Tag Archives: Road safety

Transformable smart tire with concealed spikes is tailored for safe, all-season driving

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The number of black ice-induced accidents has significantly spiked in the last five years owing to the perils of climate change. Rapid urbanization has also played its part in extreme weather events, and more instances of black ice forming on curved roads and bridges, thereby increasing the risk of fatalities when there’s no grip for vehicles to drive properly.

Unlike snow roads which are visible to the naked eye, black ice is indistinguishable from normal road conditions which makes it laden with danger at every corner. The only solution, to stay away from harm’s way is to put on a set of tires with spikes or put on tire chains. CONQUEROR tire designed in collaboration with the Nexen Tire Corporation (a world-leading South Korean tire maker) wants to change this, reducing the danger element to negligible.

Designer: Yuchan Ahn, HoChul Shin, Eunseok Seo and Korea Design Membership

The concept winter smart tire adapts to road conditions thanks to the embedded sensors. When slippery black ice or icy conditions are detected, the spikes are engaged for better grip without the riders needing to worry about anything. The design motivation for the tire’s shape comes from the snowflake crystals, and it’s not a mere penned concept. There are a number of deformation cylinders (shaped like crystals) on the surface of the tire giving way to the traditional air-injected mechanism of a normal tire.

Top of these little cylinders house the spikes and the rubber tread – with the spike controlling mechanism built into the casing to set into action, as soon as traces of icy conditions are detected. The bottom section of these cylinders has shock absorbers to absorb the impact of uneven road surfaces. The winter-optimized CONQUEROR tire is a very useful innovation that’s all set to hit the tarmac to prevent all the road chaos, and most importantly fatalities.

The post Transformable smart tire with concealed spikes is tailored for safe, all-season driving first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nuro next-gen self-driving delivery car will protect pedestrians with an old-fashioned airbag!

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Airbags have been cited to save the lives of people inside a car, and Nuro thinks they might also be able to save people outside of one.

Autonomous, self-driving cars have long been a dream of both car manufacturers as well as many drivers, but they also sound like the stuff of sci-fi horror for other people, especially those outside of the robot vehicle. Although it’s a long time coming, these driverless cars will eventually be found on highways as well as neighborhood streets, whether ferrying people or groceries. Nuro is more interested in the latter, and its latest prototype design makes a big commitment not just to the safety of people but also that of the environment.

Designer: Nuro

Nuro has been around for quite a while, but it might not be getting as much attention as self-driving cars from bigger brands like Tesla. That might be due to its focus on a very specific market for delivering goods, not humans, from the store to your doorstep. In a way, that also works in its favor because it can fine-tune its features and performance in ways that more general-purpose autonomous vehicles can’t.

For example, Nuro’s latest-gen version of its driverless R2 pod adds a new safety feature for pedestrians that sounds both absurd and genius in its simplicity. While it will try to avoid any accident as much as it can, it will also deploy an external airbag in front of the vehicle when it can’t. This is designed to help reduce the force of impact and hopefully reduce the number of injuries to pedestrians. That, of course, will still depend on how fast the vehicle was traveling in the first place, and this latest iteration can apparently go up to 45 mph.

Nuro is also making big promises when it comes to sustainability and protecting the environment. It will be impossible at this point to go all out on using renewable materials, but it will at least try to make sure to reduce its impact on the environment. More importantly, Nuro says that the new electric vehicle will use 100% renewable electricity from wind farms in Texas, reducing the carbon footprint even for day-to-day operations.

This third-gen autonomous delivery vehicle also has more space for groceries, food, and other items. Nuro says that all these upgrades are designed not just to make deliveries faster and more efficient but also to free up more time for humans to spend on more important things, like family and friends. That said, pre-production of the manufacturing facility that will make these driverless delivery robots has only just begun, so it might be a while before we see these on the road.

The post Nuro next-gen self-driving delivery car will protect pedestrians with an old-fashioned airbag! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This smart helmet uses organic photovoltaics for clean energy while keeping you stylish and safe!

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WertelOberfell, a Germany-based designed studio, recently debuted their energy self-sufficient bicycle helmet, ESUB Tracks. The helmet is designed to keep cyclists safe and the creative team at WertelOberfell certainly checked all their corners when considering the different obstacles cyclists face on the road. Built-in smart features buzz through this helmet and they’re powered by organic photovoltaics that gives this helmet all the energy it needs to keep you safe.

