Tag Archives: Engineering

Great 3D Printing Presentation

Very fun presentation by 10 year old on 3D printing and the open source Makerbot at Ignite Phoenix.

Red-light Cameras Save Lives, Could Save More if Used in More Cities

Red light cameras saved 159 lives in 2004-08 in 14 of the biggest US cities, a new analysis by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows. Had cameras been operating during that period in all large cities, a total of 815 deaths would have been prevented.

“The cities that have the courage to use red light cameras despite the political backlash are saving lives,” says Institute president Adrian Lund. The researchers found that in the 14 cities that had cameras during 2004-08, the combined per capita rate of fatal red light running crashes fell 35 percent, compared with 1992-96. The rate also fell in the 48 cities without camera programs in either period, but only by 14 percent.

The rate of all fatal crashes at intersections with signals — not just red light running crashes — fell 14 percent in the camera cities and crept up 2 percent in the noncamera cities. In the camera cities, there were 17 percent fewer fatal crashes per capita at intersections with signals in 2004-08 than would have been expected. That translates into 159 people who are alive because of the automated enforcement programs.

This result shows that red light cameras reduce not only fatal red light running crashes, but other types of fatal intersection crashes as well. One possible reason for this is that red light running fatalities are undercounted due to a lack of witnesses to explain what happened in a crash. Drivers also may be more cautious in general when they know there are cameras around.

Based on these calculations, if red light cameras had been in place for all 5 years in all 99 US cities with populations over 200,000, a total of 815 deaths could have been avoided.

“Somehow, the people who get tickets because they have broken the law have been cast as the victims,” Lund says. “We rarely hear about the real victims — the people who are killed or injured by these lawbreakers.” Red light running killed 676 people and injured an estimated 113,000 in 2009. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths were people other than the red light running drivers — occupants of other vehicles, passengers in the red light runners’ vehicles, bicyclists, or pedestrians.

Previous research has established that red light cameras deter would-be violators and reduce crashes at intersections with signals. Institute studies of camera programs have found that red light violations fell at intersections where cameras were installed and that this effect also spilled over to intersections without cameras. An Institute study in Oxnard, Calif., found that injury crashes at intersections with traffic signals fell 29 percent citywide after automated enforcement began.

The new study adds to this by showing that cameras reduce not only violations and crashes throughout entire communities but deaths, too.

Red-light cameras save lives, study says

The 2.2 million intersection crashes recorded in 2009 made up about 41 percent of all accidents. They resulted in 81,112 serious injuries and 7,358 deaths. Police established red-light running as the cause of 676 deaths and 113,000 injuries. The vast majority of the people who died – 64 percent – were not driving the vehicle that ran the light. They were passengers, other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

Robots That Start as Babies Master Walking Faster Than Those That Start as Adults

In a first-of-its-kind experiment, Bongard created both simulated and actual robots that, like tadpoles becoming frogs, change their body forms while learning how to walk. And, over generations, his simulated robots also evolved, spending less time in “infant” tadpole-like forms and more time in “adult” four-legged forms.

These evolving populations of robots were able to learn to walk more rapidly than ones with fixed body forms. And, in their final form, the changing robots had developed a more robust gait — better able to deal with, say, being knocked with a stick — than the ones that had learned to walk using upright legs from the beginning.

Bongard’s research, supported by the National Science Foundation, is part of a wider venture called evolutionary robotics. “We have an engineering goal,” he says “to produce robots as quickly and consistently as possible.” In this experimental case: upright four-legged robots that can move themselves to a light source without falling over.

Using a sophisticated computer simulation, Bongard unleashed a series of synthetic beasts that move about in a 3-dimensional space. “It looks like a modern video game,” he says. Each creature — or, rather, generations of the creatures — then run a software routine, called a genetic algorithm, that experiments with various motions until it develops a slither, shuffle, or walking gait — based on its body plan — that can get it to the light source without tipping over.

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Molten Salt Solar Reactor Approved by California

California has approved a molten salt solar reactor project. The plan is for a 150-megawatt solar power tower project. From the press release: the “Solar Energy Project has the ability to collect and store enough thermal energy each morning to operate at full power all afternoon and for up to 8 hours after sunset. The game-changing technology featuring inherent energy storage affords utilities with a generator that performs with the reliability and dispatchability of a conventional power generator without harmful emissions that are associated with burning coal, natural gas and oil.”

diagram of solar energy project using molton salt

molten salt solar system diagram

The heliostats focus concentrated sunlight on a receiver which sits on top of the tower. Within the receiver, the concentrated sunlight heats molten salt to over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heated molten salt then flows into a thermal storage tank where it is stored, maintaining 98% thermal efficiency, and eventually pumped to a steam generator. The steam drives a standard turbine to generate electricity. This process, also known as the “Rankine cycle” is similar to a standard coal-fired power plant, except it is fueled by clean and free solar energy.

