It IS a good thing. Not the unique ID part which is a bit scary. But cars communicating their intentions to each other. It should make roads considerably safer. HOWEVER, I suspect that implementing it is not as easy as it sounds.
It's the corner of 1st and Main in most any big US city. Or its foreign equivalent. And there are maybe 200 cars, buses, trucks, carts, mopeds, bicycles, horsecarts, etc, etc,etc in the area. And they are all squawking endlessly something like "Hi, I'm a mostly blue 2031 VW Hedgehog at latitude xx.xxxx,longitude yyy.yyyy proceeding NorthEast toward an intersection where I plan to turn left. If you need to talk to me, my friends call me $%34XQC1" And the vehicles are all using the same RF frequency band. And there are three other blue 2031 Hedgehogs in the area. And two 2032s which are visually identical except for the shape of the passenger side mirror. And, thanks to multipath GPS reception, most of the vehicles are a bit uncertain about the last three digits of their coordinates. And half those who aren't uncertain should be. And maybe it's raining. Or snowing. And there's an ambulance or fire engine that's trying to get vehicles out of its way.
Just exactly how does this nifty vehicle communication scheme sort all that out?
"Because the hard bit of building a car is building something that drives in the first place, and the easy bit of building a self-driving car is the car itself."
Exactly. Trying to build logic that can, for example, recognize and safely navigate a construction zone is enormously difficult.
So is building a drivetrain that won't spend more time in the shop than on the road.
Elon Musk is trying to do both. I suspect he won't quite succeed.
Google is probably wise to stick to the half they know.
I should think that Google now owns a whole raft of patents on various aspects of self driving technology. Over the next two decades, licensing fees will likely recoup them their investment... and then some.
"I will never buy that a rear view camera is a better solution to a bigger rear view mirror, side mirrors,"
Actually, my wife's car has a rear view camera and I quite like it. About the only thing on that mess of half baked electronics that I do like. I'm attempting to install an aftermarket rearview camera on my 17 year old Toyota. Someday I'll possibly figure out why it works fine on the test bench, but fails to deliver a picture when installed in the car and powered from the backup lights.
I could quibble, but I won't because I'm 99% in agreement. My litmus test scenario. An autonomous vehicle -- with or without a driver -- starts over one of the multitude of ramps in the infamous downtown Los Angeles four level interchange. At rush hour. The battery connection fails. Just snaps. Fortuitously the USC Rugby team bus is just behind it. Eight strapping lads get out and prepare to push the broken vehicle out of the way. Except without power or a mechanical steering wheel and brake, how can they steer it? Or stop it?
On top of which, comparing addresses can be non-trivial. Is "37-3 St Simeon Ln, L.A., CA" the same address as "37 Saint Simeon Lane, Los Angeles, Calif, Apt 3?"
"Wouldn't the frame be in constant tension if it was spinning?"
Yes, but the forces involved wouldn't be any larger than those involved in holding up a platform on the Earth's surface to hold window washers or bridge painters?
Good points. But, hey, 150B USD have been spent on the pretty much pointless ISS. Surely humanity can afford another 50B or 100B or so to keep the handful of inhabitants healthier. I'm not against man in space BTW, but I think the Skylab approach of a lab that was staffed for a few months every now and then to perform experiments that actually had some merit would be a lot more cost effective.
Yes, although a bolas might be difficult to spin up? I'm a lousy physicist, but I think you need to apply exactly equal (and opposite?) accelerations to both the weight and counterweight lest the center of mass and thus the whole object start to wander off? Also, I think accelerating and decelerating a bolas-like Mars mission might be tricky?
A centrifuge would (and probably will) work fine. Problem is that it has to be BIG. Otherwise your astronauts will be wandering around with different parts of their body subjected to different accelerations. e.g. If you spin up a 2 meter tube, a 2 meter tall astronaut "standing" upright will have his/her feet and head pulled in opposite directions by whatever "weight" you choose to configure. Probably not a good idea -- at least not long term.
God only knows what motivates the far Right. I think many of them don't like renewables and therefore dislike Solar City. And in that specific case, they may have a valid point. The SC operation seems kind of shady to me. SC gets the money. The homeowner gets probably expensive electricity and all the risk.
Why they dislike Tesla, Space-X, and the battery factory escapes me. Private businesses competing with other private businesses. In the case of Space-X, purportedly doing a better job than NASA. What's not to like unless they like me think Musk is... ahem... less than honest... at times in his claims? It's not like those folks can possibly have functioning BS filters.
Could be wrong, but I believe there are follow up missions and the Schiaparelli probe was intended as a great-if-everything-works-but-if-it-doesn't-we'll-probably-learn-a-lot proof of concept mission.
"How in hell did they test their Kalman filter to allow such bad data to reach the decision logic? (I assume they used one.)"
