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Wow that is a good reminder to secure my robots when driving... a deer jumped out in front of me recently and I had to hit the brakes hard. Luckily didn’t have

Wow that is a good reminder to secure my robots when driving... a deer jumped out in front of me recently and I had to hit the brakes hard. Luckily didn’t have my robot in the car. As a fellow Robogames competitor I’m glad you made it out of that crash!

ant6n 6y ago
Huh. Fighting robots in car trunks seem to be more common than I realized.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Well my robot is an explorer: https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-rover/ https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-rover/
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    That's a beast. Nice work!
    - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      Thank you!
kungtotte 6y ago
You should secure everything in your car. If you crash into something going only 50 kilometres per hour, things that are the same weight as your average smartphone will have enough force on impact to kill you.
- barrkel 6y ago
  In a dead stop, maybe, but a car isn't likely to be stopped dead. I've been told on motorcycle hazard awareness courses that if your body hits a solid object at 50 kph, it's 50% mortality risk - it's enough deceleration force to rupture your aorta. Take something like a sign post to the chest and you'll be lucky to survive.
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > In a dead stop, maybe, but a car isn't likely to be stopped dead. I guess it depends on the kind of accident. In a head-on collision or if you run into a tree/concrete wall, that's pretty close to being stopped dead. In the more common rear end or "T" collisions, probably not.
    - tsomctl 6y ago
      If you hit a tree or concrete wall, you still have crumple zones that slow you down over a short period of time.
      - KMag 6y ago
        But the crumple zones don't help the objects (now projectiles) flying about your car. The crumple zones will finishing crumpling around the same time that something sitting on the rear deck of your car will hit you in the back of the head at 50 kph. The original point was about unsecured objects in the car becoming deadly.
        barrkel 6y ago
        Of course they do. They decrease the rate of deceleration. Whether it's enough to make a difference, we should make calculations. I'd expect 50kph is where marginal increases in mortality start to become larger, so it wouldn't take much to reduce harm, I believe.
        KMag 6y ago
        Crumple zones decrease the acceleration of your body, but don't do anything to the acceleration af objects placed on the rear shelf of your car, assuming negligible friction on the rear shelf of your car. Plenty of people get injured in accidents by kleenex boxes placed on that rear deck of their car. You're travelling at 50 kpm (let's call it 14 m/s). You strike a brick wall. The cell phone on the rear deck of your car flies off the rear deck with minimally deceleration before it leaves the rear deck, travelling 14 m/s through mid-air. Let's make a linearizing approximation and say your body is stopped in 0.8m with constant acceleration. Let's assume the phone started out 1.5m behind your head. By the time your head is stopped by the crumple zone, the phone has travelled 1.6 m, meaning the phone is still 0.7 m behind your head, still travelling 14 m/s (50 kph). Granted, there are a bunch of simplifying assumptions here (linear deceleration via crumpling, frictionless rear shelf, zero air resistance), but it shows there are plenty of realistic scenarios where something placed on the rear shelf of your car strikes you in the head only minimally slower than the speed at which you were driving.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Not a week ago on a road somewhere in the eastern part of Europe: A dumptruck with in its bin a 100KW genset, secured with a little piece of rope. Needless to say I gave it a very wide berth and hung well behind. An accident with that rig would have serious consequences even with the load secured, without that it is too dangerous to be in traffic, let alone on a two lane highway.
Teknoman117 6y ago
Lots of good memories from Robogames. I had first read about it in Servo magazine when I lived on the east coast as a kid. My family ended up moving to California when I was in high school and I was a regular attendee from that point on. I entered robomagellan regularly during college (except the one year the university's club entered the heavyweight combat robot competition). After college I ended up moving to Orange County and didn't attend much. Sad to see that it ended.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Well for some throwback memories I have some old TechTV coverage of Robogames 2005 of my YouTube channel. I’m the kid with bleached blonde hair in the video. https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ
  - godzillabrennus 6y ago
    TechTV was amazing.

ant6n 6y ago

Huh. Fighting robots in car trunks seem to be more common than I realized.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Well my robot is an explorer: https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-rover/ https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-rover/
- jacquesm 6y ago
  That's a beast. Nice work!
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Thank you!

kungtotte 6y ago

You should secure everything in your car. If you crash into something going only 50 kilometres per hour, things that are the same weight as your average smartphone will have enough force on impact to kill you.

barrkel 6y ago
In a dead stop, maybe, but a car isn't likely to be stopped dead. I've been told on motorcycle hazard awareness courses that if your body hits a solid object at 50 kph, it's 50% mortality risk - it's enough deceleration force to rupture your aorta. Take something like a sign post to the chest and you'll be lucky to survive.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > In a dead stop, maybe, but a car isn't likely to be stopped dead. I guess it depends on the kind of accident. In a head-on collision or if you run into a tree/concrete wall, that's pretty close to being stopped dead. In the more common rear end or "T" collisions, probably not.
  - tsomctl 6y ago
    If you hit a tree or concrete wall, you still have crumple zones that slow you down over a short period of time.
    - KMag 6y ago
      But the crumple zones don't help the objects (now projectiles) flying about your car. The crumple zones will finishing crumpling around the same time that something sitting on the rear deck of your car will hit you in the back of the head at 50 kph. The original point was about unsecured objects in the car becoming deadly.
      - barrkel 6y ago
        Of course they do. They decrease the rate of deceleration. Whether it's enough to make a difference, we should make calculations. I'd expect 50kph is where marginal increases in mortality start to become larger, so it wouldn't take much to reduce harm, I believe.
        KMag 6y ago
        Crumple zones decrease the acceleration of your body, but don't do anything to the acceleration af objects placed on the rear shelf of your car, assuming negligible friction on the rear shelf of your car. Plenty of people get injured in accidents by kleenex boxes placed on that rear deck of their car. You're travelling at 50 kpm (let's call it 14 m/s). You strike a brick wall. The cell phone on the rear deck of your car flies off the rear deck with minimally deceleration before it leaves the rear deck, travelling 14 m/s through mid-air. Let's make a linearizing approximation and say your body is stopped in 0.8m with constant acceleration. Let's assume the phone started out 1.5m behind your head. By the time your head is stopped by the crumple zone, the phone has travelled 1.6 m, meaning the phone is still 0.7 m behind your head, still travelling 14 m/s (50 kph). Granted, there are a bunch of simplifying assumptions here (linear deceleration via crumpling, frictionless rear shelf, zero air resistance), but it shows there are plenty of realistic scenarios where something placed on the rear shelf of your car strikes you in the head only minimally slower than the speed at which you were driving.
jacquesm 6y ago
Not a week ago on a road somewhere in the eastern part of Europe: A dumptruck with in its bin a 100KW genset, secured with a little piece of rope. Needless to say I gave it a very wide berth and hung well behind. An accident with that rig would have serious consequences even with the load secured, without that it is too dangerous to be in traffic, let alone on a two lane highway.

Teknoman117 6y ago

Lots of good memories from Robogames. I had first read about it in Servo magazine when I lived on the east coast as a kid. My family ended up moving to California when I was in high school and I was a regular attendee from that point on. I entered robomagellan regularly during college (except the one year the university's club entered the heavyweight combat robot competition). After college I ended up moving to Orange County and didn't attend much. Sad to see that it ended.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Well for some throwback memories I have some old TechTV coverage of Robogames 2005 of my YouTube channel. I’m the kid with bleached blonde hair in the video. https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  TechTV was amazing.