Step-by-step, practical instructions for how to prepare a moth to drive a tiny automobile. That’s what this video shows, and the accompanying paper describes: It’s all published formally as: “Insect-controlled Robot: A Mobile Robot Platform to Evaluate the Odortracking Capability of an Insect,” Noriyasu Ando, Shuhei Emoto, and Ryohei Kanzaki, Journal of Visualized Experiments, no. 118, December 2016, […]
Tag: car
Car Horn Honking Studies (part 2)
Although car horn honking might be viewed by some as a measure of aggression it can also have its positive side. For example in driving simulators, where participants sometimes drive more slowly than they would do on a real road (when not attending to driving) – maybe a horn honk would encourage them to drive […]
Cow gas-extraction for automobile propulsion project
The cow-centric project, as reported by Ben Schiller for Fast Company, is as much performance art as state-of-the-art technology performance: “Each cow apparently passes enough gas to power a car or a fridge. Imagine the possibilities…. The project from Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology is only a proof-of-concept at this stage. But it is […]
The man who drove, blinding himself, on Route 128 — for your safety
[Ig Nobel Prize winner] John Senders led a series of safety experiments in which he drove an automobile on Route 128 — the major highway that circles Boston to the west — while a visor repeatedly flapped down over his face, blinding him…. —so begins another Improbable Innovation nugget, which appears in its entirety on BetaBoston.
Driving a lemon, sort of
When people talk about “driving a lemon“, they generally mean “lemon” to mean a defective automobile. A US patent granted in 1990 to Robert D. Whitworth describes a “Process for purifying limonene for fuel and the like“. A more detailed description, from the patent document: A plant source fuel is disclosed per se and as a blend […]
Safety seat warning: No backwards child drivers.
Investigator Jonathan Ryder sent us this image which, he reports, “came with an Evenflo Tribute 5 Child Restraint System.” The diagram warns owners “DO NOT place rear-facing child seat on front seat with air bag“. The drawing makes a further injunction against placing the device in the driver’s seat. Ryder commends the manufacturers for this— he […]
Checking email while you drive a car
This car commercial, for the 2012 Toyota Camry, may also be an experiment of some sort. It begins with just the driver,then (as if by magic) the components of the car materialize around him, one by one. These components make their appearance, presumably, in the order of their importance and/or desirability. The announcer, voicing the […]
She’ll put urine in your car, maybe
InventorSpot reports: Golden Gasoline: Use Your Pee for Fuel A recent scientific advancement could see to it that a routine “pit stop” might someday kill two birds with one stone. Think about it – on long road trips you stop at gas stations to do what two things? Empty your bladder and fill your tank. […]
Dog-powered vehicle (1880)
The September 1933 issue of Popular Science magazine describes a vehicle that didn’t quite become popular: A French engineer designed an apparatus called a Cynosphere. It was a tricycle with a small steering wheel in front and two large and curious wheels behind. Each of the rear wheels was shaped like a circular cage and […]