We had a snow day at work today, in light of the 6-12 inches of snow arriving between about 12:30pm and whenever it stops today. I had planned in advance and got up at the ungodly hour of 6am to make the 7:30 bus from alewife. That was my usual bus for the months when I went without a car. It was a good move, leaving work at ~2pm it took me until 4:15pm to arrive home, on the bus, which was faster than driving for sure, at least me driving in this stuff. It also saved a bundle on gas mileage, as sitting in traffic with the heater going is just about the wost case scenario for that I can imagine.
But I did briefly, between learning of the snow day at around noon and 12:30 when it started snowing wish that my car could drive itself from home to the lab and come pick me up. Now, maybe robotic cars were just on the mind because some of the principle investigators in charge of MIT’s DARPA Grand Challenge entry came to give a talk at about 1pm, which was cut short, and was pretty much a disaster of a talk. There were some really sweet video’s constructed from data taken during the competition that made the whole thing well worth it. Anyways, I just want to go on the record saying it would be sweet if cars could live in a repository garage somewhere, possibly roboticly controlled to save space, and they could show up at times and places requested in advance, or could be called to come early or late, or just come now. They could temporarily park on the street while waiting for you, but they would spend the night in the repository. Well it wouldn’t leave your side until you told it it was ok. And of course, you could still manually drive while it is transporting you it if you wanted. Anyways, it is apparently currently impossible to do that, according the the PIs, and I guess they would know, they did at least give it a try.
By request, more snow pictures:
