I know that this is an oversimplification, but I don’t see a huge amount of difference between a battery powered vehicle and a fuel cell powered vehicle. Both use identical electric motors and drivetrains. The only difference is that one vehicle uses a battery for electricity and the other uses stored hydrogen and a…

There is a company that sells a kit for a WIG vehicle - the UH-18SPW. They call it a hovercraft, but it uses short wings to provide lift close to the ground. I always wanted one of these.

Hey, the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary brings back some nice memories. Many years ago, I lived in Windsor Castle (yes, that is the name of a Pennsylvania town) and spent many weekends at the Hawk Mountain North Lookout and at the Pinnacle.

1st Gear: Hybrid Power

Electric vehicles have definitely entered the mainstream, and their sales will increase, but their continued rate of acceptance will be affected by some practical limits involving the laws of physics.

Harley Davidson tried to enter the small motorcycle market before. From 1961 – 1968 Harley made a 250cc Sprint. Actually, an Italian company called Aermacchi built the bikes and they were sold under the Harley Davidson name. In 1969, AMF bought Harley Davidson and the Sprint engine was upgraded to 350cc. Harley sold…

Laying Off Thousands of Workers

We also had one when I was young. I remember keeping the hood ornament from it for many years. It looked like a futuristic plane or a rocket.

Yes, I agree. Picking a product from a warehouse shelf (in a somewhat controlled environment) and packing it for delivery is much easier to automate. Many warehouses are already staffed by robots.

Yes, there will likely be more jobs servicing robots, but fewer jobs overall. Companies would not replace existing jobs with robots that require more employees to maintain. Even if the maintenance could be outsourced to a third-party, it would still be cheaper and require fewer people.

I am sure that you are correct. But, the owner of any vehicle - autonomous or not - would want to keep the vehicle in good condition. It is a major investment. Sending an autonomous vehicle out into the streets without a driver means that it could get seriously trashed, and the owner would not know about it. I can’t…

Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Thank you. I am going to tackle that one tomorrow. Right now, work is over, and its time for a beer (or two...).

Good article - thank you. It appears that they are using optimal control methods.

Actually, after thinking about it a little more...

Yes, it would be observable. Isn’t the damping controlled by increasing or decreasing the pressure in the shocks? This would also affect the roll of the vehicle.

With enough quality sensor inputs, it should be controllable, but the single output would make it challenging.

Optimal Control has a specific engineering meaning. As I mentioned, it involves a certain type of control theory involving state-space design and Kalman filtering. This type of system is difficult to implement in a laboratory; and the 2 millisecond response time is extremely challenging.

3rd Gear

McLaren claims that they use “Optimal Control Theory” for the suspension. I wonder if that is just a marketing term, or if they are really implementing a system using optimal control. I am a Control Systems Engineer, and Optimal Control has a specific technical meaning. It is a control algorithm using state-space…