A fleet of driverless street cleaning vehicles has begun trial operations at an industrial park in Shanghai, according to the Shanghai-based news portal The Paper on Friday.
The convoy, which includes a 6m-long truck and a 3m-long minibus, has been designed and developed by Autowise.ai, a Shanghai technology company, for different road widths.
Continue reading… “Driverless street cleaning trucks begin trial operations in Shanghai”
Less than a month after Uber’s fatal accident in Arizona, California regulators issue a proposal for a pilot test of passenger-carrying autonomous vehicles.
California may start allowing self-driving cars, like this one for Lyft, to carry passengers without a human driver behind the wheel.
Regulators in California are moving closer to allowing driverless cars to carry passengers, even without a backup driver present.
Continue reading… “California eyes driverless car testing with passengers”
High-tech cycling platform creates a connected community.
At Peloton, Robin Arzon, vp, fitness programming, says classes are known as ‘shows’ and instructors as ‘talent.’
Until a month ago, I had never taken a spin class. While friends and colleagues made regular pilgrimages to boutique fitness studios like SoulCycle or Flywheel, the allure of sweating buckets and feverishly cycling en masse to the beat of Beyoncé as an all-too enthusiastic instructor shouts encouragement about “feeling the burn, baby!” eluded me.
Mostly, I prefer to exercise alone.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is convinced that one day “we are going to have to leave this planet.” And he believes that his Blue Origin space company can help make it happen.
Outlining his ambitious vision at the Space Development Conference in Los Angeles during a recent on-stage chat with GeekWire‘s Alan Boyle, Bezos said that, ideally, Blue Origin would collaborate with NASA or ESA, Europe’s space agency, to move toward his goal, though he said that if that doesn’t work out, his company would go it alone.
Continue reading… “Prime delivery, straight from the moon? Bezos dreams of heavy industry in space”
The original Volkswagen microbus went out of production in 2013 due to safety concerns. Volkswagen
Volkswagen is revamping its iconic microbus with the I.D. Buzz.
The vehicle will be fully electric and hit dealerships in 2022.
It will feature a customizable interior and tech features that will eventually move the car toward autonomous driving.
A 609-acre California coastal community, Walden Monterey, serves as a respite for those needing to recharge their batteries — especially the region’s leaders in tech.
The enclave’s founder, Nick Jekogian, invites potential homeowners to visit the property and stay in portable homes, called “roving rooms,” to truly experience the sustainable, outdoor-centric lifestyle the community has to offer.
Now, a new unit, called the Galini Sleeping Pod, will be used to house prospective buyers as they consider making a more permanent purchase of the land.
Developed by the company behind the Vespa scooter, Gita is a mobile carrier designed to make mobility and transportation easier and more efficient for pedestrians.
A compartment within Gita can hold 44 pounds of cargo such as backpack, a briefcase, or any other items that make walking cumbersome.
The robot uses cameras to track the legs of the person it’s following, memorizing routes as they go.
Seventy two years after launching the iconic Vespa scooter, Italian motor vehicle company Piaggio has unveiled its newest creation: A robot designed to help you get around without a car at all.
I’m not kicking our smart speaker out of the house just yet, but the consequences of having it in my family’s life are becoming clear.
Since last year I’ve had a smart speaker in my living room—an Echo Dot. My family uses it mostly to ask Amazon’s digital assistant, Alexa, to play music. But after I saw a report that an Alexa-enabled speaker owned by a family in Portland, Oregon, had recorded a conversation and sent it to a contact, I started wondering: what is it picking up on at my house when we’re not talking to it directly?
Continue reading… “Yes, Alexa is recording mundane details of your life, and it’s creepy as hell”
When science-fiction worlds introduce robots that look and behave like people, sooner or later those worlds’ inhabitants confront the question of robot self-awareness. If a machine is built to truly mimic a human, its “brain” must be complex enough not only to process information as ours does, but also to achieve certain types of abstract thinking that make us human. This includes recognition of our “selves” and our place in the world, a state known as consciousness.
One example of a sci-fi struggle to define AI consciousness is AMC’s “Humans” (Tues. 10/9c starting June 5). At this point in the series, human-like machines called Synths have become self-aware; as they band together in communities to live independent lives and define who they are, they must also battle for acceptance and survival against the hostile humans who created and used them.
Ryan Van Wagenen has been with Global Private Equity for nearly a decade and is no stranger to the cryptocurrency movement. Since being promoted to Director within GPE in 2011, Van Wagenen has been covering the firm’s technology coverage and has seen a lot of growth in the sector. The question one must ask about crypto is what role it will play in digital currency going forward.
The crypto market that trades diverse virtual coins can look scary, exciting, as well as mysterious most especially to the casual observer. Bitcoin is the pioneer in cryptocurrency. It drastically surged in price and steeply gone down recently. Initial Coin Offerings or ICO for short in the meantime is emerging at a remarkable rate.
On one end, there are positive bulls and on the other extreme bears like Harvard Economist Kenneth Rogoff who is calling for the fall of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. Despite the fact that a number of monetary advisers all over the world remain dubious and doubtful, it is hard to take for granted the remarkable amount of money invested in this kind of currency. Two premier futurists, study and forecast technology trends regarding where they see virtual currency headed and why you must be aware of it.
Tactical Robotics’ Cormorant can carry up to 1,000 pounds and offers a range of 20 miles while flying at more than 100 mph.TACTICAL ROBOTS
FIVE MEN IN white overalls lifted the stretcher off the ground, one of them taking care to lay a clear plastic IV bag that’s connected to the patient onto his stomach. They marched him toward what looks like a black inflatable dinghy on small wheels, crossed with a fly. The stretcher was loaded in through a hatch on the side, and then the men stood back.
The patient was actually a medical training mannequin, but that didn’t stop him (it, rather) from taking part in the first “mission representative” demonstration of a new aircraft. That bean-shaped thing is called the Cormorant, and it was built by Israel-based Tactical Robotics to make battlefield evacuations—which today rely on helicopters—quicker and safer, thanks to a new design and the fact that there’s no human pilot involved.
Continue reading… “Isreal’s self -flying ‘Cormorant’ whisks wounded soldiers to safety”
Employees work on the assembly line of the electric bus at a BYD’s production base on January 23, 2018 in Xi’an, China. China’s largest electric carmaker BYD sold 113,669 new energy vehicles in 2017, up 13.4 percent year-on-year. (Photo by VCG/Getty Images)
Projections have suggested that the advent of electric vehicles will have a dramatic impact on oil demand and now its starting to show. With China adding the equivalent of London’s bus fleet every 5 weeks, that’s 279,000 barrels of oil a day removed from demand.
Continue reading… “Electric vehicles begin to bite into oil demand”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.