New Florence. New Renaissance.

Back to the Future - in Auto Technology

Frank Markus who writes the regular Technologue column summarizes trends in auto tech over 37 years

"By my count, this is MotorTrend's 263rd Technologue column, stretching back to May 1982.

In all, we've covered 183 future technologies—77 percent of all Technologue topics. Of the concepts highlighted, 36 percent have been developed to the point of production, after an average of 4.4 years. Extensive Googling suggests another 20 percent—including most of the recent topics—still have active research ongoing. If they all pan out, we'll be batting .500!

Topics-wise, I've covered 27 alternate-fuels technologies, 20 battery/EV/HEV concepts, 16 advanced combustion engine ideas, 15 electronics/infotainment topics, and 14 columns each covering chassis and safety.

Another 37 of my favorite columns defy such easy classification—like the HondaJet, the odor-fighting seat upholstery made of shrimp shells, the thorium-powered car, Ford's braille window film that helps blind passengers enjoy scenery, and the Toyota/JAXA lunar rover."

Ikea's changing definition of "home"

Interesting results from Ikea's 2018 Life at Home survey

"In the past two years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of people who say they feel more at home in places other than the space they live in. We found that at any given moment we are doing things normally associated with the home, elsewhere. Did you know for example that over a third of us shower or bathe outside of the home multiple times a week? Life is changing, and it’s time for home to catch up.

So what does this mean?

Well, we’ve learned much more about what goes into creating the feeling of home, and how to make it feel better. We’ve learned how important neighbourhoods and communities are in our homemaking experiences. In fact 64% of people globally would rather live in a small home in a great location as opposed to a large home in a less than ideal location, and 23% of people feel they have to leave the home to find alone time.

We are entering a new era of life at home.

60% of people are ready to create a home that’s different from the one they were brought up in."

 

Barcelona "Superblocks"

Each Barcelona superblock comprises a three-by-three, nine-block neighborhood of traffic-calmed and shared streets. Local traffic can enter only along the center block of each side, drive slowly around that block, and reemerge on the street from which it entered, which limits through-traffic to the perimeter. Within the block, the scheme liberates more than 70 percent of the surface previously occupied by cars, reducing noise, improving air quality, and providing much-needed public space.

The clustering of blocks, exclusion of traffic, and installation of picnic tables, play areas, and potted trees may seem like an analog initiative, but it rests on “data-integrated decision-making,” says Salvador Rueda, director of the Agència d’Ecologia Urbana de Bar- celona (BCN Ecologia) and originator of the superblock program. Rueda first proposed the superblock concept in 1987 (even then, noise and poor air quality were marring city life), but a lack of reliable projections about traffic impacts stalled it. Now, with contemporary sensing and simulation technologies, says Rueda, “we can use data to advocate, to plan, and to verify.”

For example, increasingly sophisticated monitoring equipment has enabled the creation of a network of fixed and moving sensors that connect with ICTs and a cloud-computing process. These make it possible to assess a range of air-quality parameters—particulates, nitrogen dioxide, and other pollutants—and to generate accurate, real-time estimates of doses inhaled daily by residents and commuters. Similarly, traffic flow is measured with sensors (mainly cameras) positioned in intersections, superblock access roads, and calmed streets.

Architectural Record

 

Singapore's Digital Twin

“Singapore is a city-state, and there’s rarely the room for us to experiment with our plans,” according to Siau Yong Ng, director of the Singapore Land Authority’s geospatial division. So, in a global first, the city is synthesizing all of the 3-D efforts of its various government agencies, along with vast stores of associated data from existing geospatial and other platforms, to create a digital twin of the entire city.

The $54 million project, scheduled for phased deployment beginning this year, will provide a single, authoritative digital platform for government and private-sector users, as well as researchers and the public, to better understand the city and to explore ways to improve it. Users will be able to pretest concepts and services that range from energy and food production to mobility, from development proposals to long-term land-use planning.

Astonishingly detailed for such an enormous construct, the platform’s semantic 3-D modeling provides information on terrain attributes, transportation infrastructure, and buildings and their geometry and components, right down to floorplans and materials composition. Multiple sources of static, dynamic, and real-time city data, including information from government agencies, the internet, and Internet of Things devices, enrich the platform with demographics, traffic, and weather. According to a statement from Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), which led the development of the model, “the potential uses of Virtual Singapore in tackling livability issues are limitless.”

Architectural Record

 

Smart diaper and baby monitor

Smart diaper

 

The Lumi by Pampers line, which Pampers says has a waitlist ahead of its US launch this fall, includes an activity sensor that secures to a "landing" on the front of a baby's diaper. It comes with a baby monitor and a 10-day supply of diapers. The sensor works with a corresponding app to log the kid's pee and identify patterns. Additional packs of Lumi by Pamper diapers will be sold separately.

