Next-Generation Heavy Equipment
Because I love heavy machinery, watching the massive mining equipment in "Avatar," notably the Slash Cutter and the D-22 dozer, had me secretly thinking, “Holy cow, I wanna drive that thing!" The lingering images of the uber-heavy equipment and its seemingly boundless ability to get a lot of work done in a hurry made me think of how today’s machines might morph into these mega-machines. Although "Avatar's" remote-controlled bull dozer may exist only on screen, Google recently announced that it had sent one of its self-driving Toyota Priuses over 140,000 miles of California roads by using their Google Maps and Street View technology. Likewise, the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) sent a robotic self-driving Audi TTS coupe up Pikes Peak in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb at racing speeds, further fueling my imagination about next-generation equipment.