The good news: Toyota’s developing a plug-in Prius hybrid that can run off the battery alone for short trips. The bad news: we’re talking really short trips (8 miles or less). These cars are “not fit for commercialization” because the battery technology hasn’t kept up with the potential usages. Damn that bunny. [slashdot]
Tag Archives: transportation
BBC Discovers the DARPA Grand Challenge
Despite the snide tone of my title, BBC’s article on the present and future of self-driving cars is an interesting overview of developments since the last running of the Grand Challenge, and a hint at what the world might look like after these cars go mainstream. I wonder if any of the contestants are using evolutionary computing techniques?
Up To The Minute Cartography
Maps have always been more like portraits than portrayals. They are historical, sketching a place at a point in time, always in the past. The MIT Senseable City Lab aims to bring maps into the present tense. Real Time Rome is a proof of concept, a series of cartographic representations of the city, updated with real-time data from public transportation systems, cellular tower usage patterns, and much more.
This is fascinating stuff, especially when you start thinking about the relationship maps have to the place they portray. The map is not the territory. A map is not a map without abstraction. But what you choose to abstract changes when your instruments allow you to portray the dynamism of real places. [oreilly radar]