Hydrogen Fuel cell

How It Works

Hydrogen fuel cell is a mechanism to convert hydrogen fuel in to electricity. It uses Hydrogen and Oxygen as input and generates electricity as the output. Most importantly the by product of this reaction is Water (H2O). This mechanism generates electricity using non-fossil fuel with much lesser environmental impact because this is not emitting harmful gases or significant noise. Unlike traditional power cells, hydrogen fuel cell is not a closed system. It generates electricity as long as there is a hydrogen and Oxygen supply.

Advantages and Applications

The next question about hydrogen fuel cell is it efficient? Can it be used to practical applications? As a perfect answer for above questions there are few successful prototypes which are power by Hydrogen fuel cell. That prototype contains house hold electricity generation, automobiles and even advanced military applications like submarines. The greater advantage of Hydrogen fuel cell is there is no moving part it or any fuel burning like in traditional internal combustion engine. Therefore it’s having much lesser energy wastage and highly improved reliability. Due to these advantages several market giants like Toyota, Chrysler and Mercedes-benz are investing huge amount of money on research on Hydrogen fuel cell power automobiles and there are various working prototypes also been introduced as a result. Furthermore some cities already have Hydrogen filling stations and Hydrogen fuel cell powered public transportation.

Future of Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. This advanced usage of Hydrogen as a fuel to generate electricity will become the main source of power in human civilization in near future. In addition to that this fuel will provide electricity as same as fossil fuel and with much lesser environmental impact. When it comes to the automobiles there will be much lesser engine vibrations and noise which lead to even comfortable driving experience.

Nuclear Power

How It Works

Nuclear power generation is control the nuclear reaction by preventing it lead to an explosion and use its heat to generate electricity. There are two types of nuclear reaction that can be used which are nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. The most common type that can be found in current application is nuclear fission. It generates power by slitting Uranium 235. Nuclear fusion generates power using Hydrogen isotopes same as the way which sun generate its heat. There is no proper mechanism to control nuclear fusion yet. Therefore its practical usages are limited.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The main application of nuclear power is fusion and its fuel is Uranium. Most of the developed countries use this technology to generate electricity. The process can be controlled using reactors. The power generate process is safe, yet in the case of malfunction the consequence can be severe. Furthermore it generates radioactive by products which is very costly to dispose. This technology cannot be used to power up automobiles or air craft due to radioactive fuel used.

The nuclear fusion is still in lab testing level and the reaction is totally modelled by scientists. It generates massive amount of energy with very lesser amount of fuel. But the main problem faced is there are no stable hydrogen isotopes to continue the fusion reaction in a controlled manner. Once it started it will continue to a explosion till the reaction completes. However there are no radioactive fuel used, due to that once the researches manage to stabilise the reaction it can be used to power up automobiles as well as domestic off grid power generation. Furthermore in this case fuel can be included in the automobile in its production and that will be sufficient for its whole life time.

Future of Nuclear Power

Even in Nuclear fission it uses non renewable fuel which is radioactive metal like Uranium. In order to use nuclear power as a long term energy source, the winner is nuclear fusion. Even at this moment many scientists are working to stabilize the reaction and billions of dollars are invested on it. The success of that research will lead to renewable source of pure energy. The fuel which will be use to those reactors will be Hydrogen isotopes which are very common all over the universe.

Sustainable Energy

Considering environmental factors most of the countries are trying to transform natural energy to electricity with very much lesser environmental impact. The most prominent sources used are wing, solar and tidal power. The solar power is widely used in many tropical countries. Those solar panels are available for domestic deployment as well. Due to that is becoming a secondary source of power in tropical countries already. In addition to generation electricity it can be used to heat water and for cooking purposes as well. When it comes to wind power it is widely used in countries which has plan land with lesser geographical details where they can find continues flow of wind throughout the year. There are so many researches done in order to design an efficient wind turbine and it gave successful results. Compared to others tidal wave power generation is in primitive stage yet developing. According to the current situation those sustainable energy can be used a secondary spruces of energy with above mentioned hydrogen fuel cell and nuclear power.