1) A Kalman Filter probably is not really appropriate here because the parachute has just been deployed and you wouldn't have state statistics available to filter the input data. Doesn't mean they didn't use one with ad hoc statistics. That's not as uncommon as perhaps it should be.
2) Presumably the IMU is expected to tell you the probe has run into the planet (i.e. landed) and it's time to get rid of the 'chute before it lands on your probe and also time to shut down the thrusters lest they bounce the probe across the landscape or flip it upside down. Depending on how often the IMU is read out during landing, a full second of bad data may be pretty convincingly NOT noise.
Not that I know anything about landing Mars probes.
"These batteries are not rechargable and a complete waste of time and effort."
Of course they are rechargeable. They seem to be quite similar to NiFe Edison Cells which are used in a few applications because of their virtues -- long life and tolerance of overcharging and deep discharge. The Edison cells have some problems which discourage them from wider use including inefficiency and, IIRC, high self discharge rate.
"The electrodes are prepared with ammonium fluoride, argon, platinum/calomel, potassium hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid"
"When scraps of steel and brass are anodized using a common household chemical and residential electrical current, the researchers found that the metal surfaces are restructured into nanometer-sized networks of metal oxide that can store and release energy when reacting with a water-based liquid electrolyte."
Common household chemical? Just checked. I'm flat out of Aluminum Fluoride and Platinum/Calomel. The Argon tank is empty too. I do, as it happens, I do have a bit of HCl in the garage. Can I substitute peanut butter and laundry detergent for the chemicals the experimenters used?
IIRC, the Farmer's Almanac claims to have a method for making predictions. Could be. AFAIK, their method is proprietary.
I've long suspected their editorial staff assembles in a Pub a few weeks before the printer's deadline and throws darts while the soberist attendee takes notes. But they could have more rigor. Or maybe throwing darts works.
Slashdot Mirror
It IS a good thing. Not the unique ID part which is a bit scary. But cars communicating their intentions to each other. It should make roads considerably safer. HOWEVER, I suspect that implementing it is not as easy as it sounds.
It's the corner of 1st and Main in most any big US city. Or its foreign equivalent. And there are maybe 200 cars, buses, trucks, carts, mopeds, bicycles, horsecarts, etc, etc,etc in the area. And they are all squawking endlessly something like "Hi, I'm a mostly blue 2031 VW Hedgehog at latitude xx.xxxx,longitude yyy.yyyy proceeding NorthEast toward an intersection where I plan to turn left. If you need to talk to me, my friends call me $%34XQC1" And the vehicles are all using the same RF frequency band. And there are three other blue 2031 Hedgehogs in the area. And two 2032s which are visually identical except for the shape of the passenger side mirror. And, thanks to multipath GPS reception, most of the vehicles are a bit uncertain about the last three digits of their coordinates. And half those who aren't uncertain should be. And maybe it's raining. Or snowing. And there's an ambulance or fire engine that's trying to get vehicles out of its way.
Just exactly how does this nifty vehicle communication scheme sort all that out?
"Because the hard bit of building a car is building something that drives in the first place, and the easy bit of building a self-driving car is the car itself."
Exactly. Trying to build logic that can, for example, recognize and safely navigate a construction zone is enormously difficult.
So is building a drivetrain that won't spend more time in the shop than on the road.
Elon Musk is trying to do both. I suspect he won't quite succeed.
Google is probably wise to stick to the half they know.
I should think that Google now owns a whole raft of patents on various aspects of self driving technology. Over the next two decades, licensing fees will likely recoup them their investment ... and then some.
"I will never buy that a rear view camera is a better solution to a bigger rear view mirror, side mirrors,"
Actually, my wife's car has a rear view camera and I quite like it. About the only thing on that mess of half baked electronics that I do like. I'm attempting to install an aftermarket rearview camera on my 17 year old Toyota. Someday I'll possibly figure out why it works fine on the test bench, but fails to deliver a picture when installed in the car and powered from the backup lights.
Last time I followed the GPS directions when I suspected they were wrong, I ended up 3km down a dirt track facing a pair of (closed) barn doors.
I could quibble, but I won't because I'm 99% in agreement. My litmus test scenario. An autonomous vehicle -- with or without a driver -- starts over one of the multitude of ramps in the infamous downtown Los Angeles four level interchange. At rush hour. The battery connection fails. Just snaps. Fortuitously the USC Rugby team bus is just behind it. Eight strapping lads get out and prepare to push the broken vehicle out of the way. Except without power or a mechanical steering wheel and brake, how can they steer it? Or stop it?
All well and good. The NSA possibly protects us from our enemies. But who protects us from the NSA? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
On top of which, comparing addresses can be non-trivial. Is "37-3 St Simeon Ln, L.A., CA" the same address as "37 Saint Simeon Lane, Los Angeles, Calif, Apt 3?"
