Automotive

One of your car’s oldest features has been put to a new, high-tech use by University of Michigan researchers. Utilizing a test fleet in the city of Ann Arbor, engineers tracked when wipers were being used and matched it with video from onboard cameras to document rainfall. They found that tracking windshield wiper activity can…

Idling in a long highway line of slowed or stopped traffic on a busy highway can be more than an inconvenience for drivers and highway safety officers. It is one of the most vulnerable times for “secondary accidents,” which often can be worse than an original source of the slowdown, according to the U.S. Department…

Electric vehicle startup Rivian Automotive has spent the first nine years of its existence in stealth mode working to design vehicles around what it believes are future trends in mobility, such as electrification, subscription-based ownership, and autonomy. This week the company is finally revealing what it’s been up to, dropping the curtains on its first…

Nearly eight months after one of its autonomous test vehicles hit and killed an Arizona pedestrian, Uber wants to resume testing on public roads. The company has filed an application with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to test in Pittsburgh, and it has issued a lengthy safety report pledging to put two human backup drivers…

Imagine a daily commute that’s orderly instead of chaotic. Connected and automated vehicles could provide that relief by adjusting to driving conditions with little to no input from drivers. When the car in front of you speeds up, yours would accelerate, and when the car in front of you screeches to a halt, your car…

A new camera could allow autonomous vehicles to detect hazards, other cars and people three times farther away than the color cameras currently being used. A team of researchers, inspired by the vision system of the mantis shrimp, has developed a low-cost camera that could help improve the ability of autonomous vehicles to identify possible…

The two-mile Virginia Smart Road track at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute allows researchers the unique ability to test drones, autonomous vehicles and traffic challenges in a safe, contained environment where they can control everything from street lights to weather patterns.   The Smart Road is a 2.2 mile contained track featuring two paved lanes,…

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new series of tests that could help manufacturers develop better auto coatings to protect vehicles against dents and scratches. NIST scientists collaborated with three industry partners—Eastman Chemical Co., the Hyundai America Technical Center and Anton Paar USA—to create three fast and reliable…

When engineers or designers want to test the aerodynamic properties of the newly designed shape of a car, airplane, or other object, they would normally model the flow of air around the object by having a computer solve a complex set of equations–a procedure that usually takes hours or even an entire day. Nobuyuki Umetani…

Researchers are hoping to reduce the inherent danger of testing autonomous cars in major cities with a new navigation system that will allow companies like Google and Uber to test fleets of self-driving cars on unpaved country roads. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has…

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed and successfully tested a novel process – called Friction Stir Dovetailing – that joins thick plates of aluminum to steel. The new process will be used to make lighter-weight military vehicles that are more agile and fuel efficient. The April 15 issue of Scripta Materialia describes the process in…

It may be only a matter of time before urban dwellers can hail a self-driving taxi, so researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley decided to analyze the cost, energy, and environmental implications of a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles operating in Manhattan. Using models they built…

A new holography approach could increase the size of eye boxes used in heads-up displays for planes and cars. Researchers from the University of Arizona have created functional prototype heads-up displays using holographic optical elements, achieving an eye box substantially larger than what is currently used.   Transparent heads-up displays are often used in airplanes and…