Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month we look at how technology is appearing in ever more diverse automotive
applications, there’s news of updated NFC logos heading our way soon and a brief roundup
of EV and space technology news.
A
classic 1957 British movie
Hell Drivers portrayed tipperlorry drivers duelling on the
roads and driving long hours at
breakneck speed in order to deliver
as many loads as possible and earn
a bonus for the day. The 1¾-hour
black and white film has some rising
British stars and interested readers
can currently watch it on YouTube at:
https://youtu.be/7Qb8K1qClyA
About 30 years after Hell Drivers was
made, I found myself working for a
start-up tech firm that was developing
a new electronic in-cab data logger for
trucks. This was at a time when HGV
(in Britain, ‘heavy goods vehicles’ –
‘semis’ or trucks in the US) travel time
was recorded physically on wax paper
discs in an analogue tachograph, a ‘big
brother’ electromechanical device that
many truck drivers initially resented
and dubbed ‘the spy in the cab’. Truckers disliked the idea of being watched.
Legislation stated that drivers could
drive for nine hours before parking up
for the night, but they also had to take
a break after 4½ hours at the wheel.
Once back at the depot, paper discs
were checked for legal compliance, a
chore that was often sub-contracted
out to third parties. Our new in-cab
computer promised to eliminate this
paper-based technology; it connected to a nondescript port (which we
reverse-engineered) on the back of analogue tachographs, and it captured
the journey data and wrote it onto
our removable memory key. The key
would plug into the office PC, where
our software instantly analysed it. It
was cutting-edge, trend-setting stuff,
but sadly it was probably too far ahead
of its time.
Today, digital and ‘smart’ tachographs
are available to monitor journeys, and
data is stored both in the unit’s internal memory and also on compulsory
driver smart cards. To show what onerous regulations today’s truck drivers
have to contend with, these are summarised on the UK Government website
(see: https://bit.ly/pe-aug22-tacho). Both
analogue (paper disc) and digital systems are covered, and you can also see
what traditional paper discs look like.
Black box data
One forward-looking feature of our
1980s truck computer was the idea of
capturing data in case there was an
event such as (heaven forfend) a road
accident. If sudden deceleration was
detected, the last few minutes’ worth of
data could be telescoped-out for detailed
analysis afterwards. This principle is
used today in certain dashcams, where
G-force sensors cause data to be written
to a read-only folder in memory, ready
for later examination.
A modern digital tachograph with smartphone management
(Courtesy Continental AG).
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The same kind of technology also
benefits today’s younger motorists, or
those with poor driving records. Telematics (‘black box’) units fitted inside
cars, or smartphone apps, monitor the
driver’s general style and habits, and
coupled with GPS location tracking,
they are designed to encourage safe
and steady driving and keep insurance
costs down.
Telematics data is fed back to motorists
regularly: too much heavy-footedness
or speeding can see premiums rise or
insurance policies being withdrawn
altogether. This way, drivers become
conditioned into bettering their road
skills. Some telematics policies impose
a curfew that prohibits night-time driving, when accidents are more likely to
occur. Younger drivers may even be
forced to share data with their parents!
Many car insurers offer telematics policies and there is plenty of material on
YouTube explaining how they work and
what it’s like to live with one. They may
also assist older, steadier drivers to cut
their insurance premiums.
Safety drive
Many modern cars are peppered with
electronic driving aids that at one time
would have appeared only on expensive, high-spec vehicles. Drivers today
can enjoy rain-sensing windscreen
wipers that operate when an infrared
A telematics device fitted to a car windscreen (Image: Adrian Flux
Insurance / YouTube).
Practical Electronics | August | 2022
A swarm of Sky Magic drones being prepared for
take-off.
light path is disrupted by rain or snow;
headlight main beams that dip before a
driver can react; warnings of vehicles
entering the driver’s blind spot; ‘cross
traffic alerts’– great when reversing
out of car park spaces and a huge van
has blocked the driver’s view. Then
there’s traffic sign recognition, which
the author is finding increasingly useful
in today’s busy roads, and ‘Lane Keep
Assist’ which detects when lane markings are crossed (a nuisance that I soon
switched off). It all points to increasingly sophisticated sensors and AI,
‘reading’ the road ahead.
