Climate Crisis: “Carbon Buster” Bricks

Reducing our “carbon footprint” as a society – i.e. finding ways to consume less energy and generate less pollution – is at an all time high in the industrialized world. But for researchers and scientists hoping to avert the worst effects of Climate Change, the real challenge is finding ways to meet human needs that will either be carbon-neutral, or that consume more than they create.

This is the logic behind process like Carbon Capture, the “Smog Vacuum” and now, carbon negative building materials such as the “Carbon Buster”. Basically, it’s a brick that’s partially composed of wood from old doors and windows (35% to be exact). In addition, it contains nasty pollutants that used to go into the air. But most important of all, more CO2 is locked inside than was emitted during the brick’s production and transport.

The block is manufactured by a company in the east of England known as Lignacite, a company that has been making products from wood for 65 years. Lignacite recently partnered with another company named Carbon 8, another Suffolk-based company that converts noxious fumes from waste incinerators and combined with CO2, cement and sand to create aggregate.

To create the bricks, this aggregate is mixed with wood shavings from Lignacite’s plant, and Carbon Busters are born. Each one is composed of 50% recycled material and locks in about 14 kg (31 pounds) of carbon dioxide, which includes the CO2 the original trees took in during photosynthesis, and the CO2 captured in the aggregate-making process.

Granted, the bricks aren’t exactly aesthetically appealing. But they are relatively lightweight, suitable for even the biggest construction projects, and more fire-resistant than blocks made from stone, which crack and crumble at high temperatures. Since the wood inside these bricks is not exposed to oxygen, they will not burn, but simply calcify and blacken when exposed to fire.

Giles de Lotbiniere, Lignacite’s chairman, claims that so far, roughly 600 homes have been built in the Suffolk area near where the Lignacite plant is situated. He also indicated that they sell at a 5% premium compared to conventional bricks. And while there is currently resistance to using aggregate and wood-based materials on an international scale, de Lothbiniere believes the market will expand in coming years:

Over the years, we’ve wondered if we want to continue making blocks out of wood. Each time we’ve found another reason to do it. Now, with climate change, we’ve found another one.

But of course, the market for carbon negative materials is already becoming an interesting and diversified place. Just two years ago, Material ConneXion unveiled its own carbon-negative product – a carbon-negative cement composed of magnesium silicate that not only requires less heating, but it is also able to absorb CO2 from the environment as it hardens.

And then there’s Hemcrete, a bio-composite, thermal walling material made from hemp, lime and water that represents an alternative to fiberglass as an insulating material. Much like these other carbon-negative materials, more CO2 is locked-up in the process of growing and harvesting the hemp than is released in the production, and the product is 100% recyclable.

Taken together, materials like these are likely to revolution the construction industry in the coming years, an industry which currently accounts for roughly 38% of the CO2 emissions in the industrialized world.

Sources: fastcoexist.com, inhabitat.com, (2), freshome.com

News From Space: More Happening on Mars!

It seems like weeks since the Red Planet has been featured in the news. But that’s to be expected when the two biggest news makers – the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers – are either performing a long drive or climbing a tall mountain. Not much in the way of updates are expected, unless something goes wrong. Luckily, these rovers always find ways to surprise us.

After over a year on Mars, Curiosity has accomplished a long list of firsts. This latest occurred last week, when NASA announced that Curiosity picked up the pace of its long trek to Mount Sharp by completing its first two-day autonomous drive, in which the rover did one leg of an autonomous drive on Sunday, then completed it on Monday.

Previously, Curiosity’s autonomous drives were only executed after finishing a drive planned by mission control on Earth using images supplied by Curiosity. These images would then be uploaded its on board computer, and the rover would compare them with images taken by its navigation camera to plot a safe path. The drive completed Monday is the first where the rover ended an autonomous drive on one day, then continued it the next day by itself.

This is all thanks to the incorporation of the new autonomous navigation (or autonav) software, which NASA finished incorporating and debuted at the end of August. According to NASA, this new system not only allows the rover to drive itself for longer stretches of time, it also allows mission control to plan activities for several days, which could be implemented on Fridays and before holidays so the rover can continue to work while the staff are away.

