Streamlining inspections will help railroad focus on repairs rather than detecting flaws, executives say
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/06/05-canadian-national-keen-on-adopting-new-automated-technology
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
I wonder how long it will be before we have inspection portals on our highways. Imagine you're driving along at highway speed.. you go through a portal.. and a couple of minutes later you get a beep on your phone or an email containing a defect report and maybe best routing to repair shops. "You're front driver side brake is slightly out of adjustment".. "here are five shops to choose from ".. Star Wars technology!
UlrichI wonder how long it will be before we have inspection portals on our highways.
Certainly possible even now - we have a fueling system now that couples up with the vehicle via the OBD port to provide mileage and vehicle ID to the fueling station. It's short range - nozzle to filler, but that could be made to work at distances like the toll systems.
The downside is that your notice of repairs needed might also include your speeding ticket.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
In the future, your car will be a self-driving Uber that is owned by the government, and comes when you call it. It will also be self-inspecting. When it finds a fault, it will send for a replacement for you and seek out its own repair facility.
EuclidIn the future, your car will be a self-driving Uber that is owned by the government, and comes when you call it. It will also be self-inspecting. When it finds a fault, it will send for a replacement for you and seek out its own repair facility.
When it comes to that - it is time to check out!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Euclid In the future, your car will be a self-driving Uber that is owned by the government, and comes when you call it. It will also be self-inspecting. When it finds a fault, it will send for a replacement for you and seek out its own repair facility.
I've read predictions that car ownership will be a thing of the past. They may not be owned by the government, but those companies developing self-driving cars expect people will just order a car with their smart phones everytime they need to make a trip to wherever for whatever.
That might work in major cities, especially where people already are used to using public transportation. It may not go so well where people are used to getting in their car and going to wherever when they want, not when the next car is available. It also probably won't go over at all for more rural people. But, the only people that seem to count these days are those that live in large metropolitan areas. How well do these self-driving cars do on non-hard surface roads?
Jeff
jeffhergert Euclid In the future, your car will be a self-driving Uber that is owned by the government, and comes when you call it. It will also be self-inspecting. When it finds a fault, it will send for a replacement for you and seek out its own repair facility. I've read predictions that car ownership will be a thing of the past. They may not be owned by the government, but those companies developing self-driving cars expect people will just order a car with their smart phones everytime they need to make a trip to wherever for whatever. That might work in major cities, especially where people already are used to using public transportation. It may not go so well where people are used to getting in their car and going to wherever when they want, not when the next car is available. It also probably won't go over at all for more rural people. But, the only people that seem to count these days are those that live in large metropolitan areas. How well do these self-driving cars do on non-hard surface roads? Jeff
I have a feeling that self-driving cars won't do very well in snow, ice and mud.
What will road salt and grime do to all their sensors?
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
The point about sensors is well made. The rest of the electrical system can be reasonably well protected from the elements but since sensors need to be exposed to do their job, they would succumb to corrosive conditions rather quickly.
I tell my kids that my first car didn't even have AC.. They find that unbelievable.. Yup.. the hardships we endured back in the 70s and didn't even think to complain about.
Ulrich I tell my kids that my first car didn't even have AC.. They find that unbelievable.. Yup.. the hardships we endured back in the 70s and didn't even think to complain about.
Johnny
SD70DudeI have a feeling that self-driving cars won't do very well in snow, ice and mud. What will road salt and grime do to all their sensors?
This has been a key issue in autonomous-vehicle development since the late 1970s. (Earlier developments, the GM instrumented-highway project as it existed in the late 1940s in particular, got around this a different way, by putting much of the technology in the road infrastructure.
The current approach is much the same as the 'insight' that made the iPhone screen practical: massive redundancy and signal-reconstruction techniques similar to those used for NMR (or its more PC-friendly modern equivalent, MRI). Part of the key to this is the availability of really cheap gigahertz processor cores and both volatile and nonvolatile memory; another part is the existence of pretty good 'genetic algorithm' improvement for the necessary parts of a RTOS for these vehicles.