Some aids are being adopted by law in
Europe, starting with Intelligent Speed
Assist (ISA), the traffic sign and/or GPS
speed limiter that I’ve mentioned in
earlier columns. Advanced Emergency
Braking (AEB) will both sense the proximity of traffic ahead and brake the car
automatically. Being launched onto an
unsuspecting public is the controversial rule that new cars (2022 on) must
also be ‘compatible’ to allow a breathalyser to be fitted. I suspect that new
cars will just carry some extra wiring,
rather than being fitted with the breathalyser itself.
The journal Euro Weekly News points
out another safety aid aimed at new European cars this year: the ‘fatigue and
sleep detection assistant’ which gauges
the driver’s steering movements, looking for constant or erratic corrections
while measuring the length of time
the engine’s been running. It’s speculated that sensors could even test the
pressure drivers exert on the steering
wheel; indeed, trials involving electrocardiograms embedded in steering
wheels were held nearly a decade ago
(see: https://bit.ly/pe-sug22-ecd). The
purpose of this elaborate technology is
Practical Electronics | August | 2022
Sky Magic drones created an image of a corgi dog – the Queen’s
favourite pet (BBC TV).
merely to light up a dashboard ‘coffee
cup’ signal reminding weary drivers to
take a break. I promise I am not making
this up – how VW sees the Driver Alert
System working is shown in a YouTube
video at: https://youtu.be/WqR3YbjxyS0
Magic in the Sky
Our overseas readers will hopefully
forgive us if, as a British magazine, we
take time out to celebrate the marvellous once-in-a-lifetime spectacle that
was the Queen’s 70th Platinum Jubilee held in London a few weeks ago. It
brought out the best of British pomp,
ceremony and humour, and the various
processions were organised with astonishing efficiency as everyone joined
together to celebrate 70 years of Queen
Elizabeth II’s rule. Apart from the carnival’s float parades, another marvellous
feature was the night-time light show
depicting various images in coloured
lights, carefully co-ordinated in the
skies over London. We were treated to
images of the Queen’s favourite corgi
dog, prancing horses, a pot of tea being
poured, a graceful swan and of course
the Queen’s handbag, all skilfully choreographed in a faultless display over
Buckingham Palace.
The creative genius behind the light
show is London and Singapore-based
Sky Magic, which specialises in creating
drone displays for indoor and outdoor
events. Their work has appeared in
Sydney, Dubai, Venice and many more
locations besides. Sky Magic’s custom
drones incorporate nine super-bright
LEDs producing a total of 900 Lumens
that are visible from 2km away. They’re
optimised to reduce power consumption and maximise flight duration in
displays that span some 300m in width.
A swarm of 400 computer-controlled
light-emitting drones was marshalled for
the Jubilee display. A strong emphasis
is placed on flight safety/security, they
say, and their control software generates smooth collision-free trajectories
for each drone. The aerial festival was
an enthralling experience, and interested readers can see more about the
technology at: https://skymagic.show
The Party at the Palace TV programme is available on BBC iPlayer
for UK-based, or (overseas) VPN users
accessing a UK-based server, at: https://
bbc.in/3n1l3D9
Whose IDea is this
Last month’s Net Work included an
item on NFC (Near-Field Communication), the contactless ‘tap’ technology
found in smartphones that is used for
cashless payments and a whole lot
more. NFC radio tags are more convenient to use than a QR code, as they
don’t need an app or camera to scan
an image, but sometimes problems
arise if NFC users aren’t sure where
to tap their phone. To overcome this,
a new set of symbols will gradually
appear on NFC-enabled equipment.
Industry is being encouraged to select
the most appropriate NFC ‘Wayfinding’ symbol, depending on a user’s
New NFC symbols show users where
and how to tap their NFC-enabled
device (NFC Forum).