According to NASA, on Sunday, the new software allowed Curiosity to drive about 55 m (180 ft) along a path planned by mission control, then switched to autonomous mode and traveled another 38m (125 ft) with the rover selecting waypoints and the safest path. It then stored navigation variables in its non-volatile memory, then reloaded them on Monday to drive another 32 m (105 ft).

In all, Curiosity covered about 125 meters (410 ft) in total. This brought it within about 80 m (262 ft) from “Cooperstown,” a rocky outcrop where the rover will be conducting another series of scientific examinations. These will be the first time that Curiosity has had the opportunity to use its arm-mounted instruments since September 22.

According to Kevin Lewis of Princeton University, who spoke about the upcoming studies in “Cooperstown”:

What interests us about this site is an intriguing outcrop of layered material visible in the orbital images. We want to see how the local layered outcrop at Cooperstown may help us relate the geology of Yellowknife Bay [on Mars] to the geology of Mount Sharp.

This stop will be only brief, as the rover team are anxious to get Curiosity back on its way to Mount Sharp. Once there, it will begin digging, drilling and generally seeking out the vast caches of minerals that the mountain is expected to have, ones which could potentially support a habitable environment. Exciting times ahead!

Sources: gizmag.com, jpl.nasa.gov

News from Space: First Earth-Sized Exoplanet Found!

For the past three and a half years, the Kepler space telescope has been hurtling through space and searching the Milky Way for signs of of other planets orbiting distant stars. In that time, Kepler has identified many Earth-like exoplanets, many of which reside within our own stellar neighborhood. However, it has found only one planet in recent months that is Earth-sized.

That planet is known as Kepler-78b, the existence of of which was recently verified by NASA scientists at Cape Canaveral. Of all the planets discovered beyond our Solar System, this one is both rocky in composition and weighs in at roughly 1.2 times Earth’s mass. Beyond that, however, the similarities between this planet and our own end.

In addition to having an orbital period of 8.5 hours, the planet also rotates around its parent star at a distance of about 1.5 million kilometers (approx. 93205 miles). Basically, this means that Kepler-78b is thirty to forty-five times closer to its Sun than Mercury is to ours, and experiences a full year in under nine days. This makes Kepler 78b an extremely hostile environment, unsuitable for life as we know it.

Andrew Howard, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Institute for Astronomy and the lead author on one of two papers published in Nature magazine about the discovery of the new planet, said in recent webcast:

We’ve been hearing about the sungrazing Comet ISON that will go very close to the Sun next month. Comet ISON will approach the Sun about the same distance that Kepler-78b orbits its star, so this planet spends its entire life as a sungrazer.

A handful of planets the size or mass of Earth have been discovered, but Kepler-78b is the first to have both a measured mass and size. At 1.2 times the size of Earth with a diameter of 14,800 km (9,200 miles), astronomers say it has a density similar to Earth’s, which suggests an Earth-like composition of iron and rock. Its star is slightly smaller and less massive than the sun and is located about 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

Verification of the planet’s existence and characteristics was made by two independent research teams that used ground-based telescopes for follow-up observations. The team led by Howard used the W. M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The other team led by Francesco Pepe from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, did their ground-based work at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

And while the discovery is exciting, the close proximity of Kepler-78b to its star poses a challenge to theorists. According to current theories of planet formation, it couldn’t have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there. Given that its star would have surely been larger when the system was in formation, Kepler-78b’s orbit would have put in inside the swollen star. Hence, the planet’s existence is an enigma.

To make matters worse, Kepler-78b is a doomed world. Gravitational tides will continue to pull Kepler-78b even closer to its star, and eventually it will move so close that the star’s gravity will rip the world apart. Theorists predict that the planet will vanish within three billion years. And while this may sounds like an eternity to us, in astronomical terms it represents a life cut short.

