Researchers Test Drive Bus With Automated Steering 180
An anonymous reader tips us to news that researchers at University of California, Berkeley, have successfully test driven a 60-foot bus that controlled its own steering. Sensors on the bus detected magnets that had been embedded in a San Leandro road, and it was able to reach stops within one centimeter of its desired position. Acceleration and braking during the test were controlled by a human operator, but the system is capable of handling those as well, and has done so on test courses.
"... sensors mounted under the bus measured the magnetic fields created from the roadway magnets, which were placed beneath the pavement surface 1 meter apart along the center of the lane. The information was translated into the bus's lateral and longitudinal position by an on-board computer, which then directed the vehicle to move accordingly. For a vehicle traveling 60 miles per hour, data from 27 meters (88 feet) of roadway can be read and processed in 1 second. Zhang added that the system is robust enough to withstand a wide range of operating conditions, including rain or snow, a significant improvement to other vehicle guidance systems based upon optics."
If "auto-steering" becomes popular... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Put them on a separate guideway. (Score:2)
Isolate them from people. Remove the unpredictable.
http://www.ultraprt.com/heathrow.htm [ultraprt.com]
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But it will still be cheaper to kill people than to refit all affected cars.
The only way to ensure safety is to hold the operator accountable with serious Jail time. It should always be up to the Driver/Operator to keep a check on the mechanical condition of the vehicle.
Dunno. Who gets sued today when... (Score:5, Insightful)
...a car with anti-lock brakes still rear-ends someone?
"Cars that drive themselves" won't arrive as a new option in model year 20XX. They'll encroach bit by bit, following in the footsteps of automatic spark advance, electric starters, power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, cruise control, electronic fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, traction control, collision avoidance, self-parking...
When you finally do get a car that can "drive itself", you'll probably be too busy talking on your cell phone and using your extended navigation/information center to notice.
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In aviation, planes have had autopilots for years (and recently, autoland systems), yet there is no giant puzzle as to who is responsible if the AP-equipped plane crashes: from the US aviation regulations, "The pilot in command is responsible at all times for the safe operation of the aircraft". Maybe a similar principle for cars is needed.
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An aircraft autopilot is also ready to be disengaged at any moment by the pilot if he thinks he needs to. Indeed, there has been at least one serious airliner accident caused by the pilot inadvertently disengaging the autopilot but not realizing it until it was too late.
An automated car which can drive fully independently will be a total game-changer. An automated car which requires the driver to still pay attention and be ready to take over control at all times is much less interesting.
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"Cars that drive themselves" won't arrive as a new option in model year 20XX.
Besides, by that time we'll have to worry about Dr. Wily and fighting robots. [youtube.com]
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No one said that having ABS would stop you from rear ending someone. Merely that it would stop you faster if you hit the brakes too hard and started to slide. If you're still rear ending people *with* ABS, then you need to think about one of two things. Firstly, driving further away from the guy in front of you. Or secondly inventing a system like this one that does the driving far enough away automatically.
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I was thinking the same thing. A handful of powerful magnets is not exactly expensive or hard to come by.
RFID chips might be a better choice. That could also provide more accurate navigation data, depending on how much info you can put in there to be reliably scanned as the vehicle whizzes by.
=Smidge=
trams! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The cost of maintaining tracks, switches, overheads, etc., helped kill the streetcar. It's all over and above the expense of maintaining the road.
There was no simple or economical way to re-route lines or add new ones.
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Really? The streetcar is dead? I guess I rode a ghost train in downtown Portland, OR the other day.
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.
The neanderthal geek of 1902 made a game of seeing how far and - need it be said? - how cheaply - the electric lines could take him:
a sack of nickels, a cast iron butt and bladder was all you needed to make the run from New York to Chicago.
The Portland Loop is eight miles.
In 1917 there were 45,000 miles of track - but the bloom was off the rose.
A Streetcar City [si.edu]
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The cost of maintaining tracks, switches, overheads, etc., helped kill the streetcar. It's all over and above the expense of maintaining the road.
That's because the cost of repairing damage caused to the road by heavy buses is largely invisible on municipal budgets. To wit: when streetcar tracks need repair, the cost appears on the streetcar budget; but when potholes (caused primarily by heavy vehicles like buses and trucks) need repair, the cost is absorbed by the "street maintenance" budget. Car-driving voters usually like politicians who spend money for pothole repairs. Streetcar operators, having been primarily private companies, also would no
Re:trams! (Score:5, Informative)
Try the Docklands Light Railway then.
