I have some ideas now and then which just die without making it to the world..so i have decided to at least give them a chance of life by throwing it out to the cyberspace.
If by chance someone happens to land on this and get inspired or are already working on something similar. I would love to hear from you.
One of such ideas:
The roads when clogged have bumper to bumper traffic. in such a scenario even if the traffic if moving without a roadblock, there is a wave like nature that develops because of many degrees of freedom, one with each car. these lead to long periods of stalling then movement for a couple of feet and then stalling again for each of the cars. this then leads to inefficient usage of time and fuel.
more details here.
and here
http://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/
so one suggestion is to latch a car onto one another. doing it mechanically is not feasible because in cities cars need to change course now and then as each one is going on a different route. so latching and de latching is difficult. but then it can be done by making the cars smarter.
An electronic latch.
So lets say the car's central electronic system has two sensors and communicators , one at the front and one at the back.
each car can communicate with the computer on the car in front and on the back.
lets say in the above video if all the cars had that facility.
now as soon as a stretch of road is encountered, these cars latch onto each other i.e. they all try to maintain the same distance between each other and thus travel at the same speed, thus reducing the shockwave., each car knows what is the most efficient speed for itself. they communicate within themselves and an overall decision is reached about what the speed should be for the next stretch of road.
thus, they lock the speeds of different cars to a certain speed, which it can calculate on the go.
now this would be a loose lock in the sense there is a manual override if someone wants to stop or say turn. so the car delatches when you turn on the indicator ..suddenly, all cars behind it will stop owing to the electronic communication, in fact the information about sudden stop will reach the car n positions behind much faster and the brakes will be applied for it earlier. avoiding a second type of shockwave. similarly a delay in starting a car is avoided because lets say if n cars are standing still and the first one decides to move (lets say when the signal turns green) all the cars behind it start moving simultaneously because they have the information now.
so its like a temporary railway train.
it is a challenging engineering project but could save lot of fossil fuel and man hours.
If by chance someone happens to land on this and get inspired or are already working on something similar. I would love to hear from you.
One of such ideas:
The roads when clogged have bumper to bumper traffic. in such a scenario even if the traffic if moving without a roadblock, there is a wave like nature that develops because of many degrees of freedom, one with each car. these lead to long periods of stalling then movement for a couple of feet and then stalling again for each of the cars. this then leads to inefficient usage of time and fuel.
more details here.
http://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/
so one suggestion is to latch a car onto one another. doing it mechanically is not feasible because in cities cars need to change course now and then as each one is going on a different route. so latching and de latching is difficult. but then it can be done by making the cars smarter.
An electronic latch.
So lets say the car's central electronic system has two sensors and communicators , one at the front and one at the back.
each car can communicate with the computer on the car in front and on the back.
lets say in the above video if all the cars had that facility.
now as soon as a stretch of road is encountered, these cars latch onto each other i.e. they all try to maintain the same distance between each other and thus travel at the same speed, thus reducing the shockwave., each car knows what is the most efficient speed for itself. they communicate within themselves and an overall decision is reached about what the speed should be for the next stretch of road.
thus, they lock the speeds of different cars to a certain speed, which it can calculate on the go.
now this would be a loose lock in the sense there is a manual override if someone wants to stop or say turn. so the car delatches when you turn on the indicator ..suddenly, all cars behind it will stop owing to the electronic communication, in fact the information about sudden stop will reach the car n positions behind much faster and the brakes will be applied for it earlier. avoiding a second type of shockwave. similarly a delay in starting a car is avoided because lets say if n cars are standing still and the first one decides to move (lets say when the signal turns green) all the cars behind it start moving simultaneously because they have the information now.
so its like a temporary railway train.
it is a challenging engineering project but could save lot of fossil fuel and man hours.
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