Conclusion

The above facts giving the answer to the big question ‘Can human civilization continues to have comfortable living conditions without fossil fuel?’ and the answer is YES. Future automobiles will be powered by Hydrogen fuel cell and it will give even comfortable driving experience to passengers with much lesser environment impact. In far future the automobiles will be powered by nuclear fusion reactors and passengers won’t even have to worry about the fuel since it’s filled in production and that would be sufficient for its life time. Main grid power will be generated by nuclear fusion and various sustainable sources including solar and wind. Furthermore there will be off grid domestic power generators contain Hydrogen fuel cell or nuclear fusion reactors and those will be portable as well. All the above energy sources are renewable and having minimum environment impact. Therefore mankind will be able to continue a even better comfortable life in a world without fossil fuel.

References

• eportfolio. (2010). Retrieved August, 2010, from www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu: http://www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/scholars/doc_fa08/eP_Fa08/Farhana.Khonkodar/images/hydrogen-fuel-cell.jpg

General Behaviors Of Current Transportation Mechanism

Significant percentages of all the transportation systems are depending on 2 dimensional movements. Only exclusion is air craft which can move on all 3 dimensions. All the vehicles which are using the traditional infrastructure ‘road’ can only move on 2 dimensional surfaces. However when they are climbing hills there can be a 3 dimensional movement, but it’s only because of underlying infrastructure. The next common behavior is the entire transportation systems ‘pushing’ or ‘pulling’ the things that need to be transported to the desired direction. In other words they apply a one or two dimensional force to the object that has to be transported. As long as the object is three dimensional the applied force will be transmitted to its next dimension within the object. When you are sitting in a car you can feel the seat pushing you from back when it’s accelerating.  Things get worse when it comes to greater level of acceleration.

Limitations

According to the common behavior of current transportation systems there are main two limitations. First and the most important thing is less expandability. Due to the growing demand of transportation the New York City will have to dedicate its entire surface to roads. This problem demands a easily expandable transportation system most importantly to the third dimension. Then the air space can be utilized to cater the growing demand of transportation in future. The next limitation is comfortability. As mentioned above with the acceleration under a two dimensional energy force that will be transmitted within the object in order to move it. This will become a serious issue when it comes to the greater acceleration levels. Even now the astronauts have to take special steps to deal with these problems as long as space craft has grater acceleration. The world need a better transportation mechanism which is three dimensionally expandable and which can apply force to entire object at the same time.

Use Gravitational Fields

The energy field based transportation system will provide a appropriate solution for the above major problems in current transportation mechanism. It appears to be the Gravitational field will be the solution for this because it can move any known object. The most significant advantage of using gravitational field is it can be easily expanded to the third dimension to utilize the air space. Furthermore the any object will be able to transport using this even without container. As the next advantage gravitational field applies to each and individual practical in the object that has to be transported. Due to that there won’t be a power transmission inside the object like in current transportation mechanism. This will be useful to achieve greater acceleration even without giving and traveling sensation to the passenger.

Ex: Imagine a Box that contains a passenger which is a falling in the earth from outer space. The box hides the external environment from the passenger. In this scenario gravitational field is the force which is moving both the box and passenger. Most importantly it applies energy to each cell in passenger’s body and each atom in the box. So there won’t be any power transmission within the travelling objects. In other words passenger won’t feel that he is travelling which can be the ultimate comfortability. But in reality he is accelerating approximately 10 meter per second.

Normally the gravitational field pulls all the objects around in to the center of object which generates the gravitational field. (This is the general explanation and this will be different if you consider time-space model) because of that entire objects around are landed on the surface. If there is a way to control the direction of gravitational field, it will open another dimension of transportation.

