The Self-Driving Car: A Media Machine for Posthumans?

This article discusses the self-driving car as a media machine, thinking about its character and broader implications from media archaeological and posthumanist perspectives. Self-driving or autonomous vehicles challenge traditional ideas about agency. Car culture has usually been considered human-centered. While there have been concerns about the “human factor” and the consequences of poor and distracted driving, the human behind the steering wheel has also been considered a guarantee of safety. The introduction of the self-driving car displaces the human from an active role as an agent and introduces forms of material agency as a replacement. This shift has huge consequences, which will be explored from various perspectives. The study will also situate the self-driving car historically within plans about automated highways, also discussing their discursive manifestations within popular media culture. The study introduces the idea of “traffic dispositive”, which it applies on multiple levels. One of the basic points underlying the discussion is that the autonomous car can never be fully autonomous. It is linked with data networks and other frameworks of factors that affect its uses and also its potential passengers. We must ask: How will the potential adoption of self-driving cars affect the human/posthuman relationship?

ASSESSMENT OF THE FUNCTIONING OF MOTORWAY INTERNATIONAL TRANSPORT CORRIDORS OF UKRAINE

Formerly, international transport corridors (MTCs), solving problems of functioning and development of highways of Ukraine, with the application of the problems that have accumulated in the road complex, require systematic visits to a number of tasks, as well as: any number of civil servants has be open with the development and condition of the economy, as well as with the development of the transport system of Ukraine; the issue of the development of the road network, including international road transport corridors, should be considered in a comprehensive manner, regardless of the importance of the individual highways; coverage of the full range of issues, including improvements to governance, legislative and regulatory frameworks, government regulation, etc., is required. It is relevant to evaluate the functioning of international road transport corridors, which are part of the network of public roads of Ukraine. In order to improve the functioning of the public road network of Ukraine, it is necessary to develop new modern approaches to planning the development of this network, including international transport corridors. The purpose of the study is to prove the need to create a backbone network of «intelligent» automated highways within this network. KEYWORDS: ROAD NETWORK, FUNCTIONING, DEVELOPMENT, AN UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE AND CONVENIENT TRAFFIC FLOW

An Evaluation of Open Source CFD for Study of Aerodynamics of Vehicle Platooning

The ever-growing road congestion and safety hazards induced by conventional highways has inspired the development of automated highways which provides four key benefits: fuel economy, environmental protection, road safety and smooth traffic flow. Vehicle platooning is a vital component of automated highways which contributes directly to these four benefits with its sequence of closely spaced leader-follower vehicle configuration by taking advantage of the ‘slip-stream’ effect to minimize the aerodynamic drag. Exploratory studies into platooning parameters, vehicle spacing, speeds and number of vehicles, have proven to be prohibitive expensive both computationally and experimentally due to the complexity of tests and the large number of test cases. In recent years, OpenFOAM® an independently developed, supported and documented open-source toolbox has gained popularity by offering a lower cost alternative to leading commercial CFD products. This paper summarizes the results from a computational study of autonomous vehicle platoons and the capability of OpenFOAM® to substitute leading commercial CFD solutions currently used to support vehicle aerodynamic development. This study investigates the aerodynamic characteristics of a 4-SUV platoon at inter-vehicle distances ranging from 0.25 to 1 SUV length at a constant speed of 23 m/s. Trends of the predicted aerodynamic drag coefficients (Cd) are then compared against experimental data from published literature as well as the results obtained from a leading commercial CFD package.