Free wi-fi almost anywhere you go.
When the president of the European commission gave his annual state of the union speech this week, he hit all the typical SOTU talking points—unity, pride, stability.
But tucked amid all that was an unusual promise for EU residents: free wireless internet for parks, libraries and other public spaces across Europe.
Continue reading… “Europe’s Plan for Free Public Wi-Fi Puts America to Shame”
Can robot carts compete with Amazon?
A shopping cart is mostly empty space. At the end of a shopping run, when the cart is brimming with groceries and goods, it becomes fully useful, but it isn’t until that point, and once it’s full, it doesn’t help the person trying to buy two cartfulls of stuff on their own. Walmart, the physical retail giant, doesn’t want people to worry about the inadequacies of carts while shopping. So they filed a patent for a self-driving robot cart.
Continue reading… “Walmart Patents Robot Carts”
First there was poker. Then there was the spelling bee, Scrabble and the recent emergence of e-sports.
Now ESPN is betting that speeding drones will be the next noncontact “sport” to find a mass audience.
The Drone Racing League announced on Wednesday that it had signed deals to broadcast a 10-episode season on ESPN and ESPN2, along with the European stations Sky Sports Mix and 7Sports. The schedule begins with an introduction to drone racing on Thursday at 11 p.m. on ESPN2.
Continue reading… “Drone Racing: ESPN’s Newest Televised Sport”
But the technology for extinguishing species is dividing conservationists.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to double the sum it is spending to create a mosquito-killing technology that relies on CRISPR gene editing.
Continue reading… “Bill Gates Doubles His Bet That Mosquitoes Will Be Wiped Out with Gene Editing”
A startup called Proterra has been working on electric buses for years, and its latest model has a pretty impressive range. Its Catalyst E2 Series buses can drive up to 350 miles on a single charge, which means it can go a quite a bit further than Tesla’s top-tier Model S that already boasts a 300-plus-mile range. The vehicle can also outlast its predecessor that can only go for 258 miles.
Continue reading… “Proterra’s electric bus can travel 350 miles before needing a recharge”
Doctors at Oxford University made medical history recently by successfully completing the first robot-assisted intraocular surgery. Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the university, and his team managed to gently peel off a 1/1000th millimeter membrane from the inside of a patient’s eye. To do so, the team relied on a cutting-edge medical device known as the Robotic Retinal Dissection Device, or R2D2.
Continue reading… “Robots perform surgery inside your eyeballs”
Over the last many centuries, human life expectancy has very gradually lengthened with improved health and medical technologies and research. In the next 20 years, we can expect our expected life spans to be extended at a far more rapid pace than in the past.
The thinking: Spend billions of dollars, save even more.
The $8.5 trillion global construction industry isn’t exactly known for its efficiency. The U.K. Green Building Council estimates that 15% of materials delivered to construction sites end up in landfills, the result of mismanaged scheduling and purchasing.
Continue reading… “The Construction Industry Loves Drones”
Within five years robots and so-called intelligent agents will eliminate many positions in customer service, trucking and taxi services, amounting to 6 percent of jobs, according to a Forrester report.
“By 2021, a disruptive tidal wave will begin,” said Brian Hopkins, VP at Forrester, in the report. “Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services.”
Continue reading… “Report: AI will eliminate 6 percent of jobs in five years”
Show a human any photograph and they’ll able to predict what happens next with pretty decent accuracy. The woman riding her bike will keep on moving. The dog will catch the frisbee. The man is going to have a pratfall. And so on. It’s such a basic skill that we don’t consider the vast amount of information that is used to make these predictions — concerning gravity, inertia, the nature of pratfalls, etc. — and teaching computers to do the same is proving to be a key challenge in machine vision.
Continue reading… “The next trick for machine learning is generating videos from photos”
Researchers have warned that robots and computers will pursue more criminal activities than humans by 2040.
Tracey Follows from The Future Laboratory, which helps businesses plan for the future, said: “Once robots can be hacked to become suicide-bombing machines, lone-robot attacks could become rife.”
Continue reading… “By 2040 Robots ‘will commit more crime than humans’”
DETROIT (AP) — A three-wheeled electric vehicle could be on the road later this year in the U.S. and Canada.
Electra Meccanica Vehicles Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, officially unveiled the one-seat Solo on Friday. The Solo could go on sale as early as November pending approval by U.S. and Canadian regulators. It costs around $15,500.
Continue reading… “3-wheeled electric vehicle scheduled to go on sale this year”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.