Ex: Imagine the gravitational field has shifted by 90 degreed near the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.  If that be the case the tower will become the center of gravitational field so the passengers would be able to walk in to the top floor of the building.

Challenges

The major challenge to use Gravitational fields for transpiration is the lack of knowledge and research about it. Human civilization has lots of knowledge about other energy fields including magnetic and even human energy fields. But there are limited knowledge object we have about Gravitational fields. As far as we know it can’t be generated without a matter. When there is a collection of matter there will be force in to the center of collection. In order to control it shift it and use it as a transportation mechanism there are lots of underlying research has to be done. The major challenge for the research is prepare lab facility to carry out experiments. The only nearly good enough places would be a lab in a Space station where the effect of Gravitational field of planets is insignificant. In addition to that to gravitational field is a very weak energy field compared to other known energy fields. There has to be a huge amount of matter to generate noticeable gravitational field. However at this position there is no way to generate, destroy or manipulate gravitational fields using any technique.

Historical facts sometimes provide evidence of ancient air craft across the worlds in many civilizations. It appears to be some of them are working based on some kind of energy fields, possibly gravitational fields. Due to that digging deep with those historical facts might give hints to manipulate gravitational fields for future transportation. The invention of this kind of technology won’t be limited to general transportation but inter-planet transportation too.

References

• JorgeP. (2009, April). Anti Gravity Display Globe. Retrieved June 2010, from eggheaven.com: http://www.eggheaven.com/img/upl/2/52-floating-globe.jpg

Android OS

History

The development of Android OS was started by Android Inc in 2005. Then the company was taken over by Google after that by Open Handset Alliance. The core of the Android OS is a modified version of Linux Kernel and it provide platform to develop it using JAVA Programming language. The first announcement of Android Distribution was made on 5^th November of 2007. At this moment there are so many industry giants working in Android project including Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Samsung, Nvidia and Sony Ericson.

Features

The most attractive feature in Android OS is its GUI. It provides highly comprehensive extensible GUI to the user with Open GL based 3D graphics. It supports all the modern wireless connectivity technologies. When it comes to the storage the developer can use relational database in the mobile device like in a personal computer with the aid of SQLite. When it comes to the multimedia it provides encoding to all the common media formats. The multi point touch screen enhances the user experience along with advance voice recognitions system. Most importantly it supports JAVA programming languages with multitasking. The SDK is released to developers for free. Therefore users can install freely available millions of applications on it.

The ‘Tablet’ Trend

The ‘Tablet’ trend was initially started with laptop computers couple of years ago. Those laptop devices provide 180 degrees rotatable LCD display with multipoint touch screen. Therefore it could be used as a traditional laptop computer as well as a tablet PC when the screen it rotated. The well known manufactures for these devices were HP and Samsung. After that the laptops and tablet devices were going on different specialized paths. Most of the tablet devices introduced after that was having a single-block design with large multi point touch screen. The trend of tablet devices was further stimulated with the mobile Gaming industry. The traditional mobile phone screen was way too smaller to play games and Laptop is not enough portable for that. The tablet devices gave a perfect solution for this problem with the improvement of 3D rendering hardware infrastructure in them. Furthermore people don’t like to read a book on a Computer screen. It never gave the real sensation of reading a real paper book. With the trend of Tablet devices the era of E book reborn with new energy since the readers could have almost a ‘real book’ like device to read e books. With the arrival of Apple iPad the tablet trend was a day to day hot topic among every one.

Features Of Android Tablets

Acer Prototype

One of the most noticeable prototypes has been demonstrated by Acer. The article about this was made online by Shufflegazine. According to that the device 7 inches display with 2GB memory. Most importantly as seen in the photographs of demonstration it’s equipped with a real physical keyboard. This will be good news for many people who don’t like to use on screen touch keyboard.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

According to another unofficial sources Samsung also about to release a Tablet PC. The market of the device appears to be ‘Samsung Galaxy Tab’. Furthermore it will be having high resolution 7 inches TFT display and front facing camera.