One TL;DR is that you pretty quickly get to the point where an autonomous vehicle can 'perceive' its environment about as well as a human driver with normal vision could; then rapidly exploit available cheap sensor fusion techniques and synthetic vision to produce something better.
Will it work under all conditions? probably not. But the key question -- alas! for developers and probably not for lawyers -- is just whether it would do as well as a human of normal capability and intelligence would in the same situation.
The 'short' answer to environmental sensor degradation will probably (from a government standpoint) be to require strict maintenance in order to run autonomous on public roads. Expect the old legal machinery for 'road spot checks' to be re-implemented with a vengeance, especially for people of color or Hispanics or any other targets of opportunity. Perhaps it helps that some of the fused sensor technology, notably millimeter-wave radar, is under radomes that happily keep out road grime, salt, or other contaminants and operate at the necessary range independent of bands that suffer severe water absorption. I will not be surprised to see the technologies used in Europe to keep headlight glass clean adapted to any optical-sensor vision windows.
The real reason for a 'government monopoly' in autonomous-vehicle provisions is somewhat related to the Price-Anderson idea: no one else will have the deep pockets, or the machinery for limiting or shucking liability, apart from organs of government. Anyone else, no matter how well-heeled or carefully contracted, will not survive the first inevitable round of product-liability suits when folks start to die around autonomous systems. And in a world where, for example, juries award large damages to folks who pick up lawnmowers to trim their hedges 'because nothing in the manual told them not to' you can bet there will be some artificial stupidity that outweighs even the most clever avoidance algorithms. (Note how carefully I avoid the suits over what happens when the systems are 'conservative' and shut down on any particular failure in the complex environment to 'fail safe'. Better not try this in Broward County if it results in missing the bridge game!)
You might remember that the original large-scale autonomous vehicle effort at Martin Marietta, in the Seventies, and some of the recent competitions, have explicitly involved off-road navigation (with some interesting results). The only real difficulty is that which comes when you start off-road racing with limited anticipatory range (e.g. no drone signals) and you start hitting those chuckholes and ridges at 80mph. With human drivers, they'll stop and re-weld their chassis. Not sure how autonomous vehicles would do this ... but it would be highly interesting to PSR railroads if they came up with workable technologies!
UlrichI tell my kids that my first car didn't even have AC..
Or FM. And only one speaker (although you could get one for the rear window, with a "fader"). Never mind any kind of "player." You listened to whatever station you could get. And learned how to program the five buttons...
It's been said that the stick shift is a millenial anti-theft device. Four on the floor is bad enough for them. "Three on the tree" would be virtually impossible...
Yeah.. I miss the stickshift.. even trucks are going automatic these days. Somehow not having taught my son how to start up on a hill with a manual clutch just didn't seem right.. he never rolled back.. he never stalled the car.. and I never got to yell at him for it... another family tradition gone forever.
UlrichYeah.. I miss the stickshift.. even trucks are going automatic these days. Somehow not having taught my son how to start up on a hill with a manual clutch just didn't seem right.. he never rolled back.. he never stalled the car.. and I never got to yell at him for it... another family tradition gone forever.
Drivers Ed car in HS was a 63 Chevy Biscayne 4 door, 6 cylinder with 3 on the tree. Instructors refrain - Car won't go without gas!
Once I mastered the muscle memory for the friction point - piece of cake. Surprised my internal organs are still in place after my classmates could not master the theory of the friction point with the clutch.
Dad's car was a Chrysler 300 non-letter with push button torque-flite transmission. I had trouble parallell parking its seemingly 19 foot length in the MVA's 20 foot parking space. Failed 1st attempt; second attempt was in a Nash Metropolitan with a stick shift - piece of cake.
