Toyota steer by wire...

[finyuk2005]

I guess we shouldnt be worried at all,
when electric handbrakes first came out there was absolutly not one insident of them going wrong and cars rolling into houses... garden walls... other cars...

 

[Morrisman]

On the flip side of this my car has a steering assist feature (along with lane assist), and paired with adaptive cruise control it's an utter joy on a long dull motorway journey and works flawlessly. It keeps you in the centre of your lane, steering perfectly around corners and the adaptive cruise control keeps a safe distance from the car in front. Looking at the state of driving, especially on motorways, I think it's a great idea.

A friend of mine with the VW ID5 leccy car reckons he can set the onboard GPS and it will literally drive him to whoever he is going, and will stop, slow, swerve, to avoid other cars and even negotiate roundabouts on its own.

 

[redlig]

A friend of mine with the VW ID5 leccy car reckons he can set the onboard GPS and it will literally drive him to whoever he is going, and will stop, slow, swerve, to avoid other cars and even negotiate roundabouts on its own.

AHHH the Driving Experience!! But can he attach the shopping list to the steering wheel and send it out on it's own?

 

[lazybones51]

A friend of mine with the VW ID5 leccy car reckons he can set the onboard GPS and it will literally drive him to whoever he is going, and will stop, slow, swerve, to avoid other cars and even negotiate roundabouts on its own.

I've not tried using it on anything other than a motorway. I prefer to drive the car myself for the fun bits

 

[lazybones51]

AHHH the Driving Experience!! But can he attach the shopping list to the steering wheel and send it out on it's own?

No need, they use these round here for delivering shopping and I think takeaways as well.

 

[bricol]

There's folk who think if the wheel brakes are stuck on a plane can't fly.

Golden opportunity to re-ask the old question . . .

The plane is on conveyor belt, rotating in the opposite direct to the plane travels, at exactly the same speed . . . will it take off?



I know the answer . . . the wheel bearings fail due to twice over-speed . . .

 

[m_c]

Hydraulic steering with no mechanical connection has been on tractors for 35-40 years. The orbitrol unit that the steering wheel connects to has a built-in pump so if you lose Hydraulic pressure you can still steer, As long as you've got arm's like popeye. But if a hose bursts between the orbitrol and the steering ram you lose steering in one direction which is interesting on the road.

Doesn't fast road spec require a mechanical link?

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

The plane is on conveyor belt, rotating in the opposite direct to the plane travels, at exactly the same speed . . . will it take off?

Only thing that matters is the wind speed over the wings me thinks

 

[sako243]

Electrically assisted steering has been around for donkeys years. The complaints about feel are largely because most people don't complain nor do they need it.

We build a custom controller for the Corsa B&C steering racks. We've also built wireless ones for the film industry (true fly by wire!). Feedback to the driver could be done with another steering rack. The stunt drivers loved it because it felt as if they were in the car doing the driving. Only they were sat in the back of a transit behind some large video monitors and the car was several hundred yards away.

Electronics are more reliable than mechanical systems there is no question over it. But there also lots of ways to make it cheaper which means it's where money is saved on things.

My old job we built high performance software defined radios. One of those had been sat for nearly a decade in a dusty environment, running flat out 24/7 with daily temperature cycles from -10°C to in excess of 50°C ambient. It had never rebooted, never had a glitch and never been accessed since it was installed.

But a little black box the size of a 5 1/4" CD drive cost in excess of £30k. Components were not skimped on. That is the difference.

 

[Bornfree]

Doesn't fast road spec require a mechanical link?

Possibly the newer 60k one's. The 50k one's I work on are fluid only.