Institution news
If the car in front stops without the driver reacting, this brings the car to a complete stop without any impact, or considerably reduces the impact, depending on the speed the car is travelling. Hopefully this will create safer roads rather than more complacent drivers.
You can also buy cars with a front-mounted camera to help ‘see round corners’, for example when emerging from a driveway where vegetation is restricting your vision; and adaptive cruise control to adjust your speed and maintain a safe pre-set distance from the car in front.
Under development, with the help of EU funding, are features such as pedestrian and animal detection, blind spot radar detection, speed limit sign recognition and the ability to prevent the vehicle exceeding a pre-set speed limit. It will be interesting to see how effective the speed limit sign recognition is with so many signs partially obscured due to vegetation or dirt.
The technology to operate autopilot convoy driving in a road train is being developed and this will have a significant impact on energy use and CO2
emissions, as well as increasing
safety and comfort, and reducing the risk of congestion.
Consider all of these possibilities together and it suggests cars with a surprising amount of autonomy are not far away. One of the main barriers to automated cars is gaining approval from various governments to allow automated cars to operate on the public highways. However, consider the aerospace industry – whilst autopilot can do most things a pilot can, there is always a highly trained pilot on hand who is irreplaceable when it comes to anticipating and correcting a potentially dangerous situation. Surely the same argument could be made for having drivers in cars. So perhaps we will always need a driver and automated cars are not the way forward? To win us over I think automated cars will need to do more than deliver better road safety – they will have to show a practically perfect record of operation to overcome the human desire for control.
Advertise your vacancies on our new job board
The IED is very pleased to announce that a new facility for posting and searching for engineering and product design vacancies has been launched on the IED website.
The IED Job Board is the place to look for vacancies suited to IED members. If you are looking for a job or a placement, you can post your CV onto the Board to be viewed by the thousands of people who see the site every day.
Also, IED members are entitled to place job vacancies on the Board at a much reduced rate – just £99 per vacancy (compared to £350 per vacancy standard rate).
To browse the jobs available, post your CV or advertise a vacancy within your organisation simply follow the link from the green box on the website homepage (
www.ied.org.uk).
IED prizes
Do you know an outstanding designer who deserves to be recognised for his or her innovative work? Do you work with an up and coming young designer who shows promise and talent? Have you noticed an unusually effective design which you think deserves recognition?
We are seeking nominations for the suite of IED awards for 2013, including: Geoff Kirk Young Members Award – for a highly promising young IED member Gerald Frewer Trophy – for outstanding contributions in engineering or product design, design management, education and/or training Alex Moulton Award – for innovation and inspirational design Hills Millennium Award – for an overseas designer who has made major contributions to engineering and/or product design Promotion of Design Award – in recognition of public promotion of design
If you have any ideas for nominees for these awards please do email the details to Nadine@
ied.org.uk (please note that IED Members cannot nominate themselves for the awards).
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