Dell Mini 5

There is an official report about another Android powered tablet device which is ‘Dell Mini 5’. It’s having 5 inches display with multi point touch sensor. The wireless connective will be provided through SIM card, so it appears to be supporting all the modern wireless technologies. In addition to that its having Wi-Fi connectivity as well.  The Android OS versions used for this prototype is 1.6. Most importantly when it comes to image capturing, the device is equipped with 2 cameras, One 5 MP camera on rear panel and front VGA camera for video calling.

Archos 5 Android Internet Table

Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet is already available tablet device in market. It’s available in 2 versions which is having 16GB and 32GB. The processor is 430MHz ARM Cortex-A8 and display size is 5 inches. This is having highly portable design and having great multimedia capabilities including 720p high definitions video playback. Additionally it is having built in GPS receiver as well.

The Android mobile OS provide a versatile platform for all the above Tablet devices to deliver those exceptional features to the user. In near future there will be even greater devices with further improved hardware capabilities. Most importantly there will be improved 3D graphic and it will support advance gamming on Android Tables. Furthermore due to the JAVA programming language support there will be even wider free and open source application range. Most importantly the Android OS uses an advance mechanism to run JAVA applications without the support of traditional JVM, so it will save the devices battery life.

Competitors

The most significant competitor to the Android OS is Apple mobile OS which comes with iPhone and iPad. It was gaining its popularity due to the highly improved user interfaces and great multimedia capabilities. Furthermore in Apple app store there are more than 200, 000 of applications available to download.  Even with all these Android OS can gain the advantage due to few reasons. The main reason is its free and open source. Due to that there will be millions of applications available written using JAVA programming language. Apparently the GUI in Android OS is almost good as Apple interface. In this moment Apple seems to be the market dominant tablet device OS. But in near future Android OS will take that place due to its limitless capabilities of free and open source development.

Next Chapter

All the open source development gets mature with the time. So the next chapter of Android mobile OS is pretty unpredictable. It’s already having the entire comprehensive featured required for a Tablet devices as well as any mobile device. Furthermore it has special mechanism to reduce the power consumption when it’s running third party JAVA applications. The next expected development would be the performance improvement and it will be a continuous process. Since most of the mobile devices have limited hardware resources, this will be a curtail factor for the success of Tablet OS. Other than that the next most important factor would be wireless security. Even in current versions Android OS provides advance encryptions and secured protocols to transfer data. Since the devices are always connected to various wireless networks this may need to be further improved. The gaming support of the OS is another expected development in future versions. The revolution of Android powered Tabled devices is upon us. The next surprise of Android OS is not so far as it seems.

References

• Android, C. (2010, February). Dell Mini 5 Android Tablet gets FCC approved. Retrieved June 2010, from canadianandroid.com: http://www.canadianandroid.com/b/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dell-internet-tablet-slate-announced-6.jpg
• Edgar, J. A. (2009, November). Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet: First Impressions. Retrieved June 2010, from phandroid.com: http://phandroid.com/2009/11/11/archos-5-android-internet-tablet-first-impressions/
• Hannaford, K. (2010, June). Leaked Photo of Samsung Galaxy Tab Shows 7-Inch Android Tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from gizmodo.com: http://gizmodo.com/5554446/leaked-photo-of-samsung-galaxy-tab-shows-7+inch-android-tablet
• Nystedt, M. (2010, May). Acer CEO shows off 7-inch Android tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from www.shufflegazine.com: http://www.shufflegazine.com/2010/05/27/acer-ceo-shows-of-7-inch-android-tablet/
• Perez, A. (2010, January). Dell Announces Android Powered Tablet. Retrieved June 2010, from phandroid.com: http://phandroid.com/2010/01/08/dell-announces-android-powered-tablet/

History

Steve Mann is the father of SixthSense who made a wearable computer in 1990. The SixthSense technology was first implemented as the neckworn projector+ camera system. He was a media lab student at that time. There after it was used and implemented by an Indian who is the man has become very famous in the recent Pranav Mistry. There will be a long future rather than the short period of history for the SixthSense technology.