They don't have drivers. They have "train captains" who can hit the emergency stop button if necessary, close the doors when everyone is on/off, and the rest of the time walk up and down checking tickets.
I think anything that drives where there is other traffic is going to have to have a driver, so like the grandparent poster, I don't see what the advantage of this is over a tramway.
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I was on a brand new (still smelled like new) bus on my way to the airport a couple of weeks ago and it struck me that they've had 80 years of development of the bus and the thing still vibrates annoyingly. If there was a way to combine the cheap infrastructure of buses with the smooth ride of trams it would be an instant success in most cities worldwide.
Any kind of electric bus would probably fulfill those criteria.
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They were called, in the UK, trolley buses. Quite a few towns and cities had them, especially those that hadn't bothered with tram networks: conventional buses on road suspension, but with electric motors fed from overhead wires. I think some European cities still use them.
They died out in the UK because of the cost of maintaining the overhead line and, IIRC, the capital cost of the vehicles (few systems => few vehicles ordered => high cost per unit). Therefore, sadly, not every kind of electric bus m
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Not for me...I need my independent private form of transportation. I need it to carry stuff, get to exactly where I need to be at the time of my choosing...not to mention not wanting to sit on a smelly bus with the types of people that usually are on public transportation (bums, street people, etc).
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Ouch.
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There is: meet the trolley bus [wikipedia.org]. Yes, there still needs to be wires above the road, but that's probably much cheaper than laying rails on it.
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Have you ever ridden on a trolley bus? MUNI in SF has had them for ages. I think the newer ones are better but the old ones had the worst motor control system. Just one long shudder as you rode them.
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Actually, no, but I hear they are much quieter than trams, sometimes too much -- check "silent death" in the wiki article.
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Sabotage? (Score:5, Interesting)
But can it survive intentional sabotage?
Placing magnets on the surface of the pavement would not be hard to do.
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Exactly what I thought - what about other sources of mangentic interference (say the motor of an electric vehicle, etc.)?
Re:Sabotage? (Score:5, Insightful)
what about other sources of mangentic interference (say the motor of an electric vehicle, etc.)?
This is no different than the head of a hard drive traveling over the disk surface. The magnets can be in a coded pattern that is encrypted a certain way that would be robust enough to overcome possible interference, whether accidental or intentional.
Yes, there are always risks of sabotage or an accident but this is no different than the risks of our current roadways. What's to stop someone from spreading caltrops across the road and causing a massive accident? How about the accidental interference of an oil spill or a bridge support giving way?
As with everything, you try to build redundancy and robustness into the system and limit the risks. Just because a system has the possibility of failing doesn't mean the idea is worthless.
Re:Sabotage? (Score:5, Informative)
With a bit-per-meter you simply do not have enough data density to do any sort of robust encryption.
1 - caltrops in pavement should not cause a massive accident. For evidence see police use of spike-strips to stop fleeing vehicles. Rarely do vehicles lose control under even the more catastrophic tire failure these hollow spikes cause as opposed to caltrops.
2 - Oil spills and bridge failures are not only more apparent than covert placement of magnets, they are also harder acts of sabotage to achieved w/o being caught.
But enough of the pedantic replies to your specifics, on your general claim that "this is no different than the risks of our current roadways" I will argue this is completely different than the risks of our current roadways.
Current roadway systems rely on human drivers. A human driver can react in a much more flexible manner than any automated drive system. Whereas it appears this system would be easy to fake with the high tech equivalent of false road signs, no (few?) human would drive into a lake because a fake road sign told them to. Again, this is not just about new technologies creating security risks which previously didn't exist, but more so the new assumptions which frequently come with the adoption of said technologies creating newly viable attack vectors.
Re:Sabotage? (Score:5, Informative)
>no (few?) human would drive into a lake because a fake road sign told them to.
Cue links to stories detailing the idiocy of people using sat nav...
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An automated system may in fact be more vulnerable to sabotage than what we have now, though I suspect you overestimate the difficulty in committing sabotage in the current system. But that isn't really the point.
Right now cars are ridiculously dangerous, accounting for about 2 percent of deaths [wikipedia.org], and most of these accidents are due to human error [wikipedia.org]. I suspect that the number of deaths due to sabotage are much, much lower than those due to human caused car accidents, and besides, a potential saboteur can alw
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Complete straw-man.
I never claimed people were safer drivers than machines.
I simply was thinking out loud about the possibility to compromise the safety of this sort of system.
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Exactly what I thought - what about other sources of mangentic interference (say the motor of an electric vehicle, etc.)?
