Laws and regulations to force hybrid and pure electric car makers develops vehicles that emit a noise to alert blind people to their presence are under consideration. If EVs will one day need to beep or purr for pedestrian safety, what might the ideal system sound like? Two students at Stanford think they know, and it's called PANDA.

The Pedestrian Awareness Noise-emitting Device and Application is a speaker system that was described by school media as a low noise that "wasn't a car engine and was a bit closer to a muted jet engine, with some static and white noise thrown in." Graduate students Everett Meyer and Bryan Bai developed the system during their free time and created a company, Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics, under which they developed they prototype that is currently installed on Bai's Prius. PANDA is quieter than an ICE (by ~5 dB from the front and ~10-20 from the back) and emits a sound from the front wheel wells and under the rear bumper. What that sound will be in a future production version is not yet set, as the two will be working with various blind advocacy groups in the near future to find the most effective beeping, pinging or roar.

UPDATE: typo fixed

[Source: Stanford via EVWorld]

All right everyone, it's time to warm up your conspiracy theories. Back in December we reported on a potential breakthrough in battery technology from Stanford University's Professor Yi Cui. Dr. Cui developed a silicon nanowire material for use in battery electrodes. The beauty of the tiny wire bundles is that they have exponentially more surface area than a conventional flat surface electrode. That allows the electrodes to absorb and release far more electrons for greater energy density. Now we have news that Cui has received a $10 million grant for the expansion of his research. The money will be used to hire more students and staff for Cui's research lab at Stanford.

All this is well and good, except ... the money is coming from Saudi Arabia. The new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the oil-rich monarchy is giving grants to Cui and eleven other researchers around the world. Cui and the other grant recipients will spend time each year at the new university helping to develop curriculum. The important question is what conditions are put on the research results. Will silicon nanowires ever see the light of day?

[Source: Palo Alto News]

A scientist speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco has predicted robot-driven cars that could drive humans around by the year 2030. Intelligent robot vehicles are likely to be used on battlefields even sooner though predicts Sebastian Thrun, an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University. Thrun is leading the Standford team again in this year's 60 mile DARPA Urban Challenge (see related post).

Physorg.com reports Thrun as saying, "I think they'll be on the battlefield by around 2015. It is going to make sense to use them in situations such as convoys, or in hostile environments where there is danger to personnel."

Computer aided driving systems are already filtering into luxury cars and fully robotic systems are sure to follow. Autonomous Cruise Control is a good example that is already available on a wide range of both luxury and mainstream car brands. The system utilises radar or lasers to monitor the distance between the car and the vehicle in front and will automatically slow the car down or speed up when required.

Another example of computer aided driving is Adaptive Braking, a technology found in the new 2008 Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Adaptive braking includes hill assist and panic brake assist. The hill assist detects when you are starting on a slope and maintains some brake pressure in the calipers when you move your foot to the accelerator until you actually apply the gas, to keep you from rolling back down the hill. The panic brake assist detects when you do a quick brake apply and helps to apply full pressure.

Analysis: Sounds to me like cars in 2030 are going to be a cross between the Terminator and the Maglevs of Minority Report. They'll get you where you want to go quickly, safely and with the highest degree of comfort but wont let other robotic cars cut in front of them in traffic. Hopefully the robotic cars wont rise up against their human masters post-2015 and we'll all get the chance to enjoy being safely chauffeured around circa-2030.

Related:

• Stanford Racing Team building autonomous Passat TDi with DSG gearbox
• Autoblog eBay Find of the Day: future Lexus from Minority Report
• AGB POLL: Best way to spend the DOE's money

[Source: Physorg.com]

Energy experts are meeting this week at Stanford University for the Global Climate and Energy Program, and the United States' role in a carbon-free world was the hot topic. Nobel laureate physicist Steve Chu says there is 500 to 1,000 years of energy left in the world, but it's fossil energy. Another scientist noted China is building a coal-fired electric plant every week.

"China is a coal economy," said Doug Ogden of the Energy Foundation. "You don't change that overnight."

Two analysts from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say that putting the rest of the nation on California's low-carbon diet could mean replacing all cars and trucks with hydrogen vehicles, capturing CO2 from all fossil-fuel plants and building 300 nuclear power stations. Other changes include covering North Dakota with wind turbines and installing 500 square feet of solar panels for every person in the country.

While the solutions were debated, there was consensus that action was needed quickly.

[Source: Contra Costa Times]