Source: universetoday.com, nature.com

Judgement Day Update: Deep Learning and AIs

Moore’s Law, a sort of general law of computing that was coined by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. In accordance with this observation, which was made back in 1965, computers have evolved to the point where they are over 650 times faster than they were in the early 1970’s.

Given this trend, scientists and futurists have long suspected that it is only a matter of time before computers surpass human beings in terms of raw intelligence. Already, supercomputers like IBM’s Watson, University of Illinois’ “Blue Waters”, and MIT’s ConceptNet 4 have demonstrated that they are superior in terms of raw knowledge and retention. But when it comes to actual thinking – i.e. independent reasoning and common sense – they are seriously lacking.

Yes, despite all the progress made in the field of computing in the past 40 years, bridging that gap between computational power and artificial intelligence has remained elusive. And at this point, no one is quite sure what it will take to make that leap happen. However, a number of developers and designers are coming up with breakthroughs that may constitute a small jump.

One such breakthrough comes from Standford University, where computer engineers have come up with a new algorithm that could give computers the power to more reliably interpret language. Called Neural Analysis of Sentiment – or NaSent for short – the algorithm seeks to improve on current methods of written language analysis by drawing inspiration from the human brain.

NaSent is part of a movement in computer science known as deep learning, a new field that seeks to build programs that can process data in much the same way the brain does. According to Richard Socher, the Stanford University grad student who helped develop NaSent:

In the past, sentiment analysis has largely focused on models that ignore word order or rely on human experts. While this works for really simple examples, it will never reach human-level understanding because word meaning changes in context and even experts cannot accurately define all the subtleties of how sentiment works. Our deep learning model solves both problems.

Socher was joined by artificial-intelligence researchers Chris Manning, a Professor of Computer Science and Linguistics at Standford, and Andrew Ng, one of the engineers behind Google’s deep learning project and who is working on creating the “Google Brain”. Their aim is to develop algorithms that can operate without continued help from humans.

What sets this algorithm apart is its ability to identify the meaning of words in the context of phrases and sentences. This is a big change from previous methods of sentiment analysis which have been limited to parsing through a collection of words and ranking them as either positive or negative without taking word order into account.

To create NaSent, Socher and his team used 12,000 sentences taken from the movie reviews website Rotten Tomatoes. They split these sentences into roughly 214,000 phrases that were labeled as very negative, negative, neutral, positive, or very positive, and then they fed this labeled data into the system, which NaSent then used to predict whether sentences were positive, neutral or negative on its own.

According to the researchers, NaSent is about 85 percent accurate, a 5% improvement over previous models. However, Socher and his team are working on increasing that rate of success by feeding the system more data from Twitter and the Internet Movie Database, and have also set up a live demo where people can type in their own sentences.

And whereas the field of deep learning began in the academic world, it has since spread to web giants such as Google and Facebook. In both cases, the companies have taken to hiring people familiar with the field to help them sort through the growing mountains of data they are indexing to help them improve their products, particularly those that already rely on machine learning.

In Google’s case, these include voice recognition technology, as well as their ongoing work in neural networks. In the case of Facebook, they are looking to deep learning to help them improve Graph Search, a search engine that allows people to search activity on their network. This presents a challenge, mainly because machines have a hard time interpreting the nuances of human language. Just ask Watson, IBM’s own supercomputer!

Sources: wired, (2), (3), engineering.stanford.edu

Halloween Comets!

Today, the early morning was greeted by the arrival of not one, not two, not three, but four comets! And interestingly enough, even astronomers were surprised. For months now, they have known that the comets ISON and 2P/Encke would be gracing the morning sky on October 31st, but no one predicted that they’d be joined by C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy), and C/2012 X1 (LINEAR) as well.