"Wouldn't the frame be in constant tension if it was spinning?"
Yes, but the forces involved wouldn't be any larger than those involved in holding up a platform on the Earth's surface to hold window washers or bridge painters?
It's "intracranial" not "inter cranial"
I suppose that would depend on how many heads your astronauts have.
Good points. But, hey, 150B USD have been spent on the pretty much pointless ISS. Surely humanity can afford another 50B or 100B or so to keep the handful of inhabitants healthier. I'm not against man in space BTW, but I think the Skylab approach of a lab that was staffed for a few months every now and then to perform experiments that actually had some merit would be a lot more cost effective.
Yes, although a bolas might be difficult to spin up? I'm a lousy physicist, but I think you need to apply exactly equal (and opposite?) accelerations to both the weight and counterweight lest the center of mass and thus the whole object start to wander off? Also, I think accelerating and decelerating a bolas-like Mars mission might be tricky?
A centrifuge would (and probably will) work fine. Problem is that it has to be BIG. Otherwise your astronauts will be wandering around with different parts of their body subjected to different accelerations. e.g. If you spin up a 2 meter tube, a 2 meter tall astronaut "standing" upright will have his/her feet and head pulled in opposite directions by whatever "weight" you choose to configure. Probably not a good idea -- at least not long term.
God only knows what motivates the far Right. I think many of them don't like renewables and therefore dislike Solar City. And in that specific case, they may have a valid point. The SC operation seems kind of shady to me. SC gets the money. The homeowner gets probably expensive electricity and all the risk.
Why they dislike Tesla, Space-X, and the battery factory escapes me. Private businesses competing with other private businesses. In the case of Space-X, purportedly doing a better job than NASA. What's not to like unless they like me think Musk is ... ahem ... less than honest ... at times in his claims? It's not like those folks can possibly have functioning BS filters.
"Tesla cars have a much larger cargo capacity than any other $110,000 car"
Three bags of groceries?
Could be wrong, but I believe there are follow up missions and the Schiaparelli probe was intended as a great-if-everything-works-but-if-it-doesn't-we'll-probably-learn-a-lot proof of concept mission.
Will a barometric sensor work properly while descending through gases emitted from thrusters that are trying to slow the vehicle?
"How in hell did they test their Kalman filter to allow such bad data to reach the decision logic? (I assume they used one.)"
1) A Kalman Filter probably is not really appropriate here because the parachute has just been deployed and you wouldn't have state statistics available to filter the input data. Doesn't mean they didn't use one with ad hoc statistics. That's not as uncommon as perhaps it should be.
2) Presumably the IMU is expected to tell you the probe has run into the planet (i.e. landed) and it's time to get rid of the 'chute before it lands on your probe and also time to shut down the thrusters lest they bounce the probe across the landscape or flip it upside down. Depending on how often the IMU is read out during landing, a full second of bad data may be pretty convincingly NOT noise.
Not that I know anything about landing Mars probes.
How about?:
4. Race conditions
Often very hard to spot using static analysis and not guaranteed to show up during testing.
The bane of embedded and command-control systems.
Betcha no one read "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers" Richard Hamming, 1962.
"These batteries are not rechargable and a complete waste of time and effort."
Of course they are rechargeable. They seem to be quite similar to NiFe Edison Cells which are used in a few applications because of their virtues -- long life and tolerance of overcharging and deep discharge. The Edison cells have some problems which discourage them from wider use including inefficiency and, IIRC, high self discharge rate.
"The electrodes are prepared with ammonium fluoride, argon, platinum/calomel, potassium hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid"
"When scraps of steel and brass are anodized using a common household chemical and residential electrical current, the researchers found that the metal surfaces are restructured into nanometer-sized networks of metal oxide that can store and release energy when reacting with a water-based liquid electrolyte."
Common household chemical? Just checked. I'm flat out of Aluminum Fluoride and Platinum/Calomel. The Argon tank is empty too. I do, as it happens, I do have a bit of HCl in the garage. Can I substitute peanut butter and laundry detergent for the chemicals the experimenters used?
"Oh sure. Now you want the NFL to teach linebackers words"
Now, now. Those guys are college graduates. They know lots of words. Mostly short ones. But words nonetheless.
FWIW, Belichick was using a clipboard and a pencil on the sidelines today instead of a tablet. I assume it worked. The Patriots won.
IIRC, the Farmer's Almanac claims to have a method for making predictions. Could be. AFAIK, their method is proprietary.
I've long suspected their editorial staff assembles in a Pub a few weeks before the printer's deadline and throws darts while the soberist attendee takes notes. But they could have more rigor. Or maybe throwing darts works.