This is another green energy project that has a great deal of potential. There is a great need for such new energy sources and hopefully quite a few of these projects will let us enjoy a greener and more sustainable way to meet our future energy needs.

For those interested in the business aspects of this energy project: United Technologies provided SolarReserve with an exclusive worldwide license to develop projects using the proprietary molten salt power tower technology, which has been in development for nearly three decades.

Great Furniture for Small Spaces

Wonderful design from Italy with great space saving furniture. Great design with wonderful engineering provides solutions that are a joy to see and live with. These are not cheap though. New York City distributors of the furniture.

Fix it Goo

5 years of discovery and experimentation culminated in Sugru. It cures at room tempature, is self-adhesive, is flexible, waterproof and dish-washer-proof. Another post on home fixing.

Fiskars Cuts+More 5-in-1 Multi-Purpose Scissors

These are some well engineering scissors with all sorts of handy features. Fiskars makes some great products. High-quality blades provide excellent cutting performance on a wide variety of materials. Large, ergonomically sculpted finger and thumb loops provide excellent comfort and control when cutting.

Additional features include a power notch for cutting light rope, wire cutter, twine cutter, pointed awl tip and bottle opener. You can even take the scissors apart and use the titanium-coated blade as a knife. It’s dishwasher safe and includes an innovative sheath with a built-in tape cutter and a ceramic scissors sharpener to keep the blades performing at their best. Ergonomically sculpted handles provide comfortable use and cutting control. Power notch cuts light rope. Wire cutter makes cutting wire without damaging the blades quick and easy.

A pointed awl tip is perfect for piercing small holes in cardboard, leather and more. Bottle opener makes it easy to open bottles. Take-apart design offers a titanium-coated knife that is three times harder than steel for general cutting needs. Dishwasher safe for easy cleaning. The sheath protects blades, sharpens scissors and includes a tape cutter for opening boxes.

Home Halloween Engineering: Gaping Hole Costume

photo of gaping hole Halloween costume by Evan Booth, 2006

This great Halloween costume by Evan Booth shows what a bit of imagination and engineering can do. A projection screen over his stomach displays a live video image of a camera on his back giving the illusion of a gaping hole. Photos via flickr. Very cool. Lets see what costumes Curious Cat readers can come up with.

Driver Thanks Engineer Who Hit Him on Purpose

Driver thanks man who hit him on purpose

Driving to a Mariners game, Duane Innes saw a pickup ahead of him drift across lanes of traffic, sideswipe a concrete barrier and continue forward on the inside shoulder at about 40 mph. A manager of Boeing’s F22 fighter-jet program [and engineer by training], Innes dodged the truck, then looked back to see that the driver was slumped over the wheel. He knew a busy intersection was just ahead, and he had to act fast.
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“Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together,” Innes explained. So he pulled in front of the pickup, allowed it to rear-end his minivan and brought both vehicles safely to a stop in the pull-off lane.
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Some might say the driver of the truck, 80-year-old Bill Pace, of Bellevue, and anyone Pace’s truck might have slammed into had luck on their side that day. A retiree who volunteers for Special Olympics and organizes food drives, Pace didn’t know it at the time, but he’d had a minor heart attack two days earlier and his circulation was so poor he passed out at the wheel with his foot resting on the accelerator.

Nice story and nice that the article had a tiny bit of science in the story, with another example of good work by an engineer.

Google’s Self Driving Car

Google thinks big. Google thinks like engineers. Google is willing to spend money taking on problems that other companies don’t. They have been developing a car that can drive itself. They see a huge amount of waste (drivers lives and drivers time) and seek a solution.

Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology. And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.

So we have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves. Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research.

Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain.

To develop this technology, we gathered some of the very best engineers from the DARPA Challenges, a series of autonomous vehicle races organized by the U.S. Government. Chris Urmson was the technical team leader of the CMU team that won the 2007 Urban Challenge. Mike Montemerlo was the software lead for the Stanford team that won the 2005 Grand Challenge. Also on the team is Anthony Levandowski, who built the world’s first autonomous motorcycle that participated in a DARPA Grand Challenge, and who also built a modified Prius that delivered pizza without a person inside.