In order to turn the ordinary helmet into an energy self-sufficient, smart helmet, the designers turned to science. Printed organic batteries and a Nano Arduino, a microcontroller, contained in one unit at the rear of the helmet, run the whole show and all the incorporated electric components, but the helmet’s surface provides the energy. The designers achieved the futuristic look of this helmet by wrapping flat, organic, printed photovoltaics all around in order to use the outer layer of ESUB Tracks as a PV module that absorbs sunlight and turns it into energy. This form of energy self-sufficiency allows the helmet’s batteries and smart features to constantly recharge and give power to the varying smart features and electric components that distinguish ESUB Tracks. ESUB Tracks carries a lot of hidden features, one being an integrated speaker. The helmet’s printed piezoelectric, bone conduction speakers are heat pressed onto leather straps with an embossed interior layer that slightly presses against the user’s ear for close acoustics. The speakers connect via Bluetooth from your smartphone and provide crystal clear audio without reducing the sound levels that surround that user. Along the backside of ESUB Tracks is the helmet’s sensor domain.

Here’s when the safety perks come in. If cyclists wearing ESUB Tracks aren’t aware of what’s going on behind them, then rear proximity sensors will let users know when automobiles or other cyclists are getting too close. Additionally, haptic feedback is integrated into the sensors so that piezoelectric haptic actuators vibrate whenever ESUB Tracks senses some sort of road danger or just close vehicle proximity. Just beneath the user’s chin, a printed piezoelectric microphone understands voice commands so that if a cyclist has to make a turn, then the microphone can register voice commands such as turn signals, no hand motion required. To top it off, or bottom it off, ESUB Tracks integrates self-adjusting chin straps that use an electric drive to fasten straps until the helmet fits comfortably and safely atop the cyclist’s head, no manual adjustments needed. Maybe this is actually what they all meant when they said they could ride with no hands.

Designer: WertelOberfell

ComSonics Develops a Texting-Detecting Radar Gun

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Radar Gun

Texting while driving is extremely dangerous, and certain governments decided to raise awareness of that in some very brutal ways. ComSonics took a much safer route and developed a radar gun capable of catching drivers texting.

A few years ago, an ad commissioned by the Tredegar Comprehensive School and Gwent Police depicted teens meeting their end in an extremely gruesome way, just to prove that texting while driving is a big no-no. Not long after that, the Romanian Police launched a road safety campaign that showed a feature phone’s display with the text “I said I’m sorry, what the truck!!”. The effect wasn’t as expected, as that is a really poor attempt at a word play, not to mention that the idea was stolen from Aviva. These ads (especially the first one) are meant to stay with you a very long time, and will most certainly pop into your mind if you ever think of texting while driving. The radar gun that detects texting might sound less traumatizing, but it’s also less effective.

While texting, mobile phones emit radio waves of a frequency that differs from the one used when making a phone call. Virginia-based ComSonics developed a radar gun that makes use of this very concept, but as it’s anyone’s guess that this radar is not without downsides.

The main problem with this radar gun is that the same radio frequencies are detected also while receiving, not only while sending a text. Secondly, what if the co-driver is texting? The police would still claim that the driver is guilty, even if it was a false positive. If the radar gun could be correlated with traffic cameras, then there would be no doubt that it was indeed the driver who was texting and not someone else.

Yet another issue is the emergence of personal digital assistants such as Microsoft’s Cortana, Mountain View’s Google Now or Apple’s Siri. The driver could dictate the text to be sent to the PDA, and the police would incriminate the driver wrongfully. It would be equally difficult to distinguish between the driver’s phone and the car’s own communication system. That being said, the chances of this product hitting the streets are pretty low, even though the idea itself is unique.

I guess that “Don’t text and drive” is the new “Don’t drink and drive,” as with different times, different dangers are presented to us.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Audi AR car manual and the Lamborghini Egoista, a real-life Batmobile.

California court: Drivers can read cellphone maps

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FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Drivers in California can legally read a map on their hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. The 5th District Court of Appeal...

NHTSA Released Distraction Guidelines

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The Transportation Secretary passed out the guideline list today. The devices present in vehicles were the greatest risk to driving safety. They distracted drivers from their real purpose which was...
    


Scientists investigating AI-based traffic control, so we can only blame the jams on ourselves

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Scientists investigating artificial intelligencebased traffic control, so we can only blame the jams on ourselves

Ever found yourself stuck at the lights convinced that whatever is controlling these things is just trying to test your patience, and that you could do a better job? Well, turns out you might -- at least partly -- be right. Researchers at the University of Southampton have just revealed that they are investigating the use of artificial intelligence-based traffic lights, with the hope that it could be used in next-generation road signals. The research uses video games and simulations to assess different traffic control systems, and apparently us humans do a pretty good job. The team at Southampton hope that they will be to emulate this human-like approach with new "machine learning" software. With cars already being tested out with WiFi, mobile connectivity and GPS on board for accident prevention, a system such as this could certainly have a lot of data to tap into. There's no indication as to when we might see a real world trial, but at least we're reminded, for once, that as a race we're not quite able to be replaced by robotic overlords entirely.

Continue reading Scientists investigating AI-based traffic control, so we can only blame the jams on ourselves

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Scientists investigating AI-based traffic control, so we can only blame the jams on ourselves originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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