Archive for December, 2007
How Long Before Toyota’s Drive Themselves with Robotics?
Toyota Motor Company has a history of innovation. They debuted a production hybrid car in 1997 (the Prius). They built one of the world’s most sophisticated assembly plants in Mikawa Bay, Japan, called Tahara, back in 1979. The Tahara plant is now estimated to be the world’s best quality auto production facility, with fewer defects per vehicle than any plant in the world. Of course, in 2007, Toyota debuted the new Tundra, the most powerful half-ton truck on the market today.
So, like I said, they’ve got a history of innovation.
We’ve already reported that Toyota is excited about the potential of their personal robot, and how they plan to develop a completely new industry. However, we’ve seen evidence that they intend to apply much of the technology developed with robotics integrated into new vehicles. Here’s a list of the new features you can expect:
1) Optical Recognition: What’s really stopping your car from driving itself? The on-board computer already controls every aspect of the drive train, and with the advent of ABS, traction control, and stability control, most vehicles can (and do) steer and accelerate themselves as needed. On board navigation systems, when combined with a local radio location signal, can pinpoint the position of your vehicle to within a few inches as it drives down the road.
If you car can stop, steer, accelerate, and know exactly where it is, why can’t it drive itself?
Because it’s completely and totally blind — at least for now. Optical recognition technologies are evolving. Originally pioneered by the defense department for guided missiles, computers with CCD sensors can now easily distinguish between shapes and colors. We’ve all heard of the face-recognizing cameras in Las Vegas, right? Continued investment in robotics will lead to better optical recognition technology, ultimately allowing a vehicle to “see” where it’s going using relatively inexpensive electronics.
2) Immediate Obstacle Awareness: Robots deployed in your home need to know what’s within the immediate area at all times. A variety of technologies can be used to achieve this, but a sophisticated radar-type system (significantly better than the sonic technology currently used in parking sensors) is needed to help keep a robot from running into a table leg, your foot, or your dog. This technology can (and will) be applied to vehicles. There’s a very good chance that “Collision Avoidance” will be an option that we’ll find on the window sticker in 10 years or less.
3) Robot-to-robot communication: If all our cars could see what’s in front of them and detect obstacles around them, it’s a short leap of the imagination to assume they’ll be able to communicate that information with each other. A high-speed wireless vehicle network could be used to share all this data amongst 100’s of vehicles, allowing them to function more efficiently. Theoretically, they could weave in between each other at high speed, negating stop signs, traffic signals, etc. All of our cars would move amongst each other like packets of bits do on the internet. Flying from point to point carefully navigated by a network of computers.
Imagine special ordering a new truck in 2022 — “I’ll take the Limited model with obstacle detection and avoidance, self-driving mode, and the Vehicle-to-Vehicle network package. I’d also like a sunroof.”
Popularity: 5%
ThirdHorseman Rides A Black CrewMax
From Wikipedia — “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the forces of man’s destruction described in the Book of Revelation…The third horseman, riding the black horse, is popularly called Famine or Pestilence. The black colour of the third horse could be a symbol of famine. Its rider holds a scale, which could be a representation of the ’scales of pitiless justice’ which commonly represent inequality and corruption.”
Scary stuff, but when you see the pics of this truck, you might agree that Ford, Dodge, and Chevy owners fear the apocalypse as this Tundra screams by.
Here’s what TundraSolutions member ThirdHorseman has done to this truck:
Colormatched front and rear bumpers
Colormatched handles
Black sport appearance grille
Tow mirrors
HID retrofit (E55 projectors, X5 halogen powered halos, D1S bulbs and ballasts) in black housings
Webasto panoramic sunroof
Katzkin two-tone black and gray leather
TRD shifter
Limited 20 inch alloys
Leer fiberglass tonneau
Limited running boards
Carriage Works black billet grille
Eclipse 5510 DVD Navigation
Eclipse Sirius and ipod interfaces
Boston Acoustics coaxials
TRD sway bar
aFe CAI
Magnaflow exhaust
Custom painted engine cover
The painted engine cover is just sick…awesome touch.
ThirdHorseman — thanks for submitting your vehicle. We can’t wait to see what else you come up with!!
Popularity: 9%
Alien Abductions, Get 4 More MPG, and the VW Thing
Some things I found loitering on TundraNetwork…
A Tundra owner that’s improved his gas mileage 4mpg by adding a pressurized air box — we’re excited to learn more about it.
This dog is wondering what’s going on and dares you to lie to him.
Mike’s VW Thing site is really fascinating — interesting photos, and one helluva story about breaking down in the Arizona desert in the middle of the night. Mike, if you want to embellish the story a little, you could absolutely change the “mysterious beetles” line to “Those aren’t beetles — THOSE ARE SCORPIONS!!”. Follow it up with the normal Hollywood horror ending, and you got yourself a blockbuster movie.
But seriously, good story. Check it out people.
Popularity: 1%
Warming Your Car in Winter Can Burn a Hole in Your Pocket
Winter is a hard time for drivers and car owners. It wreaks havoc on your fuel mileage. Chances are you are an unwitting ally to hurting your gas mileage. The wrong idea about warming your car up might be burning a hole in your pocket.
Most drivers are in the habit of warming their cars up in cold weather. They are under the mistaken idea that their car needs to warm up for a considerable amount of time to operate properly. Older vehicles may have needed to warm up but current cars do not.
Many drivers idle their car for 5 to 10 minutes in the winter to let their cars warm up. You should not let your car idle for more than 30 seconds. You need no more than 30 seconds of idling to circulate the engine oil before you can drive away on cold days
When you idle your car to warm it up you are burning gas but not going anywhere. When you let that happen you are getting zero miles per gallon. You may think that idling your car for few minutes or so is no big deal, think again.
To give yourself an idea about how much gas you would be burning by just letting your car idle for 5 minutes each time you start it think about this. Assume you idle for 5 minutes when you start your car in the morning. Assume you idle for 5 minutes again, sometime during the day when you start your car again to drive home.
That means your car is idling for 10 minutes per day. If winter is considered to be November, December, January and February, then winter is 120 days long. If you idle your vehicle for 10 minutes each day for 120 days then you are idling for 1200 minutes during the winter season.
1200 Minutes is 20 hours. Think about it, warming your car for only 5 minutes per start amounts to your car idling and burning gas going nowhere, for 20 hours. Can you visualize your car sitting and idling for 20 hours? Of course not. Then why warm it up for the equivalent of 20 hours of burning gas when it is completely unnecessary?
The best way to warm your car is by driving it. Most drivers don’t realize that in order for your car to operate efficiently other parts in addition to the engine need to warm up. The tires, the transmission, the wheel bearings and other moving parts also need to warm up. The catalytic converter on your car doesn’t function at its peak until it reaches between 400C and 800C. The only way to warm up the other parts of your car is by driving. The reality is your car needs to be driven to completely warm it up anyway.
To save gas and increase gas mileage in the winter one of the simplest things you can do is warm your car by driving it, not by idling. Not only will it save you gas and money but you will also be doing something positive for the environment. That warm car will stop burning a hole in your pocket.
Popularity: 3%
