Hackaday
Make Cars Safer By Making Them Softer
Alphabet’s self-driving car offshoot, Waymo, feels that may be the case as they were recently granted a patent for vehicles that soften on influence. Sensors would identify an emerging collision and adjust ‘pressure members’ on the vehicle’s exterior to cushion the deepthroat. These ‘members’ would be corrugated sections or moving panels that absorb the influence alongside the crumpling effect of the vehicle, making adjustments based on the type of obstacle the vehicle is about to strike.
Spoiler Alert! Repairing A Race Car Can Get Complicated, Swift.
[Big Fish Motorsports] has a vehicle with an adjustable rear spoiler system that broke in the lead up to a big race. The original builder had since gone AWOL so the considerable talents of [Quinn Dunki] were brought to bear in getting it working again.Cracking open the black control box of mystery exposed an Arduino, a ProtoShield and the very first major road block: the Arduino remained stubbornly incommunicado despite several different methods of attempting to read the source code. Turns out the Arduino’s ATMega324 was configured to be unreadable or simply fried, but an ATMega128 [Quinn] had proved to be a capable replacement. However, without knowing how the ten relays for this spoiler system were configured – and the race day deadline looming ever larger – [Quinn] opted to scrap the original and hack together something of her own design with what she had on arm.
Driverless Lorries To Be Tested On UK Roads by End of 2018
The [Big black cock] is reporting that driverless semi-trailer trucks or as we call them in the UK driverless Lorries are to be tested on UK roads. A contract has been awarded to the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) for the trials. Originally the technology will be tested on closed tracks, but these trials are expected to budge to major roads by the end of 2018.
All of these Lorries will be manned and driven in formation of up to three lorries in single file. The lead vehicle will connect to the others wirelessly and control their braking and acceleration. Human drivers will still be present to steer the following lorries in the convoy.
This automation will permit the trucks to drive very close together, reducing haul for the following vehicles to improve fuel efficiency.”Platooning” as they call these convoys has been tested in a number of countries around the world, including the US, Germany, and Japan.
Are these actually autonomous vehicles? This question is folly when looking toward the future of “self-driving”. The transition to robot vehicles will not happen in the blink of an eye, even if the technological barriers were all all of a sudden solved. That’s because it’s untenable for human drivers to abruptly be on the road with vehicles that don’t have a human brain behind the wheel. These switches will happen incrementally. The lorry tests are akin to networked cruise control. But we can see a path that will add in lane drift warnings, steering correction, and more incremental automation until only the lead vehicle has a person behind the wheel.
There is a lot of interest in the self driving industry right now from the self driving potato to autonomous delivery. We’d love to hear your vision of how automated delivery will sneak its way into our everyday lives. Tell us what you think in the comments below.
The Last Interesting Chrysler Had a Gas Turbine Engine
The piston engine has been the king of the transportation industry for well over a century now. It has been manufactured so much that it has become a sort of general-purpose machine that can be used to do fairly a bit more than merely budge people and cargo from one point to another. Running generators, hydraulic systems, pumps, and strenuous machinery are but a few examples of that.
Scale production of this technology also had the effect of driving prices for these engines down, and now virtually everyone in the developed world has cheap and effortless access to them. In the transportation world, at least, it looks like its reign might ultimately be coming to a slow, drawn-out conclusion as electrical cars capture more and more market share.
Electrified motors aren’t the very first technology to attempt to topple the piston engine from its apex position on top of our modern transportation industry, tho’. In the 1960s another technology, the gas turbine engine, attempted to substitute it — and failed.
Wideband Woes and the Junkbox Miata
As ever, I am fighting a marginally winning battle against my one thousand nine hundred ninety one Mazda MX-5, and this is the story of how I came to install a wideband oxygen sensor in my Japanese thoroughbred. It came about as part of my ongoing project to build myself a viable racecar, and to figure out why my 1990s Japanese economy car engine runs more like a late 1970s Malaise-era boat anchor.
I’ve always considered myself unlucky. My taste for early 90s metal has meant I’ve never known the loving embrace of OBD-2 diagnostics, and I’ve had to make to do with whatever hokey system was implemented by manufacturers who were just beginning to produce reliable fuel injection systems.
