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Tesla files patent for lasers that clean glass, could replace car windscreen wipers
- Thread starter V23
- Start date
Sounds like a vanity project they let some senior engineer pursue. It's not going to be a product so they let him put his name on a patent.
"forward"
"forward"
OP
OP
You had me at lasers. I want lasers on my car.
Put lasers on my car now.
Put lasers on my car now.
Lmao, progress. Lol.
Lasers aren't going to keep your windshield free of rain. The energy output required to do that would be both impractical and dangerous. You would likely need to create superheated steam on the surface of your windshield. You really don't want to do that.
So is this any proof of concept or is this that thing a lot of "inventors" do where they just patent a bunch of random shit even if it may be something worthless that doesn't do what it's supposed to do?
?
Tesla/SpaceX are putting rockets in space (and having them land again), has kickstarted the electric car revolution,... why are you still saying "inventors" and acting like they are not doing what they say they are doing?
Because both Nikola Tesla and Tesla/SpaceX as a company have done just that.
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No one's denying that Elon is smart, because he certainly is. The fact is, plenty of the smartest, richest people in the world are assholes. Take Jeff Bezos for example. I've seen plenty of threads about his outrageous net worth, the fact that Amazon didn't pay any taxes, and the harsh working conditions forced upon the people who work in their warehouses. You never see anyone stanning for him in those threads, and for good reason.
Whenever Elon Musk or Tesla is mentioned, on the other hand, the jury is split. I think that the people who glorify him - including some of you in this thread - must view him as being Tony Stark or something. Yeah, he's smart and richer than any of us will ever be, but he still accused someone of being a pedophile because they called one of his ideas stupid because... it was. The people who work at Tesla also work in dangerous conditions and strain to meet his deadlines. How did they respond to these accusations? They said it was a smear campaign. Between 2014 and 2018, Tesla had three times as many OSHA violations as Kia, Nissan, Toyota, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz COMBINED. What did Tesla have to say about that? That they didn't have records of every incident and Musk himself tweeted that Cal/OSHA is the "most stringent labor safety org in US" like worker safety is a bad thing.
I don't know why I'm even bothering to type this out because it won't change anything. People will still think he's God's greatest gift to mankind and that maybe, just maybe, if they stan hard enough for him on an internet message board, he'll send them a free ticket to Mars and a flamethrower.
No they're not going to design laser to clean windshields/camera glass that shoots in to peoples eyes that will damage them.
What is wrong with you?
Read the patent, it gives the potential use cases. Seems like self cleaning solar panels are the major one as the glass is treated with something that rapidly accumulates grime according the patent and isn't amenable to mechanical wipers and chemicals. Also, I imagine for the lenses on cameras for autopilot, having a consistent image quality will help maintain performance of their computer vision systems.
And, the windshield cleaning could happen during regular maintenance , who wouldn't want a deep car wash with every maintenance. It does though look like they have some scheme to make sure the laser doesn't have exposure deeper than the thickness of the glass, so who knows. Either way, it's a patent, big whoop.
cmon guys this is wired, they hype and exaggerate everything based on everyday engineering stuff. These are the guys that said an online shopping store was using quantum mechanics because they used eigenvectors lol.
And, the windshield cleaning could happen during regular maintenance , who wouldn't want a deep car wash with every maintenance. It does though look like they have some scheme to make sure the laser doesn't have exposure deeper than the thickness of the glass, so who knows. Either way, it's a patent, big whoop.
cmon guys this is wired, they hype and exaggerate everything based on everyday engineering stuff. These are the guys that said an online shopping store was using quantum mechanics because they used eigenvectors lol.
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Tbf, fuck yeah I would too. The explosion engine does sound like an insane and dangerous idea on paper.
I bet 99% of the contemporary public scoffed it off when they first heard of it.
I don't think this is the greatest idea but at the same time, logic and simple physics would dictate that it would be basically impossible for the light of the laser to reach the inside of the car unless it's positioned in a way so the light hits the windshield in a much straighter line than it probably will.
If it's mounted at the bottom of the windshield or anywhere close to that the light would simply reflect off of it and bounce over the car because its angle.
If it's mounted at the bottom of the windshield or anywhere close to that the light would simply reflect off of it and bounce over the car because its angle.
Interesting idea. I could see it being used on Mars perhaps.
Seriously. A lot of these posts shitting on an idea at this stage are just embarrassing.
Hmmmm what will be better, expensive, high-tech lasers? Or a rubber stick? I'll stick with the rubber stick!
This sentiment is entirely alien to me.
To be fair, though, I grew up in the 80s.
First thing I wondered was how powerful a laser are we talking? Those kinds of pens that annoy people or do we go big and to hell with the risks?
Well, it's a pulsed laser, so the main thing to consider is it likely won't be a continuous beam. If you pulse anything you can get the power to be incredibly high without actually consuming as much energy, which can be a neat way to blow away grime. Though I wonder how often it could be expected to pulse, and what happens in, say, a rainstorm. The main fear in my mind is something where there's a flaw in the windshield, what happens with the light. Maybe if you set up the lensing just right in the optics setup, the odds are high it'll diffuse before it hits passengers. It doesn't even have to be visible-wavelength either. Could be an IR laser.
XKCD has the numbers on that idea
Your laser needs to heat the water with 9 kilowatt per square meter assuming half an inch of rain per hour. Since lasering droplets makes them mostly just scatter into smaller droplets that's gonna be difficult to put on the target. Lasers have an efficiency around 25%. So you'd need to run about 36 kilowatts of power through the laser (average, not peak) to keep your windscreen dry. That's a LOT of heat, never mind the battery drain.
Needless to say that kind of power would do nasty things to living tissue. That's stronger than a laser cutter.
Your laser needs to heat the water with 9 kilowatt per square meter assuming half an inch of rain per hour. Since lasering droplets makes them mostly just scatter into smaller droplets that's gonna be difficult to put on the target. Lasers have an efficiency around 25%. So you'd need to run about 36 kilowatts of power through the laser (average, not peak) to keep your windscreen dry. That's a LOT of heat, never mind the battery drain.
Needless to say that kind of power would do nasty things to living tissue. That's stronger than a laser cutter.