Development

Software

Pranav Mistry says the SixthSense software will be open source. As far as this seems to be a little set of items, there will not be user interfaces or much advanced programs for the users. There will be much harder and secured coding inside the device to make sure the security of the software. It will be interesting to know the new language for coding for a sixthsense device.

Hardware

In order to control the SixthSense, it requires some advance hardware as it appears to be. In some of the public presentations, the presenter was wearing some controlling devices including color markers, Camera and projector. When the product come to the real market there has to be lot of improvement for these hardware. They has to be compact and easily controllable. How ever the hardware integration of SixthSense technology is quite innovative since they have manage to develop camera and pen like day to day objects.

Applications

In Pranav Mistry’s demonstration, he showed several applications that can be made using the SixthSense technology. It would be a great achievement for the Information Technology as well. Since it is the beginning of the SixthSense applications, there will be lot of tough problems ahead the SixthSense application developers.

Motion Capture

The innovative camera is something that got applauds of the crowd in the demonstration. Four rubber rings in the four fingers two in each can be used do draw a rectangular. It will be the area covered by the photograph. Then the photos can be taken to any interface for editing, managing the galleries and sharing. This is much controversial. There is an inbuilt storage device where the data can be stored. When using a surface, the whole data is taken into that surface and stored in the device after the editing. The data can be hacked during the editing period. That is a serious issue in this camera application. And also the capturing device being so small like 4 rubber rings can be used to capture the photos of any location.

There are so many new applications to be developed in the near future. A remote controller for media devices can be implemented to be worked with fingers using this technology. Except having the remote controller to send fast forward, rewind or next or previous options, a SixthSense device can be used. The current process of sending fast-forward or rewind with advanced options. For example, using 2 fingers to send 5 seconds, 3 fingers to send 10 seconds likewise it can be done.

Many games can be made using this technology. A car race using an imaginary steering wheel will be an attractive application. The player will have to drive the vehicle as a real one using his arms. The SixthSense tool kit will be a good replacement for the XBOX game kit and it will not be much expensive as it is said.

3D Drawing

A pencil that enables users to draw in 3D is good innovation. It will be a good tool for the beginners to the 3D modeling world. Also it will help a lot for the engineers as well. Another implementation is the physical Google map. It provides the all data that is provided by the Google. The map available on a surface and when you keep something in it, it detects the place where the options available. Dragging and dropping hardcopies to the computer will be a good and efficient replacement for the scanner. This is much more advanced because this can take 3D objects as it appears.

Future Development

It seems to be that there can be a good future for SixthSense technology applications. There are several things that designers must pay their attention. The digital cameras came into the market with a promising call. But it did not provide the real quality for the photographers at a reasonable price. Therefore most of the professional photographers still use the analog cameras. Nano technology came into the world, but the general consumers do not use that technology so far. The reason is the extremely high price. SixthSense devices are very much different from the computers, this will be a new topic for the hackers and the other people also. First thing is to provide the security for the SixthSense applications and devices. Lot of good technologies came and died due to the security threats. There are some weaknesses that can reduce the accuracy of the data. Some of them were the on palm phone keypad. It allows the user to dial a number of the phone using the keypad available on the palm. As far as the palms are different, there will be some problems regarding some issues such like the sensitivity, and several other facts. Also 3^rd party attacks can be possible.

In addition to that Microsoft is developing a controlling environment whore the user doesn’t even have to touch the controller device named ‘Project Natal’. This will be a significant market competitor to the SixthSense technology since it still required some hardware involvement with the user.

