Collision
Julie McEnery is NASA's Project Scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. When she checked her email on March 29, 2012, she was startled to find an automatically generated message stating that in six days, her half-billion-plus dollar satellite was going to cross paths with Cosmos 1805, a Soviet-era spy satellite. The predicted encounter had the two satellites occupying the same coordinates only 30 milliseconds apart. Not only that, but Cosmos was in an orbit moving nearly perpendicular to Fermi such that their collision would be equivalent to tons of high explosives. Essentially total destruction. Read More
Starting this summer (Northern Hemisphere), the Japanese-market version of the Honda Fit/Jazz will be offered with the automaker’s new City-Brake Active System. It’s designed to minimize the chances of collisions at low speeds. Read More
Bicycles are a notoriously easy target for thieves, but technology is here to help in the form of a new device that promises to help cyclists safeguard their property and recover it if stolen. Currently seeking funds on KickStarter, the Chicago-based BikeSpike team has designed a GPS tracker that features a built-in antenna, an on-board accelerometer and a connection to a GSM mobile phone network that allows users to keep tabs on their bike via a smartphone or computer. Read More
You couldn’t accuse Volvo of ignoring those people at risk of encountering the exterior of its vehicles rather than sitting inside them. The Swedish automotive manufacturer has already introduced pedestrian airbags and an automated braking system designed to avoid hitting pedestrians. Now Volvo has enhanced the latter to develop the world’s first auto-braking cyclist detection system, which is being presented at the 2013 Geneva Auto Show. Read More
If you’ve ever watched a fly trying to find its way around a house, you might have noticed that it didn’t take a particularly graceful approach – it probably bounced off a lot of windows and walls, until by process of elimination, it found a route that was clear. Well, researchers at Switzerland’s EPFL Laboratory of Intelligent Systems are taking that same approach with the latest version of their autonomous AirBurr UAV – it’s built to run into things, in order to map and navigate its environment. Read More
Orbital debris is (nearly) forever, and threatens to render near-Earth space unusable, and all but impassible. The 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test and an accidental collision between two communications satellites in 2009 highlighted the need to study orbital collisions of modern satellites. The NASA Standard Breakup Model, based on hypervelocity collision studies of 1960s-era satellites, fails to accurately describe collisions of modern satellites, owing to advances made in materials and construction. To address this problem, NASA is updating the SBM by building and destroying a modern dummy satellite called DebriSat. Read More
In the same way that we didn’t go straight from landline phones to smartphones, there are likewise going to be some intermediate steps between today’s manually-driven cars and tomorrow’s fully self-driving models. We’re already seeing some of those steps starting to pop up, in the form of things like Cadillac’s Super Cruise control, Volkswagen’s Temporary Auto Pilot, and Volvo’s traffic jam assistance system. Nissan’s latest contribution is its recently-announced Autonomous Emergency Steering System. Read More
Smart braking system joins list of firsts for Mazda CX-5
The CX-5 Crossover SUV marks a few firsts for Mazda. It will be the company's first production vehicle sporting the new KODO - Soul of Motion design language seen originally in the Shinari concept vehicle, the first vehicle featuring Mazda's efficiency-boosting Skyactiv technology, and the first to feature Smart City Brake Support (SCBS) - a system designed to avoid or reduce the damage from low speed collisions. Read More
Algorithm predicts which cars are most likely to run red lights
According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for the year 2008, over 700 fatalities resulted from drivers running red lights at intersections across the United States. Approximately half of the people killed weren’t the errant drivers themselves, but were other drivers, passengers or pedestrians who simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One approach to reducing these numbers is to utilize technology such as Mercedes Benz’s Smart Stop system, that won’t let drivers run red lights. Scientists at MIT are looking at the problem from another angle, however – they have developed a system that identifies cars likely to run the reds, so that the other drivers can be warned to stay out of their way. Read More
Proponents of flying cars like to state how much less likely collisions would be up in the air, where everyone wouldn’t be traveling on the same level, yet mid-air collisions between aircraft do already occur. Although certainly not as common as automobile collisions, approximately 10 to 12 aircraft do fly into each other every year, with many more reporting near-misses. This has led to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandating that by 2020, all commercial aircraft (and small aircraft flying near airports) must be equipped with a GPS tracking system, which would give more accurate information on their location than is provided by ground-based radar. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been tasked with creating an algorithm, that would use that GPS data to keep the planes out of each other’s way. Read More
