Tag: Autonomous

While today's vehicles have integrated GPS, satellite audio, and even mobile apps, they're only the tip of the high-tech iceberg. Let's take a look at some amazing high-tech ideas which could find their ways to our cars in the not-too-distant future.

While I’m not all that crazy about the idea of fully-autonomous vehicles, I do think that some of the technology which is emerging from related research and development efforts could definitely help with vehicle safety. Take for example, this new obstacle avoidance system that Ford is working on.

Nissan seems keen to give Google a run for their money in the autonomous vehicle technology category, and the Japanese giant is working hard at creating functional robot vehicles for 2020 and beyond.

Have you ever wanted ride shotgun in a robotic car as it drives around your neighborhood? Sure, autonomous cars are still very expensive, but how about miniature version? I bet you hadn’t though of that, but a couple of engineers came up with this scaled-down version of Google’s driverless car.

Remember the Drones for Peace? The project that wants to sell drones with cameras for just $250 (USD)? If you think that that’s too much to ask, check out what we have now. This is Lehmann Aviation’s LA100, a drone that’s meant to whisk away a GoPro camera or two.

I’ve always wanted to play with R/C aircrafts, but even with my “easy to fly” AR.Drone 2.0, I find myself crashing the thing into walls and the ceiling indoors. Thanks to some impressive work by MIT’s Robust Robotics Group, we might someday be able to fly autonomous planes that are so smart that they can avoid obstacles on their own.

My grandfather was paralyzed from the waist down from an accident before I was born. As he aged, his health deteriorated until he was unable to drive his own car despite it having specially outfitted controls operated by his hands.

A team from Cornell’s Creative Machine Lab have come up with a new robot which can not only crawl along truss structures, but that can actually manipulate them and move them around.

One of the common themes in science fiction is cars or other vehicles that can drive and navigate themselves. Google took that science fiction and made reality with its self-driving cars it has been testing and rolling around in some parts of Nevada.

It never ceases to amaze me when I drive somewhere just how many idiot drivers I see reading, texting, and doing anything other than keeping their eyes on the road. The government is trying to combat distracted drivers but what they really need to be doing is combating idiots.

There’s just something inherently cool about flying quadrotors. But I have to say this is the first time I’ve seen this many of the crafts flying in unison. Using a veritable army of flying nano-quadrotors from KMel Robotics, Alex Kushleyev, Daniel Mellinger and Vijay Kumar of the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab sent a team of tightly-coordinated to the skies in their lab.

Who’d have thought that flying robots could someday create buildings? But as crazy as it sounds, our quadrotor-loving friends over at the Swiss Federal Institute Institute of Technology already have proven it’s possible.

On November 17th, Liquid Robotics launched four of its Wave Gliders from San Francisco. These are autonomous robotic ships that will brave the seas all alone, with no support vessels.

The SEED is an autonomous, mobile camera balloon created to take photos and video of you while you’re on vacation, but I honestly see a lot of Big Brother implications. It also reminds me of the Kinos in Stargate Universe.

I think you can agree with me, people are generally stupid. Put stupid behind the wheel and you get an idiot driver that will text, eat, and read all while doing 80 MPH down the highway in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

It’s been confirmed that there was a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. That’s why I think that the Helios IX, which was developed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology, will certainly be able to help out its human friends, since it won’t get sick or die from radiation poisoning.