These two comets – the former being discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy back in September and the latter being a somewhat obscure character, presented a rare opportunity to stargazers everywhere. The appearance of four comets at the same time in the night sky is a rare phenomenon indeed. The fact that it coincides with Halloween? Well, the word spooky comes to mind…

The appearance of C/2012 X1 (LINEAR) was especially surprising given how sudden it was. In the past few days, the otherwise obscure comet has brightened by a factor of more than 200. Almost overnight, a comet found on precious few observing lists became bright enough to see in binoculars. Hence, comet trackers all over the world were sure to get up extra early to see it. But brightest of all was Comet Lovejoy, which reached magnitude 8.

As for Encke and C/2012 X1, astronomers were well prepared for their arrival. Encke’s appearance is predictable, since it treks around the sun every 3.3 years like clockwork and is often well placed for viewing. Because of its short period, dedicated comet watchers meet up with it a half dozen or more times during their lives. And due to its brightness, which tends to fall into the magnitude 7.5-8 range, binoculars are often all one needs to see it.

Comet C/2012 X1 is not usually visible in the night sky. But thanks to an eruption of fresh, dust-laden ices from its surface that blasted into space to form a gigantic glowing sphere that vaulted the comet’s magnitude 250 times to a voluminous 7.5, astronomers were expecting it to make an appearance alongside Encke this Autumn.

For those still interested in spotting these shooting stars, Comet Lovejoy will continue to brighten throughout November to the point where it can be seen by the naked eye. Small telescope users will continue to be able to see the comet with ease, as well as the gas tail that it is developing. Encke will also reach its peak magnitude for viewing by Nov. 21st as it chases the into the glare of morning twilight.

All you need is a telescope, a good set of binoculars, or a keen pair of eyes. And while we’re at it, I’d just like to remind people that this sort of conjunction does NOT portend doom! If anything, its a rare privilege, and should be considered a tiding of joy. The fact that it happens to fall on the spookiest of annual events, well that’s just pure coincidence!

Source: universetoday.com

Climate Crisis: The Smog Vacuum

In recent years, strategies aimed at combating Climate Change have evolved to become a two-pronged attack. In addition to finding ways to reduce how much we pollute, a number of methods are being devised to deal with the pollution we have already created. And one such device is being deployed to where it is needed the most: Beijing.

For many years now, China’s capitol has been notorious for its poor air quality. But last Tuesday, in the northeast city of Harbin, roads, schools and even the local airport were closed for two days straight due to a thick, choking haze that was due to unseasonably warm temperatures and very little wind coinciding with the smoke from local farmer’s burning straw and the initiation of Harbin’s coal-powered municipal heating system.

The resulting haze measured 1000 micrograms per cubic meter. That’s three times the concentration deemed hazardous by the World Health Organization, and many dozen times what is considered safe. To remedy the situation, city authorities are now coordinating with Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde to launch what he calls an “electronic vacuum cleaner” to suck up 50 meter-high cylinders of polluted air.

Two weeks ago, Roosegarde successfully demonstrated his smog machine in a 25 square meter room, in which he used an electrostatic field from copper coils to magnetize and pull down pollution from the air above. The effect could be replicated, he says, if those coils were deployed in public spaces. Now, Roosegaarde is working with Bop Ursem, a professor at the Technical University of Delft, to scale up the technology in Beijing.

Roosegaarde has had experience working with electrostatic fields in the past. Last year, he proposed using electromagnetic charging strips to charge cars on “smart,” communication-enabled highways, which won the designer an INDEX award in 2013. He also claims the project is safe, “pacemaker proof”, and really no different than the waves of WiFi downtown areas are already inundated with.

In addition, electrostatic air filtering is already used on a much smaller scale, in hospitals where clean air is a matter of hygiene and sanitation. But part of Roosegaarde’s challenge will be creating a clean 50-by-50 meter space, controlling for factors like wind. He also concedes that his smog machine won’t solve the problem of all of Beijing’s pollution, but is meant to serve as an awareness-raising exercise.

As for the resulting particles that are collected from the air, Roosegaarde believes they could be refashioned into useable products, such as jewelry. But as he himself put it, the concept is about dealing with a serious problem in a practical, new way:

I think it’s quite feasible in a weird way. Every project has its beauty and bullshit, so to speak. Of course you’ll have influences like wind, how high is the smog, but these are the pragmatics. In principle, this is doable… It is a statement to show [that] this is the new world, why do we accept the old world? In a world which is changing, it’s all about finding the missing links between imagination and innovation, between science and art.

