A professor's work with toy cars may let drivers nap on their way to work and even give the Pentagon command of hijacked aircraft. And to think the most use we ever got out of our slot cars after age 12 was selling them on eBay.
Dr. Vijay Kumar of the School of Computing and Engineering at the University of Missouri-Kansas City is developing a prototype "self-synchronizing moving objects" system during a summer fellowship at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
What that means is cars equipped with the system would recognize other vehicles and respond accordingly, eliminating the need for traffic control devices such as stoplights at intersections, and making travel more efficient on crowded roadways.
Using toy cars and an enclosed track to build the prototype, Kumar's team will program traffic management logic into each vehicle, along with sensors that communicate position, speed and direction to other vehicles. Kumar says it's a more advanced example of how Predator drone aircraft are controlled. The first life-size examples will provide audio instructions for drivers who will remain in control of the car, eventually giving way to fully-automatic vehicles.
"Eventually, all cars could be managed by our scheme," Kumar said. "By that time, the majority of cars will have electric engines, which will make it easier to deploy sensors that are an essential component of our scheme."
Unlike robot-cars from Audi and the DARPA Grand Challenge, in which cars autonomously navigate roadways based on environmental inputs, Kumar's prototypes will be programmed to make informed decisions based also on input from other vehicles, similar to the data gleaned by Nissan's Intelligent Transportation System.
Of course, since it's an Air Force project, the project will provide valuable benefits to the military. For instance, Kumar's research could be scaled so that the Air Force could take control of rogue aircraft in distress.
For now, we're just jealous that Kumar gets to spend his summer with toy cars.
Photo: Flickr/jurvetson
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