Often times, automobile accidents boil down to either one man’s word against another or some arbitrary rule that the one driving behind is automatically at fault. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have video proof of who’s at fault? Well, only if it’s the other guy, that is! But that’s the idea behind this Rear View Mirror Car Camera Recorder.
Anyone who lives on a hill knows how much a hassle it is to mow a hillside. Many farmers have just given up the task in favor of a heard of billy goats and cattle who do the job quite nicely. And I don’t’ even want to show you the slopes in my back yard. But the bottom line is that hillsides need to be mowed down just like any other landscape. Even more so as brush fires usually get out of control on hillsides. So, what all us hill folk need is a lawn mower that’s half tank, half RC car. And thankfully, that day has come with a vengeance. Enter the Evatech GOAT Robot 22T.
The Goat can be controlled by radio from up to a half mile away and can mow up a 70 degree slope like it’s flat land thanks to its tank like treads which grab ahold and provide secure footing all the way up. And it can move up that steep hillside at speeds reaching 8 MPH, which means I could sit in my backyard with an umbrella and some sweet tea and get the hillside mowed down in less time than it takes to mow the rest of the yard. Better yet, hand the boy the RC control and tell him to pretend he’s Patton’s 3rd Army moving towards Bastogne! And with the optional snowplow attachment, the Goat can also become an awesome snowplow in winter.
Sadly, at $12,000 I won’t be buying one anytime soon. But if it catches on with early (and wealthy) adopters, it could trickle down to us normal folk in the years ahead.
What a cool idea.
Hat Tip – The Giz
The old adage for cars is that engineers aren’t mechanics for if they were, they wouldn’t design their cars the way they do. Well, the same could be said of designers who aren’t engineers OR ). mechanics. Witness this ambitious wheel/tire design called the “Dynamically Augmenting Wheel System” (aka DAWS). The idea is interesting.
If you’ve ever gotten stuck in the backseat on a long road trip, you know what a short trip it can be to a nice padded cell. In the backseat you can feel crowded in and sometimes there aren’t even a sufficient amount of cup holders for the amount of people piled in there. Then you have to figure out what to do for the entire drive. In some cases you have a DVD player in the car, which is nice. If you don’t have one though, this little tray would be the perfect spot to set up your laptop on.
This is one of those gadgets you never had a clue you needed. Now that you’ve seen it though, I’d be willing to bet you’re at least curious to try it. When windshield wiper blades start to go bad, I know at least a good portion of us, myself included, put off taking care of it as long as possible. After all, it doesn’t rain all the time, so as long as you’re not having a run of bad weather, bad windshield wiper blades are easy to ignore. Although, it’s probably not best to ignore the issue in the winter.
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They’re called SnoBootz. Think of them as snow shoes for your car. Not as gangly as snow chains, to be sure, but they’re quick to install and fit like a glove on your tires. In this harsh winter weather, every car needs an edge to keep it on the road, and SnoBootz may act better than the traditional chains that most people use in the northern part of the country where snow is part of the local flora and fauna.
I believe it was Al Gore in his book Earth in the Balance who said that an ordinary car is one of the greatest threats to the environment. Clearly, all automotive companies need to be thinking about Mother Earth the next time they roll their next model off the assembly line.
I suppose this is why Ford has come up with a new dashboard that literally shows you how earth-safe your driving is. Part of it has to do with measuring your fuel efficiency, which is not gauged by a meter or a number, but a picture of a vine.
Apparently, if your driving is fuel-efficient, the vine will start budding and blooming until it is healthy. However, if you are wasting gas, you will be forced to watch that vine shrivel up and die. Yes, it is odd to have a visual cue instead of an exact scientific reading, but I guess we consumers have been trained to react to pictures instead of raw data.
When I was on the road to Vegas for CES, I wished I had some sort of video recorder so I could just speak my mind and write about it later. It would have definitely saved me some time and would have made the trip a lot less boring. On a somewhat related note, Nikkai has created the In Car Journey Recorder, which is the inverse of my idea.
Yes, the In-Car Journey Recorder is designed to affix to the windshield to record the road ahead, not the driver. It uses a 1.3M CMOS image sensor, which can record video footage for your insurance or lawyer in case of an accident. Now you have proof that it really wasn’t your fault in a collision case, when it’s your word against someone else.
The In-Car Journey Recorder records to an SD card for up to 2GB capacity, which is good for up to 18 hours worth of video footage. It can capture intervals between 2-3 seconds and 3 minutes.
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