GPS systems avaliable

I was having a conversaion outside of our group and have discovered 2 current " finder" network systems running on phone GPS chips.

http://www.navizon.com/

apparently the better interface is from a newer system magnalox with "speed coding" for the individual also.

http://www.magnalox.net/

New direction to consider

To extend thinking further we should now change scale ( think small ) are there delivery systems in place currently at different SCALES to our current thinking?

Maybe we should be looking at a macro cluster of like devices that form a delivery system ' networked ants ' interconnected, able to work together or appart.

Andrew

500kmph

This might give an insight as to what traveling through the city on a pendulum at 360kmph might look like. check out the video on this link.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/tgv_some_serious_velocity_5885.asp

What’s being delivered?

With delivery being cited as a key contributor to city congestion, is it possible to reduce the size of delivery vehicles by delivering in bulk rather than in individually packaged items requiring further transport to remove waste?
An example is bottled drinking water or other liquid consumables. Can design provide a bulk package that allows a consumer to purchase a small quantity without compromising the safety or freshness of the product? Could a tourist visiting New Delhi confidently have a water bottle filled from a bulk supply or from a piped container that had been purified on site? Could the fizz be kept in a coke with a bulk supply product? Do the world a favour and get rid of the later all together.

Chris F

An Holistic Approach

Following several meetings discussing the various collaborators views and different solutions for the pressing problem of city congestion and on-gong depletion of resources, it seems apparent that no one solution is likely to address the problem and that an holistic approach is most likely to develop integrated concepts with real life applications.
My investigations have focused primarily on vehicles and I have found a number of interesting sites on electric hub motors. Hub motors are available as a simple bolt on conversion for standard bicycles through to sophisticated applications as with this mini which uses hub motors to create a hybrid car that can achieve impressive results as shown.

http://www.pmlflightlink.com/archive/news_mini.html
http://www.pmlflightlink.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/

Item
Original target specification
Emissions Zero
Autonomy 1500km
Top speed 200kph minimum
Acceleration 0-100kph in 6 secs
Braking No mechanical brakes
Fuel Zero carbon
BHP 250 bhp minimum

Current specification
Emissions zero for 4 hours
Autonomy 1500km
Top speed 240kph
Acceleration 0-100kph in 4.5secs
Braking No mechanical brakes
Fuel Carbon neutral option
BHP > 640 bhp


The issues with electrics are obvious however; the need for charging large banks of batteries over a long period of time may make them unattractive. Perhaps it is the charging process that should be looked at. If this mini can use regenerative braking to assist with battery charging, maybe the same process could be applied to other wasteful braking systems such as lift brakes in multistory buildings. If some key large companies that required delivery services were to collaborate to provide battery banks for small delivery vehicles, low batteries could be swaped with batteries charged from energy that would have been wasted and be providing a delivery service for the building itself. Battery technology is moving forward and smaller, faster charging efficient batteries are on the horizon.
Chris F

Ants

Urban Goods Transport: The Involvement Model, based on - Ants

Imagine a world in which you never walk anywhere empty-handed, because you are always taking somebody else’s stuff along. You would have been handed it by another person, and you may need to give it to somebody else along the line before it reaches its final destination. That way, Pizzas get delivered, cats taken to the RSPCA, letters taken to the mailbox, blood samples taken to the labs, etc.

This would require three things first:

A trusting population.
A system of coordinaton.
An acceptance of the system’s value.

Here is how I suggest to solve these issues:

“A trusting population”:
If every object and every person in the world had an inseparable tracking device visible to satellites, any irregularities would be trackable, and thereby discouraged.

“A system of coordinaton”:
This would work very much like a ride share database. People would input the travels they intend to make and the transport capacities available to them in a database, which would then automatically book meeting times and places for object hand-overs, possibly in multiple form to accommodate possible cancellations or other occasions of non-meetup. This could happen entirely via email and mobile phones.

“An acceptance of the system’s value”:
The population would need to see that what goes around comes around, and they would, because as much as they carry things all the time, people give them things they ordered whenever they do. If anyone is ever identified as having provided too much service, credit will be given in the shape of being excluded from the service providing loop until the balance is clear again. As this system would do away with things such as delivery vans, petrol costs, depreciation for trucks, etc., prices would go down significantly for many things, and delivery traffic would be reduced to a mere trickle.

Chris Ebbert