References

• TED. (2009, 11). Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology. Retrieved 05 22, 2010, from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

Technical Specification

• Screen resolution will be 800 x 480(WVGA)
• Following hardware buttons are required for WP7: Start, Back, Bing integrated Search button, Camera and Power button. Some vendor devices can have more buttons than these five. But, these are required.
• Capacitive multi-touch with support for minimum of four contact points.
• A Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU with DirectX 9 graphics support and the platform is flexible enough to expand in future, according to Microsoft.
• 256MB of RAM
• Currently 8GB of internal Flash storage, but no support for microSD cards.
• WiFi support
• AGPS
• Accelerometer
• FM Radio
• 5 MP camera with flash

The ‘Metro’ interface is a type-and-motion heavy interface based on primary colors and lots of minimal, negative space, and this will be a familiar interface for Zune HD users. It has large, bold text that trails off the screen, menus which move dimensionally in and out instead of just side to side, and the sense that you are panning over long, single pages of information, rather than a set of separate panels. The clean, sharp ‘tiles’ which dominate the home screen, completely lacking in any real world-inspired bevels, drop shadows, curves of textures,  dialer, and alphabetical search grid, which looks like they’ve been built out of separate parts from Tempest. There are two themes basically boil down to light text on a black screen and it is the default theme of the OS and dark text on white screen, and you can pick your choice of four accent colors: red, orange, blue and green.

The phone unlock screen includes time, date, upcoming calendar events, number of unread messages, and number of missed calls. When the screen unlocked, it shows the user-configurable and movable ‘tiles’. The tiles can be linked to an application, a specific contact or a website, a photo gallery, playlist. But you can link anything with these tiles. It has an automatic tile sorting system as the user’s favorite list.

Multitasking And Notifications

The Windows Phone 7 series can process only the Microsoft’s core apps in the background. Third party applications cannot run in the background, and it supports push notifications enabling third party apps to send updates to the home screen even when another application is running. As a reason, Microsoft’s says, it eats a lot of battery life.

Page States

The OS support for page states, which is similar to cookies on websites. It is a light weight package that can easily be kept in memory to preserve the look and feel, and data of an app while discarding the memory heavy UI elements. When the app is needed again after the user navigate away from the screen, it reconstructs to its previous state and this process is called ‘dehydration’ and ‘rehydration’.

Hubs Strategy

Windows Phone 7’s Hub strategy is a unique feature for the platform. From the People Hub, you can manage your various mail accounts and social networks in a single view. You can set status updates and check mails in single place, rather than changing applications. The Picture Hub helps you to access your locally stored photos or cloud based social network picture galleries, upload pictures and comment on them. They offer photo editing functionalities as well. The Game Hub is integrated with Xbox Live, where you can use your avatar in there, and Xbox Live games and achievements, Spotlight feeds, and the ability to browse gamer profiles. The Zune HD is your Music + Video Hub in the Windows Phone 7. You can download new music over WiFi and 3G. You can rent or purchase videos as well. Microsoft is working with Pandora to integrate with the hub, utilizing the Zune player to tap into Pandora’s streaming services.

It has its built in Internet Explorer browser, but it’s not fast as mobile safari.

The business people always love Microsoft Windows mobile, as it has many stunning features, and it has a great support for office tools. Windows Phone 7 has great features with multimedia support and the users will love this lot more than before. In near future, we can expect some wonderful add-ons and application for the new product. Most of the games are developed with XNA support and lot of silverlight features has added to it.

References

• Microsoft-7.JPG. (2010, April). Retrieved from sanamalik.com: http://sanamalik.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Microsoft-7.JPG
• Windows phone 7 series the complete guide. (2010, April). Retrieved from engadget.com: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/windows-phone-7-series-the-complete-guide/

The problem in the previous system were

• Direct changeover
• Consequences in system failure
• No Driving fun

Let see if we will decentralize controlling, how it will solve all these problems. In this concept all the vehicles will be intelligent agents. Like every other human who are driving a vehicle sitting behind the wheel. In addition to that the cars can communicate with each other. In previous system all the decisions would be taken by the central controlling point. In here they will be taken by the cars themselves.