Given the historic problem of smog in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, London, and Southeast Asia, the concept is likely to catch on. While it is primarily intended on removing harmful particulates, like heavy metals and toxic chemicals, it stands to reason that such devices will be paired with Carbon Capture technology to ensure that all harmful pollutants are scrubbed for our cities air.

Reducing the amount of pollution we have to contend with while making sure we generate less. At this point in the game, it’s the only way the worst effects of Climate Change will be avoided in the coming decades. Stay tuned!

Sources: fastcoexist.com, cnn.com

The Future is Here: Fart-Supressing Underwear

Yes, you read that right. Whereas the ladies at Thinx invented an underwear that was leak-proof, moisture absorbing and odor-resistant, this latest piece of high-tech underwear actually prevents you from making a stink when you break wind. Sure, they are not exactly tackling Climate Change or curing diseases, but they must just be one of the most practical inventions to date.

They are known as Shreddies, and are the brainchild of British inventor Paul O’Leary. Basically, they use a thin layer of activated carbon, a known odor destroyer, to mask the smell of gaseous secretions. The porous nature of the carbon traps the smell, leaving nothing but the smell of fresh underwear, and all you need to do to reactivate the odor-trapping abilities is to wash them afterwards.

The company calls the fabric “Zorflex” and says that it went through rigorous testing to determine its odor-masking abilities. This included reaching out to a university research department, and presenting the finished product to professional standards scrutiny:

De Montfort University in the U.K. tested our new 100% activated carbon jersey cloth and presented their findings at the 86th Textile Institute World Conference.

Needless to say, when the Textile Institute – the leading international authority of clothing and footwear – backs you up, you know you’re doing something right!

Currently, Shreddies start at $30 for women and $45 for men. And in addition to their standard odor-blocking model, they also produce a line of underwear for people suffering from incontinence. These come with a new waterproof and breathable fabric, which has a high moisture vapour transmission rate.

As to the most important question, the company was sure to address that as well on their website, saying that while their designer underwear does absorb odors, it does not muffle the sound of flatulent outbursts. Luckily, they advise people to just alter the position of their bodies to do that. How thoughtful!

It’s an interesting age we live in, where underwear is capable of doing the same job as a diaper, and with odor-eliminating capabilities to boot! At this rate, we won’t need to mind our manners or toilette train ourselves at all in a few years!

Source: fastcoexist.com, gizmodo.com

Star Wars News: Vader WASN’T Luke’s Father Originally

You know, it’s been awhile since I spoke about anything related to one of the greatest science fiction franchises in history. I am of course referring to Star Wars. Lucky for me, a series of stories have popped up on the news lately, so I thought now would be the perfect time to remedy all that. And this story is quite interesting, as it has to do with Lucas’ original plan for a major plot element in the series.

In short, Lucas’ original draft for The Empire Strikes Back, which was recently leaked to the public, and in that version, Darth Vader was NOT intended to be Luke’s father. That major plot twist, which proved intrinsic to the series’ story arc, was introduced by another writer, Leigh Brackett. As a veteran Hollywood writer, and given the success of the first movie, Lucas wanted her help in making sure the script for the sequel was up to par.

Working from Lucas’ original plan, Brackett turned in an initial draft where Luke travels to Dagobah to receive instruction from Yoda, the ghosts of Obi-Wan AND his father. As for the major confrontation between Vader and Luke aboard Cloud City, the entire scene has no major twist, and instead consists of Vader offering Luke the chance to rule the Galaxy with him. Not “as father and son” mind you, just as two bad guys!

Sounds pretty weak doesn’t it? Well, turns out it gets better. In addition to there being no major twist, the original draft also had Han Solo showing Luke the basics of how to use a lightsaber (what WHAT?), featured a boatload of Wampas with the ability to freeze people, and had Han Solo spending part of the movie trying to recruit his stepfather into the Rebel Alliance.

