To the races
When Formula 1 Grand Prix racing returned to the United States in September, one of Team Jaguar's two drivers, Johnny Herbert, was asked if he was nervous about racing at Indianapolis Speedway, a track he'd never even seen. "Well," he replied in his Essex accent, "I've raced it on me Nintendo." The crowd surrounding Herbert burst into laughter.
Yet the man was utterly serious.
Can a cheesy video game help a driver pilot one of the fastest four-wheel vehicles on earth? That's a $20 million question--roughly the price tag of an F1 race car.
While drivers like Herbert tout the virtue of video game racing, researchers are using computers and F1 race cars to learn about performance capabilities. In Team Jordan's garage at Indy, six Hewlett-Packard servers compile and analyse data fed from more than 150 sensors positioned on the F1 race car.
This data is then piped to Team Jordan's factory in England over an ISDN connection to an exact replica of the race car--lifelike dummy included. In essence, the race is replayed an ocean away so technicians can decide how to tune wing surfaces, wheel chambers, and other features.
By analysing car performance--everything from clearance to throttle to brake temperatures--under extreme conditions, engineers are learning about the crucial moments when technology can intervene to prevent various components from failing--or prevent accidents. And someday this technology could make all of us better drivers.
The BIG QUESTION about computers-in-cars is reliability in adverse conditions!
We had a bad flood recently in our part of Brisbane, and quess why late model
cars were most at risk? How water-proof is the engine-management-computer
installed in today's cars? Why isn't it always installed high-up under the dash
and throughly water-proofed?
With MORE computers coming to future cars - won't this problem get worse?
Seeing how world weather patterns are changing, and flooding is on the increase,
in my opinion amphibious cars are a major need!