Self-driving Delorean
When working on slides for a lecture I realised that all self driving cars are ugly. I may have in fact described the Google one as 'post-apocalyptic trebuchet ammo in waiting' on twitter (Admittedly the batteries being so low means it's centre of gravity would be far from it's centre, and it would spin through the air rather erratically. Might make aiming tricky, but as I'm assuming the enemy is a horde of killer radioactive cows that probably won't matter much.).
Whilst I continued to use an image of the Google car for the slides (it may be ugly, but it's also recognisable) I decided to remedy this, by modifying the perfect vehicle to become self-driving. The Delorean. Obviously, it's a mock up, and I replaced the interior entirely as a steering wheel no longer makes much sense. I also decided to upload it to sketchfab, as I hadn't tried that before:
The model is not perfect - in 3D you can see that the light plays across the surface quite badly in some areas, such as near the wheel arches. But it was good fun to make, and made me realise how much nicer the insides of cars will be once you get rid off all the damn controls and driver vision requirements. Did spend a lot of time debating the side mirrors, but without them it doesn't look like a real car, and you still have to be able to check for cyclists before opening the door, even when it's as impractical as a gull wing.
