Impact Lab – Page 350 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Spanish start-up Zeleros to start pilot hyperloop project carrying cargo next year

November 12, 2021

Company says it is on track to take cargo by the end of 2022 and people by 2030

Spanish start-up Zeleros said it would have a working prototype of a hyperloop ready to carry cargo in the port of Valencia by the end of next year.

Juan Vicen, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Zeleros, told The National the company was also working on passenger pods that will carry between 50 to 200 passengers. The technology to test with passengers will be ready by 2030.We are kind of doing an electric aircraft inside a tube, without wingsJuan Vicen, co-founder of Zeleros

The company displayed a model of their hyperloop at the Spanish pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai for the first time on Tuesday.

“It will not be for passengers in the first test, as we want to ensure we can achieve reasonable speeds of 600kph,” Mr Vicen said.“For passengers we are talking about 2025 to 2030. This we consider reasonable in terms of safety to test passengers inside at higher speeds.”

The first capsule to be tested will carry about 300 kilograms to 2 tonnes of materials at the eastern Spanish port, which is the busiest in the Mediterranean Sea.

Futurist, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast Episode 59: Market design, entrepreneurship, and innovation with Irene Ng.

November 10, 2021

Watch on Youtube

Listen on the Futurati Podcast website

Irene Ng is a Professor of Marketing and Service Systems and the Director of the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation at WMG, University of Warwick. An industrial economist through her doctoral training, Irene’s research lies in the trans-disciplinary understanding of value and the design of markets and economic/business models.

Driverless vehicles

FedEx teams up with Neolix for autonomous delivery vehicle test

November 10, 2021

Neolix-FedEx delivery vehicle

By Gabriella From Gasgoo

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Global express transportation giant FedEx Express announced that it is working with China’s Neolix to test autonomous delivery vehicles in China. This marks the first time that FedEx has partnered with local Chinese tech company for driverless vehicle tests.

The partnership signifies FedEx’s effort to embrace the innovative, sustainable and intelligent logistics in China.

FedEx disclosed that the Neolix collaborative vehicles will be electric-powered with a range of 100km on a full charge and features L4 autonomous functions. The vehicles will be mounted with an interchangeable cargo box that can be converted into a temperature-controlled storage or a parcel locker. The maximum cargo capacity is roughly 500 kg.

Startup

Here are the top 10 nations enjoying the fastest growth in small businesses – and why it matters

November 10, 2021

The innovation born from the pandemic has created a host of new digitally native businesses designed to meet evolving needs and new market opportunities.
The fuel driving this exponential growth of new small business formations around the world is ease and accessibility of digital operations.
The top countries with the largest new business formation growth in 2020 were the UK (+101%), US (+86%), Australia (+73%), Germany (+62%) and Canada (+58%).

The global health crisis has disrupted businesses around the world in vastly different ways, but particularly small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), which make up more than 90% of the total worldwide. Many businesses closed their doors temporarily and others for good, while some saw unprecedented growth.

Yet a lesser-known outcome from the past 18 months has been the innovation born from this worldwide disruption, as a host of new digitally native businesses were created to meet evolving needs, new market opportunities and a global shift to remote-work environments, which has enabled the entrepreneurial to thrive.

Robots

Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides

November 10, 2021

The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell. And farmers are increasingly concerned about the long-term health impacts of continually spraying chemicals on their fields.

But not weeding will cost half your crop, killing profitability.

The solution?

A self-driving farm robot that kills 100,000 weeds an hour … by laser.

Robots, Science & Technology News

Waterloo startup performs first ever robotic intramuscular injection

November 10, 2021

A company founded at the University of Waterloo’s flagship incubator has performed the first autonomous robotic intramuscular injection, paving the way to improved patient care in an industry faced with labour shortages.

Cobionix, an autonomous robotics company located in Kitchener-Waterloo, performed the injection-without needles-using their Cobi platform.

“Cobi is a versatile robotics platform that can be rapidly deployed to complete tasks with 100 per cent autonomy,” said Tim Lasswell, co-founder and CEO of Cobionix. “We outfitted Cobi to use a needle-free injection technology and to demonstrate that patients could receive intramuscular injections, such as vaccines, without needles and no involvement from a healthcare professional.”

Nima Zamani, co-founder and CTO of Cobionix, said there are many benefits to the new technology.

“Autonomous solutions such as Cobi could protect healthcare workers, reduce healthcare costs, and improve patient outcomes,” Zamani said. “The autonomous nature of Cobi also dramatically reduces the infrastructure requirements of vaccine clinics which could help reach populations in remote areas with limited access to medical care.”

AI, Science & Technology News

THE FUTURE OF AI IS A CONVERSATION WITH A COMPUTER

November 10, 2021

AI writing tools can tell us a lot about artificial intelligence

By James Vincent

How would an AI writing program start an article on the future of AI writing? Well, there’s one easy way to find out: I used the best known of these tools, OpenAI’s GPT-3, to do the job for me.

Using GPT-3 is disarmingly simple. You have a text box to type into and a menu on the side to adjust parameters, like the “temperature” of the response (which essentially equates to randomness). You type, hit enter, and GPT-3 completes what you’ve written, be it poetry, fiction, or code. I tried inputting a simple headline and a few sentences about the topic, and GPT-3 began to fill in the details.

