Robocones 291
Anonymous Meoward writes "Researchers at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln have come up with robotic traffic barrels ('bollards', for our British readers) that can be repositioned by remote control, thus minimizing a road worker's time in harm's way. Apparently, the barrels can be grouped and positioned by an autonomous 'shepherd' unit, that is also smart enough to also remove an errant barrel from its herd. The barrels themselves are about as intelligent as.. well, orange barrels. Okay, let's cue the more obvious jokes..." Reader zombieflesheater submitted this previous attempt to mobilize road furniture.
Self Healing Minefield (Score:5, Interesting)
This should just be the start (Score:4, Interesting)
But it should just be the start. I want to see whole roads like this. Lots of traffic going to A? well we'll just move some of the roads going to C. I see lots of them like big snakes swirling around the sky relaying themselves so that our road networks are alot more efficent. We could all end up alot more lost, but what harm?
Lawsuits (Score:5, Interesting)
It is similar to the old Q of if we had cars which could drive themselves... who is to blame when two computer driven cars get into an accident with each other.
What about the physical characteristic changes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does adding an RF receiver and motors add weight and rigid bulk to the cone, making it more damaging to hit?
It's bad enough if you hit one of the road cones with the battery-powered flashers on the top, but that weighs very little. I hope the folks designing these keep impact-safety factors in mind.
Proximty Alarms (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't wait (Score:3, Interesting)
stupidest idea ever (Score:3, Interesting)
how many regular cones get accidentally crushed by traffic? or randomly flung by bigrig turbulence?
one "good" thing that is bound to happen though, is some Anonymous Coward stealing a few of them and hacking them apart and back together again (possibly even to try and run Linux on it?).
Obstacles in path (Score:2, Interesting)
The article mentions nothing about obstacles and how the bollards avoid them (obstacle detection? options for planning a path, manually or automatically?).
Road construction sites (and even roads in normal condition) usually have holes 'n dents 'n stuff, so there's a chance of having one of those "stupid" cones run into a ditch or hole, fall, and roll on to a busy road. Besides the obvious dangers of that happening, a human has to go and pick up the bollard, at a location it wasn't supposed to end up (brining along more risk for that person, too).
Re:Lawsuits (Score:3, Interesting)
Is the driver of the car to blame at fault because they were not in control of their vehicle at the time? Part of the reason the technology would exist would be to permit the 'driver' from having to watch the road and their surroundings at all times and let them do other things.
Is the car AI maker to blame for building an AI that screwed up in some way? Such at technology would not be intended as a driver replacement but as a driver enhancement, similar to ABS breaks or more advanced forms of traction control. They can help the driver out immensely, but they cannot replace intelligence behind the wheel. In this area of blame, it is often difficult to define a proper level of vendor/maker liability for defects in their product.
There are plenty of areas in the world where we turn over our own control of things to technology and let the code of a programmer decide what is best. This is fine and dandy so long as things work, and there have been plenty of high profile screw-ups where a software or hardware error caused a breakdown of a physical system or even death. Assigning blame for them is rarely an easy task.
Re:Avoiding Cars... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Practical or somebody's thesis? (Score:3, Interesting)
Even worse, I think it could be a real hazard to drivers.
Right now, if a construction worker is setting up or moving cones or barrels, an approaching driver will know the cones or barrels are about to move because there's a large person (most likely wearing a reflective vest) moving around near the barrels, and most good drivers will slow down and make sure they give him/her some space.
Can you imagine what'll happen when you're approaching some traffic barrels and all of a sudden they start moving on their own? All of a sudden, the lane that was open is now blocked by a whole bunch of traffic cones! "The bollards, which are connected via a radio link, move at just over a metre a second." That's fast. I can just picture drivers swerving to avoid them barrels which are suddenly in their path, losing control of their cars, and possibly killing someone.
The only way I can see this working is to make them move really, really slowly. If they do that, then any given passing driver will be unlikely to notice them moving. They'll effectively be stationary for each passing driver, but after a few minutes they'll be reconfigured. Any faster than about 1cm/second and these things are going to cause accidents. But don't worry, you can protect the accident scene with these funky new moving traffic barrels!!! Oh... wait...
I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)