DARPA's Grand Challenge was a big eye-opener for military use of self-driving
https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles
No winner in 2004, Stanford won in 2005
Almost anything can be automated, but the key is to making sure you are not automating a bad process. Countless companies have spent $$ doing that and wondering why they have the same results ;)
BaltACD I had trouble parallell parking its seemingly 19 foot length in the MVA's 20 foot parking space.
My driver's ed instructor - Mr Harrison, taught the "Harrison Never Fail Method." It actually works pretty well. Hard to explain without a napkin to draw it on...
UlrichI tell my kids that my first car didn't even have AC.. They find that unbelievable.. Yup.. the hardships we endured back in the 70s and didn't even think to complain about.
Even in 1961 when I came out of college and started my first job, the company's cars were manual transmission, no air conditioning, no power steering, and even NO windshield washers. My own Renault Dauphine had less.
UlrichSomehow not having taught my son how to start up on a hill with a manual clutch just didn't seem right.. he never rolled back.. he never stalled the car.. and I never got to yell at him for it... another family tradition gone forever.
Loved this routine. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=bill+cosby+routine+on+driving+in+San+Francisco#id=1&vid=f234aace79caadbc22c4fa0eefe9ed6d&action=click
tree68 BaltACD I had trouble parallel parking its seemingly 19 foot length in the MVA's 20 foot parking space.
BaltACD I had trouble parallel parking its seemingly 19 foot length in the MVA's 20 foot parking space.
OvermodMay I suggest the Katherine Mindell Pendleton Mosby method?
You pretty much described the Wendell Harrison Never Fail method...
Of course, when I took driver's ed, pretty much everything was a "boat." Kids today have no idea.
Electroliner 1935 Ulrich I tell my kids that my first car didn't even have AC.. They find that unbelievable.. Yup.. the hardships we endured back in the 70s and didn't even think to complain about. Even in 1961 when I came out of college and started my first job, the company's cars were manual transmission, no air conditioning, no power steering, and even NO windshield washers. My own Renault Dauphine had less.
And you survived! My condolences.
I've been thinking about my next truck to replace my SUV... thinking about a used standard cab 8' pickup. Ever try finding one easily anymore? Easier if you want a 2wd (work truck), but I want a 4x4. Seems 99% of trucks from the last 6 years are loaded crewcabs. Nothing wrong with that, as I have one - I just want something with a usable bed as a 2nd truck. The fewer options it has, the better.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
The most difficult situation I was in arose when my daughter parked her car behind mine and rode her bicycle to work. As it was, her daughter had drivern her car to school. so i was able, with many moves, to get my car to where my granddaughter's car had been parked and then back out of the garage. After my daughter came home, I told her of my adventure--and she said that I could have taken the key to her car from the hook in the kitchen--where I had left the spare key to my car.
In one respect, the operation was easier than what I had to do one day when I was working a store--the man I worked for looked out the back door and saw that the delivery wagon was not where it was uspposed to be, and told me to go out and getthe horse and wagon back tothe right place. He had grown up on a farm, and may well have thought that any teen-aged boy knew how to do the job. I went out, climbed into the wagon, picked the reins up and backed the horse until he was clear of some obstacle. I then slapped the horse's back with the reins, and guided it back to where I could tie him.
zugmannI've been thinking about my next truck to replace my SUV... thinking about a used standard cab 8' pickup. Ever try finding one easily anymore? Easier if you want a 2wd (work truck), but I want a 4x4. Seems 99% of trucks from the last 6 years are loaded crewcabs. Nothing wrong with that, as I have one - I just want something with a usable bed as a 2nd truck. The fewer options it has, the better.
Yuppys are killing the 'basic pickup' they want the crew cabs with all the possible options to demonstrate the max status they have attained.
BaltACDYuppys are killing the 'basic pickup' they want the crew cabs with all the possible options to demonstrate the max status they have attained.
I don't think I'm a yuppy... but I has a crew cab. It's nice for what it is.
