The Technic Alley

Electromate-400 is a power-pack, jump-starter and air compressor, all rolled into one – a very handy device to carry in your car on road trips.

“How many miles can I drive on a gallon of gasoline?”
“How many gallons of gasoline do I need to travel 10,000 miles?”
Is there anything fundamentally different in these two questions?
Consider the following examples:
Let’s say you drive 10,000 miles in a year on an average. If you have a car that gives you 10 miles-per-gallon (MPG), [...]

That was Microsoft’s famous slogan some years ago, but very soon that may be the question your car asks you, as soon as you get in and buckle up.
“Innovation comes ‘Standard’” claims Microsoft in a recent press release about its new Auto 4.0 platform that was announced at the CeBit and Embedded World conferences, during [...]

These are some of the robots that you can build with the NXT kit.

The Humanoid – Alpha Rex
Alpha Rex is very sophisticated. He can walk, talk, hear, see and feel! You can visit Alpha Rex’s Home to learn all about him.

The Animal (Scorpion) – Spike
Spike is like a real scorpion. He can crawl on [...]

While writing posts for the article The Car That Drives Itself, I have been wondering about all possible reactions to a topic like this. Then I realized that this is a great example to illustrate the idea of Edward de Bono’s Six Hats.
If you had six people wearing the six different hats sitting in a [...]

This post is an article that lists the collection of posts on this topic written so far in this blog.

Catch Up On Your Sleep While Driving
Cars On Autopilot
How Would You Put Your Car On Autopilot?
A Six Hats Perspective
More to follow…

This is a continuation from the post Cars On Auto-Pilot.
Here is one possible way:

Set destination information on GPS.
Start driving to the nearest auto-pilot enabled freeway.
Autopilot enabled freeway has multiple lanes. The rightmost lane, from where you enter or exit is Lane 0.
Lane 0 – Manual control when you enter, but cars will not go faster [...]

If you found my earlier post Catch Up On Your Sleep While Driving interesting, then this one is for you.
Why Autopilot?
Let’s say you are on your way to some place that is a good 40 miles away, and that’s mostly on a freeway. If you were the passenger, you could read a book, catch [...]

“Isn’t that crazy??!!”
Yes, it is!! It is dangerous! If you are talking about today, that is. You don’t want to sleep at the wheel, but what’s wrong in dreaming? (pun intended)
Imagine this.
Today you have a GPS that knows where you are, where you want to go, which way to go, where to turn, which lane [...]