CNN

 

The digital Emirates Airlines CX

I spent two whole days in the last month on Emirates planes, in their lounges and their airport transfers. While it is a noticeably high-touch airline, I was especially impressed with the digital aspects of the CX   

They offer 4,000 channels of movies, TV shows, music and podcasts at your seat. And you can create your own playlist in their app before you fly.

Personally, I ignored those channels. I stayed connected with my iPad on the SITA OnAir WiFi. Even better, it was complimentary. We briefly lost connectivity over Greenland.

My other entertainment came from displays of its navigation system and streams from 3 cameras - one in the nose, one in the belly, one on the tail.

The Emirates airport lounges at JFK and Dubai have plenty of technology of their own. Espresso machines. Spa equipment. All kinds of scanning technology - you board directly from the lounge in many airports. The negative of such big, wide open lounges is more frequent security checks. There is an opportunity to digitally streamline that. 

The airport transfers themselves had plenty of nav and safety technology including the proximity sensors and display the driver had in the clogged roads of Mumbai. 

The planes have plenty of sleep aids - digital controls for your seat, mood lighting, automated drapes for your window, Bowers & Wilkins noise-canceling headsets.

It starts with the Emirates app which allows you to select your seats. Not just select them - view them in 3D and virtual reality. View your menu in multiple languages depending on your route - here's one in Hindi. Book your airport transfers. Get notified of your driver info from its transfer partners, Blacklane and Addison Lee by text and email (I did have to call once to move forward a scheduled ride).  

The real difference is the blend of human and digital touch. I got a good example of that while Julie from Cork, Ireland poured me a tawny port with a smile in the lounge on the A380. Right behind me was a 55 inch display streaming live sports. I could have spent hours in those sky lounges. But there was so much else to experience right at my seat. 

I hope and pray other airlines start to improve their own CX by offering even a fraction of what Emirates offers its passengers.

Cadillac's "Super Cruise" mode

Unlike Autopilot and similarly pseudo-self-driving systems offered by the likes of Nissan, Super Cruise strictly limits where the driver can use it. As it developed the system, Cadillac hired a company called Ushr to drive every mile of limited-access highway in the US and Canada, using a lidar laser scanner to record all the lane lines, tollbooths, curves, merges, splits, and other features. It trimmed away some useless lidar data (like roadside trees), and compressed what was left until it fit easily on a car’s computer. The resulting map helps the car anticipate things like sharp turns, but it has a more important function.

By matching the car’s location (using GPS) to the map, Cadillac disables the system where it’s not confident that the system can handle the driving. Maybe the car’s lane is ending, or it’s approaching a tollbooth, or reaching the point where the five lanes of the Bay Bridge split into the various highways of Berkeley and Oakland—anything that demands more than staying between the lane lines and a safe distance from the car up ahead. About one-third of a mile before the cutoff point, lights in the steering wheel go from green to red, the driver’s seat buzzes, and the dashboard reads “Super Cruise disengaging, take back control.”

Wired

 

 

 

 

Digitizing life on the road for truckers

Hub Group, which operates a fleet of more than 4,000 trucks, last month unveiled a set of artificial-intelligence-driven capabilities, promising to offer more accurate delivery times.

The new capabilities leverage over 10 million data points, many of which are generated by interconnected sensors and other hardware that Hub Group has been adding to its trucks for the past two years, said Vava Dimond, the company’s chief information officer.

Ms. Dimond said the goal is to use as much data as possible to make deliveries more efficient and boost productivity. But the initiative is also aimed at making life easier for its truckers, she added.

For truck drivers, the cab of the vehicle is their office, she said, “and that office isn’t conducive to things like paperwork, when it’s raining or the wind is blowing.” Hub Group’s app can track and automatically fill out truckers’ paperwork, including logs along their routes, proof of delivery notices and other forms. The company developed the bulk of the tools in house.

WSJ

 

 

Onboard - Medical - diagnostics

The idea is elegantly simple: Use information gathered by a vehicle's numerous multiaxis accelerometers and other sensors during an accident in order to help predict the injuries inflicted on the occupants, and share this data with first responders so they're prepared to provide precisely the care needed. For example, the data could be used to immediately dispatch a medevac unit instead of waiting for an ambulance to arrive, assess, and then summon medevac. MDGo claims that—for survivable accidents—such tailored care and time savings could improve victims' long-term outlook for mortality and morbidity (chronic pain/side-effects) by as much as 44 percent.

Motor Trend

 

 

 

 

Mobility trends

Highly recommend this issue. The cover itself gives you an idea on how we will move around in the future - the last mile and much farther.