It told me that AI uses “a series of autocomplete-like programs to learn language” and that these programs analyze “the statistical properties of the language” to “make educated guesses based on the words you’ve typed previously.”

So far, so good, I thought. I hit enter again, and the program added a quote from Google’s head of AI, Jeff Dean, then referenced an experimental piece of software from the 1960s before promising that an “AI Revolution” was coming that would reap immense rewards across the fields of science, technology, and medicine.

THE MEDIUM INCLUDED PLAUSIBLE FABRICATIONS; ENDLESS OUTPUT; AND, CRUCIALLY, AN OPPORTUNITY TO RESPOND TO THE ROBOT WRITER

new technology

Stanford engineers team up with Michelin-star chef to build modular restaurants

November 8, 2021

By Christine Hall

While studying engineering at Stanford, Alex Kolchinski, Alex Gruebele and Max Perham met and bonded around the lack of food options on campus and the cost of the options that were there.

“Even on a subsidized meal plan, it would cost $10 for lunch and more for dinner,” Kolchinski told TechCrunch. “I would sit and do my work in the dining hall just to be able to eat two lunches. Alex (Gruebele) would just go to Chipotle and spend his stipend there.”

While thinking about how to provide good food at a lower cost, both Kolchinski and Gruebele, who were doing PhD work involving robotics, got to thinking about how robots could help people with meal prepping and other tasks.

“It turns out that a $10 burrito bowl really costs $3 in food costs, and the rest of the money goes to places like labor, overhead and real estate,” Kolchinski added. “If we built a self-contained restaurant, we would bring down the price of really good food, and it would be close by.”

Driverless cars

New technology gives smart cars ‘X-ray’ vision, detecting hidden pedestrians, cyclists

November 8, 2021

CP-enabled vehicle detects cyclist behind bus.

Australian researchers have developed disruptive technology allowing autonomous vehicles to track running pedestrians hidden behind buildings, and cyclists obscured by larger cars, trucks, and buses.

The autonomous vehicle uses game changing technology that allows it to “see” the world around it, including using X-ray style vision that penetrates through to pedestrians in blind spots and to detect cyclists obscured by fast-moving vehicles.

The iMOVE Cooperative Research Centre-funded project collaborating with the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics and Australian connected vehicle solutions company Cohda Wireless has just released its new findings in a final report following three years of research and development.

The technology’s applications, which are being commercialized by Cohda, involve an emerging and promising technology for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) called cooperative or collective perception (CP).

Cancer

New Drug-Like Molecule Counteracts Epigenetic Drivers of Cancer

November 8, 2021

A decade ago, genome sequencing revealed a big surprise: about 50 percent of human cancers are linked to mutations in what are known as epigenetic regulators, which control the activity of genes.

In a new study in Cell Chemical Biology, a team of scientists led by Oliver Bell from USC and Stephen V. Frye from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill developed a new drug-like molecule that can counteract the effects of mutated epigenetic regulators, which are known to drive certain types of cancer including lymphoma.

Alternative Transportation

This High-Speed Hydrogen Fuel Cell Catamaran Is a Game-Changer for Public Transport

November 8, 2021

by Otilia Drăgan

High-speed ferries can be an excellent alternative for commuting in cities that have access to inland waterways. Still, the problem is that they also burn a lot of fuel, which is bad for the environment and costly. With this in mind, two Swedish companies have joined forces to develop a high-speed catamaran that is also emissions-free.

Beluga24 could become the world’s first zero-emissions, high-speed catamaran for public transportation. Green City Ferries AB, a Stockholm-based systems integrator for waterborne transportation, wants to revolutionize this mobility sector with an electric ferry that also boasts high performance and significantly reduced operating costs.

This is how the Beluga24 was born, designed by Teknicraft in New Zealand and Studio Sculli in Italy. Green City Ferries built this catamaran’s foil-assisted hull from carbon fiber, which is known to be lightweight yet very efficient. It’s meant to be a comfortable commuter, with enough space for 150 passengers and 28 bikes. By being smaller and lighter than standard ferries, it can reduce operating costs and enable more frequent trips.

Robots, Science & Technology News

Skyscraper Window Washing Robots Are Here to Take Over One of Our Most Terrifying Jobs

November 8, 2021

Window washers are the next in line to see their jobs replaced by robots.

ByAndrew Liszewski

Even if they’re not afraid of heights, it still takes someone with nerves of steel to work as a window washer, dangling a hundred floors above the ground with a squeegee in hand. A company called Skyline Robotics wants to make window washing much safer because instead of humans, the lift that’s lowered down the side of a building is staffed with robots instead.

According to Skyline Robotics, the window cleaning industry, including those towering structures dotting the skylines of major metropolises, is a lucrative business with over $40 billion in revenue every year. The problem is that 74% of trained window washers are over 40 years old, and there’s not enough young blood to replace them. It’s easy to see why that’s the case. As anyone who’s ever seen the local news reporting on a daring window washer rescue already knows. It’s a risky gig, even if it comes with amazing views. One possible solution? Enter the robots.