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I'm not sure you're closely following the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) research for making new, more powerful and efficient land vehicles, but they've worked like little beavers very secret and dangerous. quite remarkable things. As a new take on the wheel which, let's face it, has long rested on its laurels.
The DXPA Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) program has fairly ambitious goals, all based on the fundamental concept that it becomes increasingly difficult for armor to provide protection against modern weapons. way to larger, heavier, more bulky, expensive and less manoeuvrable vehicles, a new path should be taken.
The program lists its very ambitious goals as:
- Reduce the size and weight of the vehicle by 50%
- Reduce crew on board needed to run the vehicle by 50%
- Increase vehicle speed by 100%
- Access to 95% of the land
- Reduce signatures that allow opponents to detect and engage vehicles
These are pretty stiff goals. They released this video to show some of the results:
While this video is full of incredible things, I think the most striking is the Reconfigurable Wheel-Track from Carnegie Mellon University, which can dynamically morph from a (relatively) conventional round wheel into a track. triangular. Here, look at this:
Wow, it's cool. The summary of Carnegie Mellon's article about this Wheel-Track system gives a good overview of their possibilities:
The wheels and tracks each have a diverse set of properties that allow them to thrive in very different missions. Where once heavy armor and heavy weaponry were synonymous with security for military ground vehicles, the current development effort has shifted to intelligent forecasting and escape attacks. A device capable of making the transition between the shape of the wheel and the shape of the track would give these vehicles the efficiency advantages of a wheel and the mobility benefits of a track.
Essentially, you get the speed of a wheeled vehicle with the incredible off-road capability of a tracked vehicle, probably at the expense of complexity and weight. Plus, you'll need some kind of control and power system for everything that drives the transition between the track and the wheel, but I'm sure all of this will be refined and you'll be able to buy a set of 15-inch wheels -tracks for your Prius from here 2021.
There are many other fascinating things in this video: windowless driving, based on virtual reality (with less driver nausea), and this thing:
What remarkable moments we live.
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