Consider the original Edison electric bulb, as well as the Philips Hue bulb. Diagram the 5 system elements in each case. What additional system(s) has to be present for the Philips Hue to work? Can you diagram it?
For the original Edison electric bulb, the system diagram is quite simple for the bulb itself. It requires electricity of some sort, so its source is from a power plant. The distribution system is the electric grid, and the packaged payload is the electricity itself. The tools are the bulbs, and the control system is the light switches that we all know and love.
The Philips Hue, however, requires a few additional components in addition to the simple electricity delivery that the classic light bulb needs to function. It also requires the information as an Internet of Things device to function properly. In that case, the source is the user's phone (typically), the distribution system is the internet, and the packaged payloads are the bytes that comprise the information needed to control the Hue. The tools are the Hues, and the control system is once again they user's phone.
Consider self-driving cars. Identify (& diagram) the 5 system elements needed for self-driving cars to work?
Self-driving cars are a curious case; a long sought-after technology that always seems to be so close, yet so far at the same time. In any case, the thing that allows humans to drive cars is one thing: our ability to take in and process information. The same must be possible for self-driving cars. Instead of organs and a brain, however, self-driving cars have sensors and most likely some controller within the car itself. The packaged payload is once again information, this time in the form of bits and bytes instead of electrical impulses. The tools are again the control system of the car, and the control system is the computer within the car.
If you have a choice between making very smart or somewhat less-dumb roadways, which would you choose & why? How would you improve safety?
Of course, one car is not an island. Self-driving cars will of course be required to work with each other in order to make sure that they coordinate and do not crash into anything. Roads may be one of the keys to providing that information, though there are also other ways to do it. From a certain standpoint, making roads as smart as possible seems like the best thing to do. They could tell cars what condition they are in so as to promote slower driving in harsh conditions, as well as communicate the presence of non-vehicular presences on the roads like deer. They could also provide quite precise location detection of every car on the road. All this technology, however, comes at quite the price, int both upfront and maintenance costs, and most of them can be supplied much more easily with existing infrastructure. GPS can allow for location tracking. Meteorological services can be correlated with road conditions, and unexpected presences in the road are being dealt with even now, with proximity detection and automatic braking. So, instead of making roads wicked smaht, we can make the cars driving on them smarter and tap into existing technologies to get the same information those roads could provide.
As for safety, that is where coordination comes in. Humans are notoriously poor drivers because we are not coordinated at all; the root cause of traffic jams and accidents. If every single car on the road was self-driving and communicating, then those issues would cease to exist. Traffic jams would no longer be an issue, and accidents would be cut to 0: so long as every car is working together.
Now, how would they communicate and work together? Obviously, having one, or even several centralized computers probably won't work. The data from billions of cars, all having to be polled in real-time may be too much to handle, and if a supercomputer capable of doing such a thing did exist, imagine the cost of running it! Also, imagine a scenario where a deer suddenly leaps in front of a car in Russia. If the car has to transmit that data to a server elsewhere, then wait for the server to make a decision, it may be too late. Time is measured in milliseconds; too long a time waiting for such decisions could cost lives.
Instead, localize the communication. Have each car be powerful enough to make decisions on their own, and communicate that decision to other cars within a local radius. This dramatically cuts down on stress on a handful of supercomputers as well as saves precious time in the process. Even if that one car that brakes suddenly to avoid the deer is being trailed close behind by another, the first car can transmit that data to the one behind it, and so on if necessary. The trailing cars can then brake along with the first one.
Of course, that's not to say that there shouldn't be a few centralized sources of communication. They are still useful for sending notifications to every single car necessary, which may become necessary in cases of national emergency,
Identify the Packaged Payload in (B). How do you make money if you’re Ford? How do you make money if you’re Google? Is the packaged payload the same?
If you're Ford, the Packaged Payload is simply energy in the form of petrol, just like it always has been. You make money off of sales of the car itself, along with any accessory sensor that may be deemed necessary to retrofit older cars, perhaps.
If you're Google, the Packaged Payload is slightly different. Instead of the fuel used to propel the car, it is the information that the car needs to decide where to go. Perhaps it is unentrepreneurial to say that such a thing should not come with a cost. Perhaps it could, and with most other healthy competitive industries, a consumer should have the choice of which control module to buy to control their car. The separate modules would communicate via a universal protocol agreed to by all companies. Differentiating features would include security, personalizability, and performance. If one really wanted to make money aside from upfront costs, perhaps charge some sort of subscription fee to use the module. As much money as one might make, however, I do believe that something as revolutionary and critical to safety as a self-driving car control module cannot feasibly charge a monthly fee for use, only a one-time fee. This will of course inevitably lead to the ethics of business and practices, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Hopefully soon, as the potential for such technology is limitless.