Most magnetic fields are very weak, unless designed not to be. Most sources of magnetic fields, like transformers and solenoids bleed very little outside their surface, and commonly decay very quickly.
Depending on how this technology works, it may also be possible to effectively filter out any magnetic field not emanating from below (or above) the bus. The induced current in a loop of wire in the same plane as the floor of the bus will have a factor sin(theta), where theta is the angle between the loop and
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Re:Sabotage? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You think a bus driver makes $60,000 a year?
From salary.com:
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Re:Sabotage? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been thinking how about "just don't do that then"?
After all, placing stuff on railway tracks can derail a train and kill people. Doesn't even have to be anything fancy.
Someone could just as easily pour motor oil on a dangerous bend and get people killed.
As a species we really have to start growing up.
If technology continues improving, the amount of power the average individual is able to wield is likely to increase dramatically.
So the alternatives are grow up, or lose freedoms (not good), or experience "some random idiot thinks it's funny to kill everybody" (also not good).
The odds are we're doomed, but who knows we might get lucky.
It's an equalizer (Score:2)
Once this is better than the **average** driver,
it will be required. (by law or to get insurance)
The death rate for idiots will definitely go down.
It's much less clear what will happen with skilled
drivers. They don't have to face the idiots, but
they can't avoid road problems either.
I'm willing to test this to the last drop of (Score:2)
Hat tip: Moe Howard.
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Use redundant sensor systems:
* magnets in road
* GPS
* inertial guidance
* collision detection sensors
* inspection vehicles
* encoded/encrypted magnets as per Graff's suggestion
* combinations of the above: if magnet #1234 isn't at GPS coordinates X,Y,Z then shutdown. If the inertial guidance, GPS and magnets do not agree then shutdown.
* tamper resistant magnets: every Nth magnet is too big to easily move
* lots of magnets: there are too many small magnets to easily move or sabotage
* video image analysis: if
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Or if someone were to place a bomb underneath the bus that would detonate should it go under 55 miles per hour? What would the robots do then, huh?
Go off to make several other bad movies?
Whatever... (Score:2)
That can be a couple of hours here in Metro Atlanta.
I forgot: Press Release at top of (Score:2)
Ah hem! Press releases are not news.
I can release a press release that say, "ButterOldGuy has invented a process of vetting the most perfect VP and how any geek can get laid by a super model or better yet, a porn star."
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You can now. It's called public transportation.
Ah yes. Touche. BUT, public transport also gets caught in traffic. I'm assuming with these controlled buses, traffic would be controlled so that even the buses wouldn't get bogged down in a traffic pile up.
Besides, my movies star Jenna Jamison. I can't watch them on public transport!
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Robobus vs. stupid drivers (Score:5, Interesting)
I would've liked to have been on a Robobus back in July. An idiot driver in an SUV cut our bus off, and the driver firewalled the brake to avoid hitting him. My 3 year old daughter planted her face in the fiberglass seat ahead of us, I was in a side-facing seat and almost went through the windshield and my wife got thrown into a stairwell.
My guess is that Robobus would've kept going right into the SUV. Would've served him right.
(No, he didn't stop and we didn't get the plate number. He took off into the night.)
Hey SUV driver; if you cut a bus off at 100th St. in Ocean City, MD on August 2nd, you're a bastard.
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As unhappy as you were getting bounced around, an actual collision would've been much worse for you. Bad drivers should be punished by fining them and taking away their licenses, not by crashing into them.
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If these systems are successful, i'm sure it will not be long before municipalities have them rigged with automated photo-radar/imaging systems for automated ticketing...in areas where such things dont have precedents against them at least.
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Crazy car driver.
I think the bus driver in that accident should have just braked in a straight line and not swerved, even if he hits the car - if he slows down enough the people in the car should be ok.
If not well too bad - esp if the driver had died I'd have called it suicide
It's also likely there are fewer people in the car than in the bus.
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I know off topic, I just can't resist when someone brings up my favorite book about one of my oddball hobbies.
Robustness? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice, but does it drive in random directions if someone has set loose a bag of magnetic marbles on the road? I'd have a hard time trusting this.
Re:Robustness? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's interesting that new technology is always held to a higher standard than established technology.
We trust trains even though someone could put some rubble on the tracks. We trust human drivers even though someone could shine a laser pointer into their eyes. We trust bikes even though someone could string up a tripwire. We trust buffet restaurants even though someone could put crushed glass into the food.