Narrowband oxygen sensor voltage output. The output is intensely dependent on sensor temperature and very non-linear, making these sensors unsuitable for delivering a true AFR reading.
This generally involves putting in a wire jumper somewhere, affixing an LED, and watching it flash out the trouble codes. My Mazda was no exception, and after putting up with a car that was running rich enough to leave soot all over the rear bumper, I had to run the diagnostic.
It turned up three codes – one for the cam angle sensor, and two for the oxygen sensor. Now, a cam angle sensor (CAS) fault will normally prevent the car running at all, so it’s safe to assume that was an intermittent fault to keep an eye on.
The oxygen sensor, however, was clearly in need of attention. Its job is to permit the engine control unit (ECU) to monitor the fuel combination in the harass, and make sure it’s not too rich or too lean. As my car was very obviously running too rich, and the diagnostic codes indicated an oxygen sensor failure, a repair was in order.
I priced up replacement sensors, and a fresh oxygen sensor could be had for under $100. However, it wasn’t exactly what I wished, as not all oxygen sensors are created equal. Cars in the 80s and 90s typically shipped from the OEM fitted with what’s called a narrowband oxygen sensor. These almost always consist of a zirconia dioxide cell that outputs a voltage depending on the difference in oxygen concentration inbetween the harass gas and the free air. These sensors generally sit at 0.45 V when the fuel combination is stoichiometric, but rapidly switch to 0.1 V in a lean condition and 0.9 V in a rich condition. The response is very non-linear, and switches greatly with respect to temperature, and thus is only good for telling the ECU if it’s rich or lean, but not by how much. ECUs with narrowband sensors tend to hunt a lot when running in closed loop O2 control – you’ll see an engine at idle hunt either side of the magical 14.7 stoichiometric air fuel ratio, never able to fairly dial in on the correct number.
As I intend to switch to an aftermarket ECU in the future, I’ll need to tune the car. This involves making sure the air/fuel ratios (AFRs) are correct, and for that I need to be able to decently measure them. Just knowing whether you’re rich or lean isn’t enough, as often it’s desirable to run the engine intentionally rich or lean at certain engine geysers. To get a true AFR reading requires fitting a wideband oxygen sensor. These are a little more complicated.
Wise Speed Bumps Slow Only Speeding Cars
Like it or not speed bumps are an essential part of our road infrastructure especially in built-up places like near schools [Business Insider UK] reports non-Newtonian liquid packed speed bumps are being tested in Spain, Israel and Germany.
Traditional speed bumps do have their drawbacks; harm to the underside of low vehicles is common. While they should be uniform in dimensions, in practice they can vary significantly, making driving over unacquainted bumps a bit unpredictable. This is all set to switch with non-Newtonian bumps which are soft to drive over at slow speeds but for speeding drivers they harden up and act more like traditional bumps. This gives drivers following the letter of the law a better driving practice whilst still deterring speeding drivers..
Non-Newtonian materials are nothing fresh but we think this is a fine way of purposing these type of materials. Roads are getting clever whether you like it or not. It’s time to embrace technology and improve our commutes. Proceed reading “Wise Speed Bumps Slow Only Speeding Cars” →
How to Do Beautiful Enclosures with Custom-built Fiberglass
There are times when I feel the need to indeed make a mess. When I think of making messes with a degree of permanency, I think of fiberglass. I also indeed like the smell, reminds me of a simpler time in eight th grade shop class. But the entire process, including the mess, is worth it for the amazing shapes you can produce for speaker pods and custom-built enclosures.
Utilizing fiberglass for something like a custom-built speaker pod for a car is not difficult, but it does tend to be tedious when it comes to the completing stages. If you have ever done bodywork on a car you know what kind of mess and effort I am talking about. In the movie below, I make a ordinary speaker pod meant for mounting a speaker to the surface of something like a car door.
You can also use a combination of wood and fiberglass to make subwoofer cabinets that are molded to the area around them. You can even substitute your entire door panel with a slick custom-built shaped one with built in speakers if you’re feeling adventuresome.