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A Hyperloop ‘capsule’ under development in Toulouse, France.
likely familiarity and experience of
the equipment and how often a tag
would ever be tapped (once or twice
in a lifetime? All the time?). There’s
more at: https://youtu.be/QZEftIt2fbE
One buzzword bandied around in
commerce is ‘KYC’ or Know Your Customer. How do online traders or other
bodies know it’s really you tapping away
on the keyboard? How do they guard
against, say, money laundering or online
fraud? Recently, I was asked to verify my
own ID by an online merchant using the
Veriff ID checking service. A web page
QR code displayed a URL to open with
my smartphone, after which the Veriff
applet popped up. I had to scan both
sides of my UK driving licence before
submitting a selfie. (A passport with
built-in NFC chip could also be used:
the smartphone will scan the NFC chip
directly.) My details were uploaded to
a cloud somewhere, and a minute later
I was duly ‘verified’.
To be fair, it couldn’t be easier, and
the system worked flawlessly, but the
process highlighted how our personal data gets bandied around, and one
might wonder what happens to the
flow of our private data behind the
scenes or where it ends up. There’s no
suggestion that it’s insecure, but from
the citizen’s perspective, I found the
process was anything but transparent.
I also wrote last month about the
pitfalls of society sleepwalking into
becoming a cashless culture, one that
is beyond the reach of those who don’t
have, or can’t use, a smartphone or a
multitude of apps. Someone who is
infirm, elderly or doesn’t own a smartphone will struggle to access online
services in the first place, but as Baroness Altmann wrote recently in the
Daily Mail, ‘From car parking to banking
and GP visits, we must stop punishing
the elderly for the crime of not being
able to work an app.’ She added that
‘three million people in Britain did not
access the internet — more than two
million of them aged 70-plus. Even ten
percent of mobile phone users don’t
own a smartphone, denying them the
capacity to download the ‘apps’ with
which so many companies seem to be
entirely obsessed and increasingly foist
on their customers, in an effort to cut
costs and increase their profits. ... As a
result, a large section of society is left
feeling at best marginalised, at worst
completely forgotten.’
Quite right. Even those who can
use smartphones and apps today will
eventually find themselves neither
interested enough nor able to do so,
but the slow drift towards relying on
mobile apps and tiny touchscreens to
conduct everyday business seems to
continue unabated.
Prepare for take-off
Verifying one’s ID using the Veriff system
requires a scan of photo ID and a selfie.
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Decades ago, old retail stores and offices used pneumatic tubes carrying
little capsules to shift cash or paperwork rapidly and securely between
locations. ‘Money air tube systems’ are
still produced by Aerocom, for example (www.aerocom.co.uk), evidence
that we haven’t quite gone cashless yet!
Fast forward to today, and research and
feasibility studies continue on a proposed ‘hyperloop’ transport system,
which aims to move passengers and
freight safely over ground in capsules
travelling at up to 750mph – faster
than a Boeing 777. No pneumatics here
– linear motors will drive the pressurised carriages on a magnetic cushion,
contained within low-pressure tubes.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT, see: www.
hyperlooptt.com) is headquartered in
the US and Toulouse, France and has
now received investment from the scientific and engineering consultancy
Thornton Tomasetti to take the project
forward. While Britain stumbles to ever
complete its HS2 high-speed rail line of
just a few hundred miles (see: www.hs2.
org.uk), a hyperloop overground pipeline-based transport network could see
futuristic seaport and ‘hyperport’ terminals being built in the US or across
Europe. I’ll track the progress of Hyperloop, and an interesting insight is
at: https://youtu.be/uwm3qvFWVRU
AutoFlight’s electric vertical take-off
/ landing (eVTOL) Prosperity air taxi
featured earlier in Net Work columns
successfully completed its second
proof-of-concept test in June. A fullsize prototype with revised propeller
configuration has made 30 flights, transitioning from vertical lift to forward
cruising and back home again. The air
taxi will carry three passengers plus
a pilot, and a production-ready version of the air taxi is expected later
this year. Drone enthusiasts will be
interested in a full-test-flight video at:
https://youtu.be/o3t40KcnMBo
According to their latest Mobility
Consumer Index, 52% of motorists
planning to buy a car will now choose
an EV, said analysts Ernst & Young in
a March 2022 survey, in what was described as the ‘tipping point’ for the
‘electric vehicle’ market. The internal
combustion engine is not dead and
buried yet, though; digging down, I
found that ‘electric vehicles’ included hybrid (HEV) and plug-in hybrid
(PHEV) cars which of course contain
petrol or diesel engines too. Buyers
cited ‘environmental reasons’ as the
main factor when choosing an EV,
the survey said, yet only 20% of them
would choose a battery electric vehicle
(BEV); the rest are happy with hybrid
fossil-fuelled cars.
