bad about cleaning it. It has an aluminum frame and seems really light compared to the schwinns and huffys I grew up with. Shimano gears, but I'm confident you can find a way to make fun of that.
I've had so many bikes stolen over the years I can't bring myself to spend much on one. I find your pompous attitude that $1000 is the minimum buy-in to be a cyclist to be destructive.
Man, you really need that seminar!
That shouldn't happen. A good wheelset should last you for years, at least 4 or 5 times that many miles.
Well, I can't be sure but I think the axle bent when I got hit by a car. There were also numerous potholes and driveway bumps and the fact that I am overloading the axle. I don't need my bike to be eternal, I treat it more like a consumable. Strangely, since I adopted this attitude it hasn't been stolen or destroyed in an accident but I've been burned enough to not get attached.
you need to buy something quality, not cheap, and you get what you pay for when you buy a bike.
Here you're just plain wrong. My bike is from Walmart, it was $200, and it has nearly 15,000 miles on it. I had the wheel replaced under warranty, if I bought a new wheel from the mfr it would have cost $50.
I ride hard, maintain poorly, and still my cheap bike held up admirably.
It is sad how many years I wasted, thinking that I didn't have what it takes to be a bike commuter, because of misguided people like you. I couldn't get over my heartbreak when I came back to my beloved Peugeot and it was beat to death by vandals in 1988. Now that I have realized cheap bikes are a good option I am a happy cyclist, putting at least 150 miles a week onto my trusty walmart bike.
I know a bunch of people with expensive bikes who are afraid to take them anywhere, and a bunch more people without a bike at all because they think they need to spend 4 digits to get something decent.
Man, you really need that seminar!