Analysis and comparison of Scalextric, SCX, and Carrera Digital slot car systems: A mechatronic engineering design case study

Digital slot cars operate by transmitting both power and data over a single pair of wires much like DCC-controlled model railways and some home automation systems. In this manuscript we analyse and compare the cars, track, controllers, and electronic data transmission protocols of the three popular digital slot car systems

Central Florida Future, Vol. 41 No. 36, April 6, 2009

Students shift away from cars to shuttle; Cars produced in the world every year; Art drives the Soul; Digital videos up for voting; Alum debuts at film fest.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/centralfloridafuture/3213/thumbnail.jp

HARDWARE DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE FOR SPECIFICATION OF DIGITAL SYSTEMS

The new hardware description language presented in this article was developed for the Computer Aid for Recursive Synthesis (CARS) system. System CARS has been developed to assist the designer in the synthesis phase of digital system design. CARS applies a top-down structured approach in the design process and can be used at any user defined level of refinement. The description language developed for CARS is well suited to describe behavioural concepts and structures as well

Experiencing Electric Vehicles: The Car as a Digital Platform

The transition towards electric vehicles (EV)s is rapidly increasing, and the automotive industry has been busy exchanging to electric engines. However, electrification of cars is not only about hardware, but it also implies a digitalisation of cars. Charging and maintenance of EVs is enabled through digital platforms. Little is known of how this digitalisation of cars affect people’s everyday lives. What happens when the car moves from being simply a machine that provides means for transport, but also becomes a power source and a sensor platform with computing capacity powered with AI driven technologies that is controlled via digital platforms? In this article, we present findings on how people experience and learn to live with EVs in their everyday life. We argue that ethnographic understandings of EVs as evolving digi-physical phenomena provide opportunities to foresight how to implement EVs from a people-centric perspective

Digital Winter. Connected vehicles for safer roads

Increased connectivity in cars, means that important information about infrastructure can be instantly transferred from the cars into a cloud. Car manufacturers have provided these systems for decades, but have just recently offered these connected functions to a broader customer base. Sharing data with the road authorities, however, is rare.  Trafikverkets FOI-project Road Status Information wanted to explore the possibilities to gather road friction data from cars in daily traffic to monitor and improve the winter maintenance of the roads.  A new cloud based digital solution from ÅF, in a joint venture with Volvo Cars, will now provide the Swedish Transport Administration of slippery road conditions data. One of the first initiatives in Europe to share data from vehicles in daily traffic with road authorities on a larger scale.&nbsp

Impact of running first year and final year electronics laboratory classes in parallel

First electronics courses are considered difficult by students because of the circuit theory content, and retention of students in electronics is a problem worldwide. Retention is especially problematic at universities that offer a common first-year program since the students can change streams, for example from Electrical to Mechanical. At our university we ran the laboratory classes for a challenging first-year electronics course in the same room at the same time as a popular final-year mechatronics class that involved visible use of Lego Mindstorms, a model elevator, digital model trains and slot cars, etc. We report the outcomes of a quantitative and qualitative study of the impact of this organisation. One lab stream did not see the parallel classes and thus acted as a control group

A Study of the Application of Digital Computers for Controlling Vehicle Traffic at a signalized Intersection

This study outlines a method whereby a small, specialized on-line digital computer could be used to control urban vehicle traffic at a signalized intersection. In the basic system proposed, the computer uses as input data a history of the instantaneous vehicle flow, in terms of number of cars arriving and arrival time. The data are stored for a period of 240 seconds in a magnetic drum memory. Once each 1/2 second, the computer examines the arrival pattern of cars and compares the delay being imposed on the waiting cars versus the delay which would be imposed on the cars on the moving phase if the lights were changed for a sufficient time to clear the waiting queue. The computer then decides when to change the signal lights and what the timing interval for the next phase should be