Latest figures from the UK’s Society
of Motor Manufacturers and Traders
Practical Electronics | August | 2022
AutoFlight’s Prosperity eVTOL air passenger taxi completed a second round of trials in
Germany in June.
(SMMT) show electric vehicle sales
rising, with 20% of new registrations
being EVs. This still represents just
2% of all vehicles on British roads.
At a time when petrol (gasoline) and
diesel fuel costs are at an all-time
high, 20.5 million petrol cars and 13
million diesels make up 95% of Britain’s car ownership, says the SMMT,
admitting there is ‘significant ground
to cover if we are to fully decarbonise
road transport “at pace”. This is coupled with the first consecutive annual
fall in vehicle numbers in more than
a century... leading Britons to hold
onto their cars for longer’. Yet our TV
screens are stuffed full of adverts for
space-age electric cars at prices that
are out of this world.
Previously mentioned in Net Work
(May 2022) the start-up EV maker Fisker
tells me it now has 50,000 reservations
for its Fisker Ocean SUV. The company has released details of its second
model, the Fisker PEAR, described as
an ‘agile urban EV’. The new Fisker
PEAR has over 3,200 pre-orders, with
production expected to begin in 2024.
More details at fiskerinc.com
Meantime, high-end EV brand Polestar
has partnered with StoreDot, mentioned
in earlier columns, with an investment
aimed at exploring StoreDot’s extreme
fast charging (EFC) battery technology
for use in future models.
Other news
Windows PC users are warned of a
surge in deadly ransomware attacks
that exploit a Zero-day security hole
– the so-called ‘Follina’ vulnerability – in Microsoft’s operating system.
This latest wave of malware can wreck
networks, so users should be extra-vigilant and watch out for dodgy-looking
MS Office or rich text files, .zip files
arriving by email or .html links (eg in
forums) that may download malware
onto your system. Particularly worrying is that simply ‘Previewing’ infected
files in File Explorer’s Preview pane
can trigger the attack, even without
opening the file, so Preview should
be disabled, at least until the flaw is
patched in a Windows update.
How ransomware gangs are clubbing
together to attack networks is published
on The Register IT website at https://bit.
1551W IP68 miniature enclosures
ly/pe-aug22-zero which also explains
how machines can be infected by the
Follina exploit in the first place. A detailed analysis has been published by
Sophos at: https://bit.ly/pe-aug22-ms
In June, Blue Origin, the sub-orbital
space rocket firm owned by Amazon’s
Jeff Bezos, completed its fifth human
spaceflight and the 21st flight for the
New Shepard program (see Net Work,
March 2020.) Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster rocket lands vertically,
leaving the crew capsule to parachute
down to Earth separately. More at:
www.blueorigin.com/new-shepard/fly/
Instrumentation on NASA’s James
Webb space telescope continues to
be commissioned ready to commence
operation. One of the observatory’s mirrors was recently struck by a widely
reported, but tiny micrometeoroid
which has not affected the telescope’s
operation. Its first full-colour images
are due in mid-July and the web page
https://go.nasa.gov/39CT6Pd shows
the current progress, along with the
instrument’s operating temperatures
– it’s rather chilly at –241°C.
Sony has established a new division
called Sony Space Communications
Corporation to develop high-speed
laser beam communications devices
for microsatellites flying in low-earth
orbit. The miniaturised technology is
aimed at microsatellites where space
is at a premium (no pun intended),
and will enable real-time communications from anywhere on the ground
up to any satellite in space, as well as
between satellites themselves. The use
of optical techniques also avoids the
complexities of radio frequency licensing, Sony adds.
That’s all from Net Work this time,
see you next month!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
!
w
ne
Learn more: hammfg.com/1551w
Contact us to request a free evaluation sample.
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Practical Electronics | August | 2022
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