Lifeboat Foundation

Hopefully this doesnt negatively effect the self driving truck.

One of Uber’s top engineers will no longer be able to work on a key self-driving car technology, a federal judge ordered, adding a new hurdle in the ride-hailing company’s race to get to market.

Uber will be able to continue working on its self-driving car technology, the judge said, but embattled engineer Anthony Levandowski must be removed from any work relating to a key technology called LIDAR, which helps cars “see.”

Continue reading “Judge blocks top Uber engineer from working on key self-driving technology amid battle with Alphabet” »

SAN FRANCISCO Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] must promptly return stolen confidential files to Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Waymo self-driving car unit, a federal judge ruled, while stopping short of shutting down the ride-services company’s autonomous car program.

The judge wrote that Uber knew, or should have known, that an ex-Waymo engineer it later hired had taken Waymo files potentially containing trade secrets, and that some of the intellectual property had “seeped into” Uber’s own development efforts.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, unsealed on Monday, marked a blow to Uber, which is engaged in a battle with Waymo to dominate the fast-growing field of self-driving cars expected to revolutionize the automotive industry.

Continue reading “Uber must return stolen Waymo files, can continue self-driving work: U.S. judge” »

Tracked Combat Vehicles

Multi-Utility Tactical Transport (MUTT)

Continue reading “Futuristic Warfare” »

Instead of just being regional, why not go international? That’s the idea behind ET3’s tube transportation concept, which it calls the “mag-lev limo.” It would be capable of traveling from New York to Beijing in 2 hours.

Transportation of the future is being developed today: autonomous electric vehicles, flying cars, and the futuristic pods that make up the Hyperloop are just a few notable examples. There’s another idea vying to be the next generation of public transportation, and while it might look something like the Hyperloop, this tube transport company’s CEO Daryl Oster explains why it’s different:

Continue reading “A New ‘Tube Transport’ System Could Get You From New York to Beijing in 2 Hours” »

EVE and NOMI will change the way you drive.

Many of us have already come to know the disembodied voices of personal assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, but now a software engineer has finally put a face to a name.

Jarem Archer, who works as a consultant through his business, unt1tled, created a hologram device to match Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistant from Windows 10. She’s just like Cortana the Halo character, which Microsoft based its own on — she’s a slightly translucent, blue-light babe with a hip-waist-bust ratio that exposes her origins in the world of gaming. But Archer’s Cortana is 3D and paces around inside a pyramid prism that rests on a table. In his demo video, he asks Cortana if he’ll need an umbrella, and she then pulls up a graphic with the temperature and assures him that it’s “probably not necessary.”

Continue reading “This guy designed a hologram virtual assistant that actually works — just watch” »

Imagine the perfect personal assistant.

This partner would understand your needs — often before you’ve even expressed them — and know exactly how to deliver what you’re asking for. They would make helpful suggestions without becoming intrusive, and keep you from missing appointments and opportunities. Most importantly, this personal assistant would be someone you can trust implicitly.

Now, how do you embody those traits in an artificial intelligence-powered service? Our experience creating our travel assistant app, Mezi, illustrates key principles of AI regarding the ongoing role of human involvement and how to draw the dividing line between valued assistance and unwelcome intrusion. Here’s what we’ve learned recently.

Continue reading “How to create the ‘perfect’ AI-driven bot” »

Intelligent Machines

A single autonomous car has a huge impact on alleviating traffic.

Even intelligent cruise control systems could be used to clear up congestion.

Continue reading “Watch a single autonomous car stop a traffic jam from happening” »

See also: Elon Musk Says Robots Will Help Tesla Catch Up to Apple in Value

So why won’t other auto manufacturers follow suit and overtake Tesla? First, their products, as well as their factories, are bogged down by legacy. Tesla’s electric cars are significantly easier to manufacture than internal combustion (IC) vehicles. Tesla’s Model S has fewer than 20 moving parts, compared with almost 1,500 moving parts in an IC-engine car. This means that there are fewer steps in the assembly process, fewer suppliers to deal with, and lower inventory of components and parts. Further, Tesla doesn’t have to deal with a unionized workforce, a complex supply chain, or a legacy dealer network. Free from this legacy, Tesla can embrace disruptive innovation without worrying about the backlash from workers, suppliers, and dealers.

To become as big as Apple one day, Tesla will need more than the “Henry Ford” approach to manufacturing. It will also need the “Steve Jobs” approach to marketing by creating a vast global appetite for its products. The Apple iPhone is a global product that can be sold from New York to Mumbai to Beijing with very little incremental investment. However, Tesla’s cars require the creation of infrastructure for charging and a distribution network from scratch—a very expensive and time-consuming process. Tesla will need to build out its charging network and distribution reach, country by country. China is an important overseas market for Tesla, as is Scandinavia; it also has a rollout plan for India with its Model 3.