http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,458893,00.html
January 11, 2007
INTERNET ON WHEELS
German Company Engineers Driverless Taxi
By Manfred Dworschak
In Paderborn, Germany, a driverless Railcab for passengers and freight
is born -- and its developers are ushering in a new era of rail travel.
For years now, the railway of tomorrow has literally been running in
circles. The most you could see was a pair of small gray rail cars on a
field just behind the university in the city of Paderborn in the western
German state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Day in and day out, they ride
along on their circular track, sometimes steering out of each other's
way using a track switcher.
As mundane as that may seem, something great is taking shape here,
engineer Joachim Lückel confidently assures. "We are building a better
Transrapid," he says, referring to Germany's high-speed magnetic
levitation train.
But there is little here to suggest any relationship between the
so-called Railcab and the Transrapid, one of Germany's most impressive
engineering achievements. Only a real connoisseur could see the magic
happening here. Indeed, the most thrilling recent development was that
the two unassuming and driverless cars drove in a convoy for the first
time.
Ten years have passed since Joachim Lückel, professor of engineering,
came up with his life's work: He foresaw small, speedy, gondola-like
cars, swarming about everywhere on the old railway tracks, whooshing off
on their own by the thousands -- all across the country. And anyone who
wants to go anywhere simply calls and orders one.
In the past, developments in public transportation often focused on the
expensive train transportation -- traditional passenger trains,
high-speed rail and magnetic levitation trains that move the masses. But
Railcab is part of a new trend of developing relatively fast, highly
efficient and cost-effective individual transportation systemsthat could
radically change the way we travel in the future.
In Lückel's brave new world, there is neither a control center for the
cars nor a fixed schedule. That's too old fashioned. Instead, the
customer calls, and the next available vehicle rolls up, ready for
service in the way we use taxis today. And the journey continues towards
its goal, without any stops or changes of train.
In Paderborn, a kind of fusion between a car and railway transportation
is emerging. Using satellite navigation, every car on the track network
finds the quickest route to its goal. Along the main routes, the
Railcabs form convoys. One after the other, they hurry along, moving
closely but not directly together so that they can save energy by
traveling in the slipstream. Before reaching their goal, the individual
cars part from one another, while the rest of the group rolls on without
slowing down.
Engineer Lückel, a skilled automobile expert, quickly found allies for
his project. Seven departments, from engineering to electro-technology,
joined to form a consortium whose very name reveals pride in the future:
New Rail Technology Paderborn.
In at least one regard, the Railcab is similar to the Transrapid -- they
both use the same method of propulsion. Solenoids, electrically charged
in succession, run between the tracks and create a traveling magnetic
field that propels individual cars along. The motor basically sits in
the track, thus making the vehicles light and relatively inexpensive. If
estimates are correct, Railcab cars won't cost any more than an
automobile of the same size.
Trials began four years ago, and funding has been secured for another
two. The next step, says project director Ansgar Trächtler, is to reduce
the distance between cars for the automatic convoys to about 20
centimeters. There may even be enough money left over to build a car
with a passenger cabin. That would make it possible for the first time
for travelers to usher in the new age by taking a few spins around the
track.
In the meantime, though, the old railway networks will continue to cram
hundreds of people in long trains with limited schedules -- just as they
have for the past 150 years. But the old way of train travel is already
growing tiresome for many. While it may be bearable to use trains to
travel direct from one city to another, the annoyance level climbs when
a person has to visit less densely populated areas. Depending on the
starting point, even a trip to Paderborn, a city of about 142,000
residents, can require transfers between trains and lead to missed
connections.
The only thing more old-fashioned than passenger trains are freight
trains, which link to one another as laboriously as ever: The cars roll
from the marshalling humps toward the shunting where they have to be
coupled with great effort by hand.
But in Paderborn, engineers have even come up with a remedy for that
problem: With little fuss, refurbished freight cars could be
incorporated into the lines of rolling Railcab convoys. "Even small
loads of goods could arrive at their goal quickly, and usually without
reloading," says Trächtler. "That would provide the first real
competition for heavy trucks."
For all their pioneering spirit, the researchers were careful to avoid
the pitfalls of the almighty Transrapid, which they consider to be the
icon of a dinosaur technology whose days were over before they ever
began.
