BMBF Project Puts Automated Electric Vehicle on the Road

The German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funded project UNICARagil aims to rethink vehicles and their development processes. The goal is a disruptive, modular and agile vehicle architecture and the prototypical implementation of four different application cases from automated family taxis to mobile package delivery stations.

As early as 2013 TUM’s Visio.M drove its rounds remotely operated.

Autonomous electric vehicles will be an essential component of future mobility: they will form the basis for sustainable and intelligent road transport, novel mobility and transportation concepts, improvements in traffic safety and a boost in the quality of life in urban environments.

However, requisite vehicle concepts require a significantly more centralized and efficient data processing and transmission in motor vehicles and, consequently, a departure from established architectures and processes.

Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “BMBF Project Puts Automated Electric Vehicle on the Road.”

Climate change in a 'new and dangerous' phase

Climate change has moved into a new and dangerous phase, according to the Canberra Times.



The future of an earth suitable
for human habitation is in our hands.

The Arctic ice is melting faster than ever anticipated and the story suggests the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2015 and completely ice-free all year round by 2030.

In its story of September 22 headed: “Four-degree rise demands 90-degree rethink”, the Canberra Times said  events now unfolding in the Arctic were not anticipate to arrive until the end of the century.

The Canberra Times story is loaded with information that could be described at best as “alarming”, but these three paragraphs are particularly unsettling –

“The polar icecaps are one of the vital regulators of global climate; if the ice disappears, the absorption of more solar radiation accelerates ocean warming, with increasing risk of large-scale release of carbon dioxide and methane from melting permafrost. This may initiate irreversible runaway warming.

Global energy, food and water security are also poised on a knife edge. These changes are occurring at the 0.8 degrees increase, relative to pre-industrial conditions already experienced, let alone the extra 1.2 degrees that probably will result from our historic emissions.

The "official" target of limiting temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees is way too high. Current policies, such as our Clean Energy Future package, are far worse and would result in a 4 degrees-plus temperature rise. Official panaceas, such as carbon capture and storage, are not working.”