Newsflash: if someone wants to sabotage a piece of infrastructure, they'll find a way! Obviously autonomous driving vehicles need to be able to continue functioning despite normal interference (weather, traffic accidents, etc.), and even some forms of sabotage. But ultimately it will be possible for someone to mess with the system. Just as it is with everything else.
Tossing a bag of magnetic marbles in front of robo-busses is no different than dropping bricks on cars from an overpass: the main deterrent is that most people are not sadistic assholes trying to kill other people.
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Seen it, driven it, didnt bother with the t-shirt (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seen it, driven it, didnt bother with the t-shi (Score:2)
Yes, that's the first thing I was thinking too.
We have had these for a while and were recently taken back into service after a crash (which was unfortunately caused by an operator forcing an override)
Empty vs. Full Roads (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure it can navigate an empty road, but what about once there are other cars on it or pot holes or what if the bus service needs a temporary detour?
Cool from a technology perspective, but I doubt it will ever be applied to actual street driving. Most likely it will end up with some alternative use like controlling the office mail cart or something.
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Cars are giant and fairly solid. Ultrasonic sensors are very good at picking them out. Even much smaller objects -- like people and traffic cones -- are pretty easy to detect and avoid. Likewise visual systems can generally differential between "road surface", "other surface", and "obstacle" with very high reliability.
As for detours, it's a little more complicated. An obvious solution is "use humans for detours." Busses typically run bi-directional routes along the same roadway, so a driver could simply shu
Real questions defeat stupid ideas .... sometimes (Score:2, Troll)
Why would anybody investigate this goofy plan? [ An oversupply of government and foundation grants from brain-dead administrators? ]
Why would we automate the driving of vehicles when there is a serious unemployment problem? Automating the driving would greatly reduce the jobs for drivers. Isn't the Teamsters Union rather strong?
What does putting hundreds of thousands of expensive magnets in the road systems do to solve the problem of oil depletion?(which leads to fuel costs that exceed the value of the
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Why would we automate the driving of vehicles when there is a serious unemployment problem?
The economy will see no lost jobs. Saving the cost of "busdriver" jobs will allow for the creation of other jobs elsewhere. The money normally spent on drivers will go toward increasing demand for other goods or services. That increased demand will create more jobs, and because inefficiency was removed the jobs that replace "busdriver" jobs will be more numerous and better paying. So, if unemployment is a problem, ma
Error correction (Score:2)
Should read: "less people will have to rely on private vehicles"
Re:Real questions defeat stupid ideas .... sometim (Score:2)
While this tech. alone won't be of much use I could see it being part of a more sophisticated automated driving system. Car makers already have automatic cruise control, colision avoidance systems, radar etc either available or in developement so I think a system combining these technologies might not be that far into the future.
Imagine a HOV type lane that allowed drivers of compatible vehicles to travel at 100+ mph within a foot or two of each other. The fuel savings due to the aerodynamic advantages of
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"Instead of having thousands of trucks carrying goods from LA to Phoenix, we need to be able to have a big diesel 'rig' truck be able to be loaded in Long Beach from ship containers, drive to the rail terminal, and drive right onto the high speed train car and be secured. Then the train will carry the entire truck to Phoenix rail central. The truck will then be driven off the train (by a local driver) and the contents be delivered to their local destinations."
You just described a bad version of a good old i
1995 Called... San Diego Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
1995 Called... San Diego Anyone?
The Carpool lanes in San Diego I15 had magnets put in them over 10 years ago and fully autonomous GM cars navigated the roads effortlessly.
This was almost 15 freaking yeats ago...
Anyone so NOT impressed by this?
Re:1995 Called... San Diego Anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup, and as early as 2002 Siemens was demonstrating a bus in Arlington, Virginia that uses the same principle. It was basically a track-less tram with a driver override. The vehicle (which btw, was amazing) drove by itself and auto-detected its stops, red lights, hazards, but it had a driver. If the driver touched the controls it would override the automatic operationg.
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Cars following magnets... not at all impressive (anymore). Show me an AI that can pass the school of fish test [templetons.com] and then I'll be impressed.
Still no replacemet for Keanu (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but can its new-fangled computer brain defy the laws of physics and jump the bus over an incomplete highway overpass at 70 mph? I didn't think so. Until we can make an artificial replacement for Keanu Reeves, I won't trust it. It's gotta be able to say, "I know kung-fu" too.
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processing capability (Score:2)
For a vehicle traveling 60 miles per hour, data from 27 meters (88 feet) of roadway can be read and processed in 1 second.
Well I would hope so, since 88 feet is the distance it travels in 1 second at 60 MPH. Otherwise it would be processing the roadway behind it. Perhaps they should say ... data from 27 meters (88 feet) of roadway must be read and processed in 1 second.
