Watch Stanford’s Self-Drifting Electric DeLorean Shred Some Doughnuts
If you’re going to build a autonomous electric car, why not do it with some style? Continue reading Watch Stanford’s Self-Drifting Electric DeLorean Shred Some Doughnuts
Tag Archives: Autonomous
Autonomous Spaceplane Travels to 10 km, Lands Safely 200 km Away
Space balloons, where one sends instrument packages to the edge of space on a weather balloon, are a low-cost way to scratch the space itch. But once you’ve logged the pressure and temperature and tracked your balloon, what’s the next challenge? How about releasing an autonomous glider and having it return itself to Earth safely?
That’s what [IzzyBrand] and his cohorts did, and we have to say we’re mightily impressed. The glider itself looks like nothing to write home about: in true Flite Test fashion, it’s just a flying wing made with foam core and Coroplast reinforced with duct tape. …read more
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The Weedinator Returns
We are delighted to see The Weedinator as an entry for the 2018 Hackaday Prize! Innovations in agriculture are great opportunities to build something to improve our world. [TegwynTwmffat]’s Weedinator is an autonomous, electric platform aimed at small farms to take care of cultivating, tilling, and weeding seedbeds. The cost of this kind of labor can push smaller farms out of sustainability if it has to be done by people.
Greater efficiency in agriculture is traditionally all about multiplying the work a single person can do, and usually takes the form or bigger and heavier equipment that can do more …read more
Tempe Police Release Footage of Fatal Uber Self-Driving Car Accident
Dashboard camera footage of this weekend’s Uber self-driving car accident was released by Tempe police. Continue reading Tempe Police Release Footage of Fatal Uber Self-Driving Car Accident
Uber Self-Driving Car Kills Arizona Woman, the First Pedestrian Death By Autonomous Car
The death of an Arizona woman hit by an Uber self-driving car marks the first pedestrian fatality by an autonomous vehicle. Continue reading Uber Self-Driving Car Kills Arizona Woman, the First Pedestrian Death By Autonomous Car
Extraterrestrial Autonomous Lander Systems to Touch Down on Mars
The future of humans is on Mars. Between SpaceX, Boeing, NASA, and every other national space program, we’re going to Mars. With this comes a problem: flying to Mars is relatively easy, but landing a large payload on the surface of another planet is orders of magnitude more difficult. Mars, in particular, is tricky: it has just enough atmosphere that you need to design around it, but not enough where we can use only parachutes to bring several tons down to the surface. On top of this, we’ll need to land our habitats and Tesla Roadsters inside a very small …read more
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Gorgeous Engineering Inside Wheels of a Robotic Trail Buddy
Robots are great in general, and [taylor] is currently working on something a bit unusual: a 3D printed explorer robot to autonomously follow outdoor trails, named Rover. Rover is still under development, and [taylor] recently completed the drive system and body designs, all shared via OnShape.
Rover has 3D printed 4.3:1 reduction planetary gearboxes embedded into each wheel, with off the shelf bearings and brushless motors. A Raspberry Pi sits in the driver’s seat, and the goal is to use a version of NVIDA’s TrailNet framework for GPS-free navigation of paths. As a result, [taylor] hopes to end up with …read more
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The Navy’s First Carrier-Launched Drone Will Be a Flying Gas Tank
Make Cars Safer By Making Them Softer
Would making autonomous vehicles softer make them safer?
Alphabet’s self-driving car offshoot, Waymo, feels that may be the case as they were recently granted a patent for vehicles that soften on impact. Sensors would identify an impending collision and adjust ‘tension members’ on the vehicle’s exterior to cushion the blow. These ‘members’ would be corrugated sections or moving panels that absorb the impact alongside the crumpling effect of the vehicle, making adjustments based on the type of obstacle the vehicle is about to strike.
The new reality of self driving vehicles has had people anxious over safety concerns with good …read more
Hackaday Prize Entry: The Weedinator Project, Now with Flame
We like that the Weedinator Project is thinking big for this year’s Hackaday Prize! This ambitious project by [TegwynTwmffat] is building on a previous effort, which was a tractor mounted weeding machine (shown above). It mercilessly shredded any weeds; the way it did this was by tilling everything that existed between orderly rows of growing leeks. The system worked, but it really wasn’t accurate enough. We suspect it had a nasty habit of mercilessly shredding the occasional leek. The new version takes a different approach.
The new Weedinator will be an autonomous robotic rover using a combination of GPS and …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: The Weedinator Project, Now with Flame