ADIFO could resurrect the idea of flying saucers, promising extreme speed, efficiency and aerial agility
At low speed, it operates like a quadcopter, at high speed, it’s a jet-propelled, highly efficient supersonic aircraft whose entire body acts as a low-drag wing. Those are the claims of the Romanian creators of this flying saucer that’s designed to offer unprecedented aerial agility across a broad range of speeds.
CSIRO’s Vertebrate Pest Detect-and-Deter (VPDaD) device
The development of IoT for agriculture is still in its early stages, but it looks promising as more farmers are putting these technologies to work.
Australian agriculture has historically been defined by long droughts and irregular rainfall. For farmers, these harsh conditions leave small margins for error, meaning that gruelling work on the paddock does not necessarily translate to healthy stock or strong crop harvests.
One way that farmers have adapted to these conditions is the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors. But in comparison to other sectors, farmers have been slow to adopt these technologies due to concerns surrounding the cost of implementation and ongoing service—particularly when there is no immediate value received for certain IoT technologies, which can sometimes take several years of accumulating data before it shows its value.
The one-time use drones can carry more than 1,000 pounds of supplies.
The US military is testing delivery drones that can transport supplies over long distances and be thrown away after each use. Made of cheap plywood, the bigger version of the two gliders being tested can carry over 700 kilograms, or roughly 1800 pounds. As reported in IEE Spectrum, the scientists at Logistic Gliders, Inc. revealed that their gliders just successfully completed a series of tests with US Marines. If cleared for mass production, the LG-1K and its bigger counterpart, the LG-2K, could cost as little as a few hundred dollars each.
Using unmanned aircraft for delivery is an idea both the military and private sector have explored for years. Traditional aircraft guzzle fuel, cost money to purchase and maintain and require a human pilot. An unmanned aerial device doesn’t require any of these things. Companies like Amazon flirted with the idea of using drones to speed up package delivery, but couldn’t overcome logistical hurdles. While far away from being suitable for civilian use, these latest delivery gliders may be a step in the right direction.
Around 75% of coal production is more expensive than renewables, with industry out-competed on cost by 2025
‘We’ve seen we are at the ‘coal crossover’ point in many parts of the country.’
Around three-quarters of US coal production is now more expensive than solar and wind energy in providing electricity to American households, according to a new study.
“Even without major policy shift we will continue to see coal retire pretty rapidly,” said Mike O’Boyle, the co-author of the report for Energy Innovation, a renewables analysis firm. “Our analysis shows that we can move a lot faster to replace coal with wind and solar. The fact that so much coal could be retired right now shows we are off the pace.”
The study’s authors used public financial filings and data from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) to work out the cost of energy from coal plants compared with wind and solar options within a 35-mile radius. They found that 211 gigawatts of current US coal capacity, 74% of the coal fleet, is providing electricity that’s more expensive than wind or solar.
The cooperative robot model that China is expanding could hold vital lessons for other developing economies that also rely heavily on small businesses.
There’s a “factory of the future” being built in Shanghai, with $150 million in investment from Swiss-Swedish automation giant ABB. Slated for completion in 2020, the factory is a place where “robots will make robots,” according to ABB. But the cutting-edge robotics technology the facility hopes to showcase won’t cater only to heavy industrial needs. It will also largely feature “collaborative automation solutions” — known as cobots — that work with humans instead of replacing them. The facility is evidence of an emerging Chinese automation strategy that’s beginning to reshape the world’s approach to robotics.
Imagine strolling through a cemetery at night, the wooded path softly illuminated by a canopy of glowing pods filled with human remains suspended overhead and transforming decomposition into electricity until the body is finally gone. The cycle of life complete, the light then dims to dark, the pod taken down and replaced by a bright new body shining down upon the path from its star-like grave.
While this may sound like the stuff of science fiction, in reality it’s a reimagined cemetery of the future called the Sylvan Constellation, a system where microbial fuel cells facilitate the body’s decomposition and transform it into light. More than a ghostly fantasy, this project from DeathLAB — a Columbia University–based interdisciplinary research and design initiative rethinking how we live with death in the metropolis — is a potential solution to one of the biggest problems cities are facing: We’re running out of space to store the dead, and the way we do it now is environmentally disastrous.
Majorities predict a weaker economy, a growing income divide, a degraded environment and a broken political system
Public is broadly pessimistic about the future of AmericaWhen Americans peer 30 years into the future, they see a country in decline economically, politically and on the world stage. While a narrow majority of the public (56%) say they are at least somewhat optimistic about America’s future, hope gives way to doubt when the focus turns to specific issues.
A new Pew Research Center survey focused on what Americans think the United States will be like in 2050 finds that majorities of Americans foresee a country with a burgeoning national debt, a wider gap between the rich and the poor and a workforce threatened by automation.
The Russian military’s research division is working to develop ground-based, combat-ready robots to assist its infantry.
The heavily-armed robots, first displayed in a state-produced video last month, resemble miniature tanks that can be deployed alongside infantry or swarms of quadrotor drones — either of which, according to C4ISRNET, can send targeting information back to the killer robot.
The virtual battlefield can simulate millions of “intelligent entities.”
The U.S. military has constructed a massive virtual reality platform to help train infantry soldiers in realistic battlefields filled with millions of artificial intelligence agents.
Futurism first reported on the Synthetic Training Environment (STE) back in April, when the U.S. Army published a whitepaper describing its ability to simulate real cities in the U.S. and North Korea.
Now software developers who contributed to the VR platform opened up about their work in an interview with Digital Trends, describing how virtual reality can help the U.S. train a more combat-ready and versatile military.
For many Americans, wages have remained relatively stagnant in recent years, rising only between 2 and 3 percent per year since 2013, Pew Research Center reported in August. After accounting for inflation, today’s wages have around the same purchasing power they did 40 years ago.
But in certain professions, salaries have recently grown much faster. GOBankingRates analyzed data from Glassdoor, Salary.com and the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 45 occupations across the U.S. to determine where wages rose the most between 2014 and 2018.
Here are the top 15 U.S. jobs where salaries are growing the fastest.
Rob Carpenter, founder of Valyant A.I., stands next to his creation at a Good Times in South Denver.
For as long as there have been robots, there’s been the fear that they will take our jobs, or even worse — take over everything.
Well, reality is more nuanced than most Sci-Fi movies’ depiction of artificial intelligence. Industry officials say it’s less about replacing people in jobs, but more about giving them extra tools to make work and life easier.