Completely irrelevant.... (Score:2)
The embedded magnets make this a non-event. Vehivles guided by ground embedded markes have been in uuse for decades.
Hack-a-bus video on YouTube (Score:2)
It will not take long for someone to lay down enough magnets to move the bus to where they want it to go — such as a neighbor's pool...
Fringe benefits! (Score:2)
Apart from guiding the bus, the system will also stop your change from rolling too far..
Underwhelmed (Score:2)
First, this is basically Demo '97 [berkeley.edu] technology. The CALTRANS PATH people have been fooling around with this for years. I saw this around 1990 or so up at the CALTRANS Richmond test facility. Automated lane following was demonstrated in 1959 by General Motors with Firebird III [wikipedia.org].
About the only justification for this is to improve stop accuracy at bus stops so the bus can get close to the curb without scraping the tires. A bit of automated parking assistance there might be helpful. A neat trick would be to
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
The human driver performs many critical tasks other than steering. Braking for vehicles or pedestrians moving into its path, making judgments about pulling over to the curb among illegally parked vehicles, arguing with fare cheats, crackheads and the homeless, etc.
Its not likely that these other requirements for a driver's presence will be eliminated any time soon. Meanwhile, keeping the driver in charge of steering keeps him paying attention to road conditions. Note how many pilots take naps while on autopilot (both at the same time, sadly).
The systems in which an automated steering system could work safely are essentially identical to elevated railways, monorails, or subways. In other words, grade separated transit systems.
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I bet I could read a newspaper and tap the steering wheel once every 10 seconds to keep the bus rolling.
Give me any automated system and I've probably seen several oddball driver behaviors that could throw its algorithms into a loop. The "Oh, oh. Some old geezer is backing up on the freeway to catch the exit he just missed" comes to mind.
Magnets? Why not paint? (Score:2, Informative)
However, the MAX and ACE lines use optical technology, meaning they only need a painted line to operate. It's kinda cool, riding in a bus that follows a line just like those robot kits you give to kids.
(Here's to hoping we've PWN
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But what happens ... (Score:2)
Snow? (Score:2)
So....magnets placed in the road and sensors in the bus are sensitive enough to compensate for an 8" difference in vertical distance? Riiiight.
Not saying this is totally useless, but test in a northeast winter before you spout off about 'snow'.
So, if it had automated steering... (Score:2)
...didn't the bus test drive the researchers?
60 mph (Score:2)
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Although I imagine it wasn't.
Re:traffic (Score:5, Funny)
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And at $1300 USD/mo, I passed.
And that's not even in the expensive part of town.
Get realistic about your expectations there, bud.
I don't have bus-reliability issues. I don't even have b
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"Live closer to their workplaces."
"Ride bikes to work."
Of course; the holy grail of all of us who work outside the house for a living. Except that:
1) The cost of living near where we work is dramatically higher, which cuts into our net income.
2) We drive a considerable distance, which makes riding a bicycle an unrealistic option.
I worked 12 miles from my house about 7 years ago. Got laid off. Nothing else in the area. Now my commute is 60 miles. I have three children in school and roots in this town for
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Yes, my wife works. And she makes considerably more than I do, and is much more highly placed. A diminution or loss of her salary would be nearly catastrophic at this point in our lives.
The roots we have are family; we're all based within an hour's drive of family and we're very close; and one of my children is an athlete and the school that he's in is highly ranked for that sport. To name but a couple of other examples.
Absent the social/familial/work roots, I have no doubt my family would support me an
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.
not every worker is a twenty-something geek, not every job puts you in a sleek glass tower and not every city has a climate as benign as southern California.
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We use the SI system in the United States, not the antiquated metric system (of which some definitions were translated in the creation of SI). The "standard" units are proxies for SI units, and are all exact, linear conversions.
We use lbf as a proxy for weight (N), and lb (or lbm) as a proxy for mass (kg). They are not the same. We are therefore, very, very confused by European insistence on continuing the mass-force confusion by incorporating kgf into their commerce system.
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Both optical and magnetic guidance systems typically use ultrasonic sensors for nearby (less than ~100 feet) obstacle detection. At highway speeds that's not enough to stop before hitting something that's at a dead stop, but it is enough to tell when someone cuts you off, or if there are construction barrels in the road, or if there is a pedestrian crossing in front of the bus.
Not that it couldn't also be combined with an optical system -- I think that's a good idea -- I just doubt the system is intended to
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Hal: I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.