spy-in-the-cab could improve teenage driving
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7 November 2009 | NewScientist | 29
art in virtual environments. “We lose something when we go from the physical world to a virtual world that’s created only from programming.” However, he isn’t certain the problem has been cracked yet. “I want to be able to create with my hands in a virtual environment, and right now that’s a real challenge.”
Keefe has been working on a project called Drawing on Air , in which the artist works in a 3D
virtual environment, holding a haptic device, called the Phantom , in one hand and wearing a glove connected to a computer in the other (see photo) . The image is created using the “tape drawing” technique, commonly used in car design, in which both hands are used to draw lines. One hand
indicates the start point of a line, while the other moves to where you want the line to go. The haptic device provides feedback on the hardness of a surface, enabling the artist to feel the same resistance they would if painting on paper, for example.
Even more innovative approaches are being considered to provide artists with physical cues. Seth Goldstein and his team at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are working on a device that can be physically manipulated to create 3D artworks, in a similar way to how sculptures can be moulded from clay . Called claytronics, the device would consist of a tray containing up to a million particles, each the size of a grain of sand . The artist would be able to control how the particles stick to their neighbours, allowing them to be moulded . The team say that the device will be programmable, allowing the artist to alter the behaviour of the material so the particles behave like, for example, clay or steel.
While sand grain-sized particles are still a long way off, Goldstein’s team has taken the first step towards them. They have designed cylinders about 1 millimetre in diameter that they say can be controlled to allow them to stick to their neighbours using electrostatic forces. They expect the first cylinders to be manufactured this year. “Interfaces like claytronics are going to have quite a transformative effect on how we express ourselves with the computer,” says Goldstein.
Keefe agrees, and says that artists will adopt these techniques mainly because they will be able to do things in virtual environments that are impossible in real life. For example, artists could create 3D objects that can defy gravity. And Goldstein imagines a day when a claytronics interface is used simultaneously by multiple artists to make a collaborative sculpture. “That will be cool,” he says. ■
“As touch is natural to our way of interacting, physical cues from virtual art will aid creativity”
Electronic guardian keeps teenagers safer on the road
ACCIDENT rates among teenage
drivers could be slashed using in-car
technology that warns them when
they are driving recklessly.
So says safety engineer Oren
Musicant at Ben-Gurion University in
Israel, who wanted to know if in-car
technology could help reduce the
appalling number of teenage deaths
on the roads. In the US, for instance,
car crashes are the leading cause of
death for teenagers, accounting for
over one-third of all deaths of those
aged between 16 and 19 years old.
In March 2008, Staffordshire
County Council in the UK trialled
in-vehicle data recorders with 50 local
teenage drivers over six months. The
IVDRs, made by GreenRoad of San
Francisco, California, are more
commonly used to help truckers drive
more safely and with greater fuel
efficiency. The IVDR monitors unsafe
driving events, such as overly sharp
turns, heavy acceleration, hard
braking and fast lane-changes. The
warning system was switched on
halfway through the trial. From that
point, red, yellow and green LEDs on
the facia of a dashboard-mounted box
told the drivers how they were faring.
Musicant has now analysed the
data GreenRoad downloaded on
some 18,000 trips that 32 of the
Staffordshire teenagers took. He
found the number of unsafe driving
events undertaken by each driver
halved after the warning lights
were turned on, he told the recent
Intelligent Transport Systems
conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
Musicant reckons the system
could become part of the measures
insurance companies mandate for
teenage drivers: “Some insurance
companies already adjust premiums
depending on how far you drive – in
pay-as-you-drive programmes. This
could be part of such measures,
lowering premiums if a teenager
uses a risk detector.”
However, teenagers may prefer
to have more-familiar kit to carry
out such monitoring, says Per-Olof
Svensk, an engineer with Triona ,
a transport-software consultancy
in Borlange, Sweden. The
accelerometers needed to detect
unsafe driving events are becoming
available in smartphones, he notes.
“The phone has a lot of functionality
to spare and will do a lot more to
assist drivers than merely provide
navigation.” Paul Marks ■
“The unsafe driving events undertaken by each driver halved after the warning system was turned on”
–Stay focused–
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–Drawing on air–
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