Ex: Car B is following car A. Car A going to turn left after 1 KM. Previous centralized system, that information will be uploaded to central server and it will make the car B aware. In this decentralized system car A will directly talk to car B and say “Hey dude! I’m going to turn left after 1KM” so based on that information car B can take steps.

Sounds cool ah! But still there can be a central server to update cars about general conditions of the roads including traffic and maintenance. And just assume, only your car is having this system. No problem, it can use its camera, radar etc and drive alone thinking all the other cars are driven by humans. With the increasing number of this kind of intelligent cars, system will come to live step by step. No need of direct change over. In the case of central server failure it won’t affect the system badly. Still cars can drive communicating each others.

That’s how this decentralized system is going to solve the problem of changeover and how it will react to a system failure. But how this is going to solve the problem of “Driving fun”?

There is a simple solution. “Manual override!”. If driver want to drive by himself, he would be able to override the system manually and continue driving. In that case all the other cars around will be notified that this car is manually overridden. So other cars can take appropriate security steps, because a human is behind the wheel. To make this even better, there can be some busy city areas where manual overriding is prohibited. In permitted areas drivers can have fun.

This sounds like an awesome system, but when it comes to implementation, there are many technical challenges. Still there is no good enough intelligent system to drive a car on a real road. Communication between cars wouldn’t be much harder. It’s just matter of introducing common protocol. Once we come up with a good intelligent system to drive a car, we are almost done.

(Special Thank : Shyam Mehraaj Reyal)

References

• (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mjnet.us/recen_t_projects_files/traffic_control_center_long_island_city_queens__traffic_moni.jpg

Just think, if everyone on the road will perfectly follow the road rules, In that case there won’t be any traffic. But humans are controlling vehicles and we are not that perfect. So is there any perfect one to control traffic. Yes, a computer. I actually saw this in the movie “Minority report”. This is a Centralized Traffic Control System. All the vehicles are connected to a centralized server and it control everything on the road. And the best part is the server knows positions of each and every vehicle, so it can move two vehicles nearby on the same track with the speed 120 Kmph, maintaining very narrow distance between them. And the same thing can be applicable to ‘n’ number of vehicles. On top of all, just assume the vehicle in front of you going to turn left in next junction. In general situation the driver on signal light in left and indicate that. But in this kind of system, the central server knows that the vehicle going to turn left and it can control other vehicles behind that accordingly. This sounds like a dream, but not impossible. We already have GPS and maps on our vehicles. All we have to do is update those details and get driving instruction from the server and execute them.

Once this kind of system will come to action, there won’t be a Steering wheel in vehicles. That space also will be allocated for passengers. The passenger will have to enter the destination once he gets in to the vehicle and those details will go to the central server. The server will give the vehicle a rout considering all the factors including other vehicle routs etc. Finally vehicle will reach the destination without human involvement. And it’s so difficult to find a parking space in modern busy cities and it’s a real pain to many people. But one day with this kind of system, once you go to office, you can tell your car to go home and come back when you going to finish the shift.

This will be a bad news for auto lovers. So sad that manual driving is no longer permitted. And you can’t drive over speed, break the law and have some fun. No more manual shifting, drifting, drag, street racing or anything. This is going to be kind a boring yes.

One possible problem in this kind of system is servers are always going down. Under any conditions we can’t guaranty 100% up time. What will happen if the central server (Probably the Server Cluster) will go down? Yes we can design the system to stop all the vehicles, but can we afford that delay?  On top of all, what will happen in the case of bug or defect in the system? The possible damage will be massive and probably cost many human lives. And how far can we expand this system? When it comes to implementation we have to go for a direct changer over. Is it possible? The engineers will have to find solutions for all those problems before this kind of system comes to live.

References

• (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2007/10/FAA_630x.jpg