Tragically, Brackett died shortly after sending in this first draft which was worked from Lucas’ notes, so she never got a chance to rework it. That task fell to Lawrence Kasdan and Lucas, who eventually worked from Brackett’s draft to create the film we all know and love. Alas, it was a good thing Lucas brought in some outside talent to help him with his script, or he would have had a Phantom Menace situation on his hands two decades too soon!

Going from the original story, as Lucas had it, the story not only loses most of its intrigue, but it’s also becomes bogged down in superfluousness and one-dimensionality. Part of what made Luke’s character so interesting was the inner turmoil he faced – being torn between stopping his father and wanting to help him, but also knowing that by killing him, he would risk becoming him.

What’s more, in this version Vader loses all depth and becomes a cardboard-cutout bad guy. By learning that he was in fact a once-great man who “fell from grace”, his character became far more interesting and involved. And of course, knowing that he was once good presented Luke with a third option and a resolution to his quandary – redeem his father rather than kill him, thus ending the war in a way that would not damn his own soul.

And sure, Obi-Wan did tell Luke point blank in the original movie that Vader betrayed and murdered his father, but that was what was so cool about it looking back. In that film, Alec Guinness’ abilities as an actor really made it seem like he was holding something back with Luke. Knowing that his tale was meant symbolically rather than literally just made sense. I mean, he is a warrior-mystic after all. He’s supposed to be all meta!

And really, this twist was what made the Star Wars trilogy work on so many levels. The idea of a son having to face his father, a fallen angel, in a titanic struggle of good and evil with immense personal implications and the fate of the universe hinging on the whole thing. It’s like Judea-Christian and classical mythology, Jung, Freud, and Existentialism all rolled into one!

To know that Lucas never intended it to be such, well that kind of puts a damper on the whole thing doesn’t it? But then again, it also answers a lot of nagging questions: like how the man who created the original saga could have created such fluff just twenty years later. Good thing he knew how to accept help back then, otherwise we’d have all missed out on a massive sci-fi pop cultural phenomena!

And in the meantime, enjoy some of these outtakes from the original movie which also recently emerged. Apparently, these come from the movie archives of the original film, which strangely, Lucas claimed had been destroyed. Wasn’t that the reason he couldn’t release the originals alongside the heavily CGI’d versions on DVD? Ah, who cares! Enjoy the clip:

Sources: blastr.com, uproxx.com

The Future is Here: The “Smart Rifle”

With the help of ballistics computers, integrated devices, and other high-tech advances, the firepower of the individual soldier is growing by leaps and bounds. And now, thanks to weapons like the Tracking Point “smart rifle”, which utilizes computer-assisted aiming, just about anyone will be capable of becoming a sharpshooter.

Tracking Point’s team is located in north Austin, Texas, where they have been working for many years to produce a truly “smart rifle”. After three years, they managed to create a weapon that can hit targets up to 915 meters (1,000 yards) away with near 100 percent accuracy. To put that in perspective, that’s about the length of ten football fields.

Interestingly enough, Tracking Point’s technology was born of frustration. The company’s founder, John McHale, came up with the idea for a smart rifle after returning from a 21-day hunting trip in Tanzania, where he failed to bag the elusive Thompson’s gazelle. Despite repeated attempts that seemed sure to hit the mark, he kept missing, as he lacked the skill to make the necessary corrections for a long-distance shot.

As a Texas native, McHale worked for decades in high-tech. He founded and ran several startups, including NetWorth and NetSpeed, which developed products that brought high-speed Internet to businesses and homes. Using technology to help people deal with the variables of long-range shooting – like shaky hands, wind, and bullet drop – seemed like a good fit with his approach to problem-solving.

Basically, long-range shooting involves a lot of math, incorporating velocity, ballistics, wind speed, and sometimes even Coriolis forces. Basically, as soon as a bullet leaves the gun, it becomes subject to gravity and is fighting to stay on course. The longer the range, the more difficult it is to make an accurate shot. For experienced long-range hunters, these variables are often kept track of using a “dope book” or log.

