The world’s first driverless bus service began carrying passengers in the French city of Lyon this weekend, attracting curious onlookers keen to photograph the vehicles.
Two electric minibuses with a capacity of 15 passengers each are now operating a 10-minute route with five stops in the city centre at an average speed of 6 miles (10km) per hour.
Continue reading… “World’s first driverless bus service begins service in French city of Lyon”
An end to arguments over the temperature of office air conditioning could be on the horizon after scientists invented a material which cools the body by 4F.
The new cloth reflects sunlight while also allowing heat radiating from a person’s body to escape.
Continue reading… “The end of air conditioning? Scientists develop clothing that cools the body .”
Intel’s acquisition earlier this month of Nervana Systems is another example of how startups are preparing to disrupt the worlds largest industries using Artificial Intelligence.
Continue reading… “AI disrupting the world’s largest industries”
Hackers have spyware in your mind. You’re minding your business, playing a game or scrolling through social media, and all the while they’re gathering your most private information direct from your brain signals. Your likes and dislikes. Your political preferences. Your sexuality. Your PIN.
Continue reading… ““Brain Malware”: How Hackers could get inside your brain”
Back in 1967, when Mike Nichols made the film The Graduate, plastics were the way of the future. Today, although much of our food is in fact wrapped in plastic films, we now know better. Plastics are most decidedly not the way of the future for several reasons: They create a massive amount of waste, they’re not actually that great at preventing spoilage, and they may very well be lousy for your health.
Continue reading… “Researchers Develop Edible Food Packaging Made of Milk”
Aptonomy Inc. has developed drone technology that could make prison breaks, robberies or malicious intrusions of any kind impossible for mere mortals.
Dubbing it a kind of “flying security guard,” the company has built its systems on top of a drone often used by movie-makers, the DJI S-1000+, a camera-carrying octocopter.
Continue reading… “Introducing the self-flying security guard”
Silicon Valley, or the Greater Bay Area, is the 18th largest economy in the world, more than half the size of Canada’s economy and bigger than Switzerland, Saudi Arabia or Turkey. This is because the region has become the world leader in research and development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, software and virtual reality.
Continue reading… “How robots, drones and artificial intelligence will change everything”
With the Internet of Things slated to have tens of billions of connected devices by 2020, one of the most crucial design considerations for internet-connected products is figuring out how to seamlessly integrate these devices into everyday life. In this respect, teaching machines how to identify the individuals they are interacting with is paramount—it will allow for the total personalization of everything that is promised by the IoT. Rather than just having internet-connected light bulbs and refrigerators that are sitting around waiting to get hacked, these devices will be able to recognize you and interface with you according to your preferences (something that devices like the Xbox One are already doing via facial recognition).
Continue reading… “WiFi Signals Can ID You by Your Body Shape”
Facebook’s gaming aspirations didn’t stop with Farmville and its $2 billion Oculus VR acquisition. Nope, the social network is also launching a dedicated PC gaming platform today. Said platform will lean heavily on developers using the ubiquitous Unity game engine, according to a release from the company. The partnership’s first project is admittedly developer-centric, but it has a direct impact on the folks playing games on Facebook. Zuckerberg and Co. describe it as a new export feature baked into Unity that allows a studio to publish directly to Facebook and the aforementioned Facebook PC gaming platform “with very little effort and few code changes.”
Continue reading… “Facebook launching PC gaming platform”
Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The city is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department, which has produced many of the biggest names in the newly hot field. Sebastian Thrun, the creator of Google’s self-driving car project, spent seven years researching autonomous robots at CMU, and the project’s former director, Chris Urmson, was a CMU grad student.
Continue reading… “Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet in Pittsburgh This Month”
Within a few years, the first commercial mining mission beyond Earth’s orbit could be underway. Asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries has announced that it will be sending a spacecraft called Prospector-1 out in search of resources by the end of the decade.
Continue reading… “Space Mining Company Plans to Launch Asteroid-Surveying Spacecraft by 2020”
According to Ray Kurzweil, we’re approaching a time when humans will begin to radically extend their lifespans. This sounds good on the surface, but will we have enough resources to support everyone? And won’t living indefinitely get boring eventually? Not so much, Kurzweil says.
Continue reading… “Ray Kurzweil: Radical Life Extension Will Be Better Than You Think”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.