Horizon Report "Smart Objects"

Smart objects usefulness hit me as being very helpful. Aside from the obvious, personal data, etc. I was thinking of the smart object being embedded in the car computer. Due to the highly computerized nature of automobiles today, embedding smart object data in the car, that could "communicate" with your iPhone, and continue to report all the codes and variations of the diagnostic data, and then you would take your phone into the shop or download to Pep Boys over the net and let them discuss with you the relevancy of the data, or what repair work would be recommended. In other words the smart object would report to "you" relevant data, and you could shop this information around to find what you should do for the car, and where you should do it, etc. It would be a closer tie to you controlling or understanding the information rather than taking the car into the shop now and hoping you get "ripped off" with the salesman telling you that you need to refill your halogen fluid.

Electric Car reality?

While reviewing Technology’s Promise [Halal, W. E. (Ed.). (2008). Technology's Promise:Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society: Palgrave Macmillan.], I too find myself desiring to comment on the predictions of alternate fueled vehicles that Halal has commented on. First of all I would like to say that I desire to have the electric car, hover car, and teleportation technologies as soon as possible. However, regarding the automotive technology, there are still some hurdles that need to be overcome. One of the technology areas, and in my opinion, still the largest hurdle at this time, is the power density of the alternate fuel being considered.

A great article from Design News [Murray, C. J. (2008). Auto Industry Working Hard to Make an Electric Vehicle Battery. Design News.], discusses the power density of the existing battery technologies versus what is contained within gasoline.

(Image inserted from "http://www.designnews.com/article/print/10574-Auto_Industry_Working_Hard_to_Make_an_Electric_Vehicle_Battery.php")

In summary, gasoline contains approximately 80 times more energy per volume than lithium-ion electric vehicle battery, and 250 times more energy than the standard lead-acid battery in cars today. This means that in order to extract the performance that exists today with gasoline engines, there has to be an 80 times improvement in the technologies that are used to make automobiles. For example if we use Halal’s assertion that the current gasoline engine is only 14% efficient, to get an electric engine that was 100% efficient would improve efficiency approximately 7 times. We still need a 73 times improvement somewhere else within the automotive technology, such as weight savings, wind resistance, etc.

If you couple this with the acquisition costs of the fuel, (the cost of producing the gasoline vs. the cost of creating the battery), again the gasoline still has the advantage. There are still many hurdles that exist before all electric cars can compete as a total system cost with gasoline vehicles. I believe, and hope, that all electric cars become an economical reality, but I am left to believe that if they become mainstream in the near future with existing technologies, it will not be due to its economical/efficiency advantage, but will become viable due to people willing to pay the extra costs of the inefficiencies for other real or perceived payoffs.

Animoto video on Dissertation subject

Here is my animoto presentation

Remote driving

I have been interested in the ability of a vehicle to take a passenger from one destination to another without interaction from the passenger. I call this remote driving. However, after scanning the topic a bit from recent researchers in this area, the implementation appears to be further out than what I had hoped for. Basically, in my summary it is an issue that no single processor group can make all the decisions that must be made in order to drive, such as avoidance, braking, navigating, acceleration, etc. These tasks at the current level of affordable technology must be made by separate processor groups or robotics, and this becomes a large issue as to how to have these separate robotic functionality parts making the system wide decisions necessary for safe and secure transportation. It appears that due to this issue that this technology area is pursuing remote driving, such as using a remote control device, such as PDA, or others, to remotely power the vehicle. Similar to the remote control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that the military is currently investing in.

So it appears that the current direction in this area, is not what I had hoped for, travel with no user interaction, but travel with remote interaction. Just to see how far this has come feel free to view this video of Full Size RC Car. It is interesting once you wait out the advertisment delay.

Active Engineering Podcast

Gabcast! Active Engineering Podcast #1

New WEB 20 tool

I have found another web 20 tool that I like. I am part of a large close family and I have been searching for a means to keep us all closer togther other than the very public facebooks, or other social media. I ran across MyFamily.com and I found it very easy to set up our own family website, free of course (with some advertising, but $2.50/month for more stuff and no adds). It can be a public or private family site. I choose the private site and I can invite the folks I desire to have access to it. You can have family pictures, calendars, etc... All family memebers can add their comments or photos or whatever to the site. I like this one.

SDP implementation comments

This week I was asked to analyze and comment on a Structured Design Process (SDP) process example. I choose the XY234 drug development example. The author really spends much time discussing the front end work and its benefits regarding the SDP process. I believe I can agree with the claim that the front end process was of benefit to the participants and stockholders. The conclusions seem to indicate successful implementation of the SDP process, however, it appears that either the process has not been concluded yet. Early claim was that the drug process may take 12 to 15 years to get to market, so this process may not be completed yet. But this example remains an example of the front end process but not to the whole process, because there is no over all completion to say that the SDP process is better than the conventional process, at least in this example. I might also make a minor observation in that the author has chosen the Structured Design Process as the name of his democratic process. The adoption of this name implies that other or previous design processes, such as the discovery of the laws governing planets, such as gravity, or the design process of sending men to the moon, were not structured. I am sure that the author did not mean this, but it strikes me in this manner.