With a computer-assisted scope, all of this information is gathered in real time by the gun itself and then fed to the shooter via the display in the eyepiece. And while Tracking Point’s rifles are the first type of gun like this on the market, many are sure to follow. Already, a few companies are working on other types of smart firearms, gun-centric apps, and tech-infused scopes.

But of course, this invention goes far beyond the field of sport hunting. The US Army and every other advanced military on the planet is also heavily invested in integrated software and targeting computers to their firearms. And with the development of smart scopes and specialized apps, a new revolution is underway in firearms that has not been seen since the advent of gunpowder.

For those interested in buying one of these rifles, the company has indicated that their is a sixth month back order waiting period. Each one goes for around $25,000 apiece, and the company has already sold out on all the weapons it has slated until the end of the year. Beginning back in may, Tracking Point began shipping their rifles to buyers, and planned to make 400 to 500 by 2014.

Personally, I could do without one. But that’s because In my world, if you’re going to kill an animal, you better make it up close and personal, and be prepared to eat it and not waist a thing! You might say I take the naturalist approach to hunting 😉

Source: news.cnet.com

The Future is Here: The “Attention Powered” Car

Driver inattention, tunnel vision, and distraction are all major causes of road accidents. And while the law has certainly attempted to remedy this situation by imposing penalties against driving while on the phone, or driving and texting, the problem remains a statistically relevant one. Luckily, Emotiv and the Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia have joined forces to come up with a brilliant – albeit slightly unusual – solution.

It’s known as the “Attention Powered Car”, an automobile that features a neuroheadset made by Emotiv, creator of a range of electroencephalography-based monitoring gear. Basically, the driver straps on the headset while driving and then interfaces with custom software to read the driver’s brainwaves. Any lapses in concentration are read by the headset and cause the vehicle to slow down to about 14 km/h (9 mph) as a way of alerting the driver.

In fact, the car – a Hyundai i40 – will only run at full capacity when it senses that drivers are giving their full attention to the task at hand. According to Pat Walker, RAC executive general manager:

The impact of inattention is now comparable to the number of deaths and serious injuries caused by speed and drink driving, which are all contributors to Western Australia consistently having the worst fatality rate of any Australian state. Nationally, it is estimated inattention was a factor in 46 percent of fatal crashes.

The prototype design is largely meant to bring attention to the issue of driver distraction, and also serve as a tool for investigating the problem further. Researchers have been using the car (on a track) to test how various tasks, such as switching radio stations or sending a text message, impact a driver’s attention. Factors measured include blink rate and duration, eye movement, and head tilts.

And while novel and pure science fiction gold, the concept is also quite due. Given the improvements made in EEG headsets in recent years, as well as computerized vehicles, it was really just a matter of time before someone realized the potential for combining the technologies to create a safer drive that still relied on a human operator.

While robot cars may be just around the corner, I imagine most people would prefer to still be in control of their vehicle. Allowing for a neuroband-operated vehicle may be just the thing to marry increased safety while avoiding the specter of a future dystopian cliche where robots handle our every need.

RAC WA has also produced a number of videos about the Attention Powered Car, including the one below. To check out others, simply click on this link and prepare to be impressed.

Sources: news.cnet.com, staging.forthebetter.com.au

Stories by Williams

Classic sci-fi books, reviews, and the best of from a dedicated fan and author!

Category: News

Climate Crisis: “Carbon Buster” Bricks

News From Space: More Happening on Mars!

News from Space: First Earth-Sized Exoplanet Found!

Judgement Day Update: Deep Learning and AIs

Halloween Comets!

Climate Crisis: The Smog Vacuum

The Future is Here: Fart-Supressing Underwear

The Future is Here: The “Smart Rifle”

The Future is Here: The “Attention Powered” Car

Classic sci-fi books, reviews, and the best of from a dedicated fan and author!

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