My first car was a '73 Volkswagen. Manual transmission, naturlich, AM radio, no big deal, AM radio was all you needed back then, forced-air heat, which meant if you weren't moving forward at a good clip you didn't have heat! It DID have air conditioning, of the "2-55" variety.
The only deluxe feature was a firing button on the steering wheel for the twin MG-34's on the hood. Horrido!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
The "Blitz Bug" was fun, it got me around all right, but I wouldn't go back to one.
All my cars had standard transmissions until I got the 2011 "Hy-yun-dai-yay." I miss driving a standard, but after 20-plus years of driving around doing copier repairs I just about clutched my left foot to hamburger! I gave in and bought the Accent with the automatic. I'm almost starting to walk normally again.
zugmann, I don‘t know how old or how used you are looking for, but have you tried looking at state surplus sites in upper Midwest states? Up here in the snow belt almost every governmental unit such as school districts, small cities, state entities such as watershed districts, the DNR, etc., run many 4WD standard cab pickups. They are often used for snow plowing in the winter, hence the 4WD. They are usually sold at 8-12 years old and quite often with relatively modest mileage totals.
You must have better auctions than we do. Most of the trucks sold off here are rusted out hulks.
I'm basically looking for 5-10 yrs old at the oldest. Make, model, not as important (I have no loyalties - they all have their own issues). I'm in the camp of fewer the options, the better (my other truck has about any option you could want).
kgbw49zugmann, I don‘t know how old or how used you are looking for, but have you tried looking at state surplus sites in upper Midwest states? Up here in the snow belt almost every governmental unit such as school districts, small cities, state entities such as watershed districts, the DNR, etc., run many 4WD standard cab pickups. They are often used for snow plowing in the winter, hence the 4WD. They are usually sold at 8-12 years old and quite often with relatively modest mileage totals.
Being 'snow belt' vehicles they have been driven hard and put away salty - how much metal is left in them is open to question.
zugmannI don't think I'm a yuppy... but I has a crew cab. It's nice for what it is.
The only major issue I have with modern crew cabs is that their rear seats are bolt upright and virtually worthless for long-distance travel by people older than about 8 years old. You might as well go for one of the 'four-door' extended cabs and use the space back there for storage instead of more than emergency seating.
And a crew cab with eight-foot bed is a difficult thing to navigate without something like Quadra-Steer, and can be parked almost nowhere in what passes for civilized society nowadays without inconvenience. Real trucks don't have short beds -- that's the Yuppie manifestation on a 3/4ton or greater capacity.
I waited 15 years for Ford to build what one Web site referred to as the 'Four-Door Bronco' -- front seat, back seat, eight-foot closed bed on a 3/4t or 'one-ton-single' 4x4 chassis. In the meantime I used GM's nearest alternative (which was a '94 diesel Sub, notable for reasonable outside dimensions while preserving good usable interior space). What we eventually got was the Excursion -- overweight, ponderous, nearly impossible to maintain ... and with only the equivalent of a short bed, with actually considerably less usable space than the older Suburban. (I had Mercury Colony Park wagons with more usable space.)
Nobody seems to have built any decent closed-body 3/4t since ... well, the series of Suburbans that ended around 2010. And even those didn't have diesels unless you pay some backwoods magician to swap in a D-max or Cummins for an inflated price, or watch eBay and the auctions for a long chassis pickup that some buffoon has rolled...
About the options: personally, I enjoy many of the 'cowboy Cadillac' amenities when I can get them in a used truck at reasonable price. The issue, as you say, is that even the used prices are so artificially high I don't bother. (On the other hand, the mid-to-late-90s Suburbans, which need relatively little aftermarket work to be right, are costed-down nicely... and the crown jewels of GM production, the early-2000s 3/4t Subs with 3.73 Q-steer, can be found reasonable if you're patient and the 6-liter relatively easily swapped out for something better...)
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