"Just consider the amount of energy that's required to levitate a
massive train like that," says engineer Lückel. "Today, that's already
Stone Age technology."
Railcabs employ the tried and true wheel, and they don't try to break
any speed records -- not that those mean much, anyway. On its
30-kilometer route in Shanghai, Lückel estimates, the Transrapid
requires the first third to get up to speed, and the last third to
brake; in between, it briefly reaches speeds of 430 kilometers per hour.
"High top speeds aren't economical," says Lückel. "It's the average that
counts."
Railcabs can travel at an average speed of about 160 kilometers per
hour, but they also move without stopping, which can reduce travel
times. And most important, they don't need any new tracks: They can
operate on the existing track network, including urban commuter rail
lines. A customer could board a Railcab in a suburb of Hamburg and
travel without pause to visit grandma in Nuremburg.
The only thing needed is the addition of custom track switchers that
enable the Railcabs to make swift track changes on their own. Old block
signal technology, with a drive and moving parts, would be unable to
react quickly enough to safely manage track switches if a fast-moving
Railcab in a convoy were to swiftly turn out of the group. Instead, the
Railcab relies on what engineers call a "passive switch" technology. The
track switcher has no moving parts and the direction is instead
determined by the Railcab shuttle itself. A slight turn of the wheel is
enough to determine whether a Railcab turns left, right, or proceeds
straight ahead.
But wouldn't an exchange of track switchers alone be so expensive as to
turn off all possible investors? "We could also start small," says
project director Trächtler, "on individual routes or in certain
regions." For the transition period, his team has already devised
special track switchers that would fit with the old or new railway.
The cost of running the Railcab system remains unclear. In the long
term, researchers assert it would be cheaper than current railway
systems. But no one has really tested it. There isn't enough money for
that in Paderborn, and Germany's national railway, Deutsche Bahn, isn't
participating in the project.
"We are not doing any basic research," says Deutsche Bahn's spokesperson
for technical matters, Christine Geissler-Schild. And large companies
like Siemens are doing their best to keep mum, as long as the most
powerful main client shows no interest.
It almost seems as if, over the past several decades, the Transrapid
consumed all of Germany's innovative spirit. Is it too late for a new
railway? Only a few years ago, a project like Railcab would have been
totally impossible. The computer technology simply wasn't advanced
enough.
"What we are planning," says Lückel, "is basically a kind of Internet on
wheels."
In the digital network, of course, data packets don't need any block
signals to whiz along the lines. Losses are taken into account.
Sometimes, data arrives garbled; it is then discarded and requested
again -- a factor that would obviously be impossible with a physical
entity like passengers.
The engineers at New Rail Technology Paderborn have come up with an
ingenious steering system that depends even more than the Internet on
decentralized intelligence: The individual cars move autonomously, like
independent agents. They negotiate detailed routing commands on their
own; and the gondolas handle the choice of route. The central hub
doesn't interfere -- instead it provides useful information like reports
about traffic on individual sections of the network.
Researchers insist that all this is doable today. As always, the devil
is in the details. For example, the promise of an on-call Railcab loses
some of its appeal because at this point one car would hold 10 people or
more. Wouldn't that be just like a group taxi without any of the
creature comforts of private travel? "It would be better to have
two-seat cabins, of course," admits Lückel, "but we haven't been able to
scale down our technology yet."
The consortium is recommending a mixed-mode operation in the early
stages: Some cars would travel along the main routes according to a
schedule. Anyone who wanted a Railcab right away, and for themselves
alone, would then have to pay a more expensive fare.
Shortcomings or not, there does appear to be interest in the Railcab.
Transportation experts from London have already flocked to Paderborn,
and there has even been an inquiry from as far abroad as Abu Dhabi in
the United Arab Emirates. For now though, the engineers at New Rail
Technology will just have to wait and see if there is political will for
the product in Germany.
But the engineers aren't sitting idly by. As they wait, the Railcab
developers are concentrating on efforts to make travel more comfortable.
They are working on a computer-controlled suspension system that would
use sensors and an onboard computer to intercept every little bump in
advance and compensate for it. And that would leave passengers with a
lot less to complain about.
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
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