Automotive

Vehicles could be affordably produced for a wide variety of specialized purposes using a sophisticated wheel unit developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo. The self-contained unit combines a wheel and an electric motor with braking, suspension, steering and a control system in a single module designed to be bolted to any vehicle frame.…

It’s dark on the backroad as a motorist speeds toward the intersection. Up ahead, the stop sign blends with the night and in seconds a deadly crash occurs. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than half of all roadway fatalities occur on rural roads. Now engineers at The University of Texas at San…

For an automobile designer, one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of creating a new vehicle is having to sketch in 2D sketch while thinking in 3D. Gravity Sketch, a UK-based virtual reality (VR) software firm, is working to provide car companies, including Ford Motor Company, with VR tools that will allow designers to…

 Boeing [NYSE: BA] yesterday successfully completed the first test flight of its autonomous passenger air vehicle (PAV) prototype in Manassas, Virginia. Boeing NeXt, which leads the company’s urban air mobility efforts, utilized Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to design and develop the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and will continue testing to advance…

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…