The other side of the equation

In my opinion, the most satisfying aspect of mathematics is the rigidity of it all. That is the beauty of the equals sign, which assures us that 1 + 1 ≠ green, as well as other small islands of truth to which we can grab hold in a predominantly irrational world. (incidentally, you computer science folks who will insist that 1 + 1 = green is just a constraint satisfaction problem waiting to be solved can just shut your pie holes) The problem with mathematics is that the whole lot of it works in theory, which, as we all know, is that magical place where everything just happens to go the way it is planned.


Driving a car (or more precisely, making a computer drive a car) is not a theoretical problem- some of it doesn't go as planned. Epistemologically speaking, that means none of it ever always goes precisely as planned, though it does admit the possibility that some of it sometimes does work out nicely. I appreciate these little pockets of truth on the other side of the equation, especially when I have a hand in deriving them.



For the past two months we have been integrating and integrating. That means things are / were getting moved over from prototypes on the Suburban to near-final versions on the Tahoe. It is getting crowded in there... this was the picture of the insides about a month and a half ago:

and since then the computer rack has doubled in width, and we have added a few more miles of cable inside the car. What used to seat seven now seats 24... computers. The front seats are no exception. The driver always needs to be conscious of moving parts, and the passenger leg room has been taken by the brake motor (shown here in one of its rare lab appearances):

err yes, that tiny little speck is a penny... I am convinced that we adopted this particular brake motor so that in the event of a complete electrical failure on the car, it can be thrown overboard and used as an anchor. The absurdity is only multiplied by the box replacing the console:

which I think we can all agree is enough to make Captain Kirk wet himself with glee, especially since ours makes smiley and frowny faces. For all you on-the-go types, I am told that the front passenger dash (formerly home to the airbag) makes a nice cupholder.

I can also show you some very interesting tracking: [930.9859, 5, 7, 1, 50.857518, -7.552142, 0, 0.14499, 0, 1.519918, 0], but that is probably not nearly as interesting to you as it is to me. I know, I know! Don't worry, we're working on a snazzy visualization.

Those who want to see videos (and have bandwidth to burn) can email their respective acquaintances on the team for some linkies.