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Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 534

Aug 27, 2016

Ray Kurzweil Explores How Self-Driving Cars Will Choose Between Life or Death

Posted by in categories: computing, information science, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI, transportation

Driving a motor vehicle requires making tough choices in the heat of the moment. Whether slamming on the brakes in traffic or speeding up before a light turns red, split-second decisions are often a choice between the lesser of two evils. Sometimes, a choice could lead to bodily injury or even a loss of life.

As more self-driving cars reach the road, life-and-death decisions once made by humans alone will increasingly shift to machines. Yet the idea of giving that responsibility over to a computer may be unsettling to some.

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil Explores How Self-Driving Cars Will Choose Between Life or Death” »

Aug 25, 2016

Remote-controlled and crewless: is this the cargo ship of the future?

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

The future of cargo transportation will be autonomous, according to Rolls-Royce, which has revealed plans for a remote-controlled, unmanned ship that could take to the seas as early as 2020.

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Aug 24, 2016

World’s first self-driving taxis debut in Singapore

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, robotics/AI, transportation

SINGAPORE (AP) — The world’s first self-driving taxis will be picking up passengers in Singapore starting Thursday.

Select members of the public will be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones in taxis operated by nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. While multiple companies, including Google and Volvo, have been testing self-driving cars on public roads for several years, nuTonomy says it will be the first to offer rides to the public. It will beat ride-hailing service Uber, which plans to offer rides in autonomous cars in Pittsburgh, by a few weeks.

The service will start small — six cars now, growing to a dozen by the end of the year. The ultimate goal, say nuTonomy officials, is to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018, which will help sharply cut the number of cars on Singapore’s congested roads. Eventually, the model could be adopted in cities around the world, nuTonomy says.

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Aug 24, 2016

A breakthrough in the use of glass for power storage could unleash a torrent of innovation in the transportation and energy sectors

Posted by in categories: business, energy, information science, transportation

I never get tired of reading about the glass energy solutions.


Harnessing Big Data Power Promises Greater Rewards for Environment & Businesses

‘Ideal’ energy storage material for electric vehicles developed.

Continue reading “A breakthrough in the use of glass for power storage could unleash a torrent of innovation in the transportation and energy sectors” »

Aug 24, 2016

New Lidar Chips for Self-Driving Vehicles are Smaller Than a Dime, Cost $10 to Manufacture

Posted by in categories: computing, robotics/AI, transportation

The Lidar (Light detection and ranging) systems on self-driving vehicles are big and generally expensive. MIT has a Lidar-on-a-chip solution that will fit on a dime and cost about $10 to manufacture.

radar system on a chip

Please consider the IEEE Spectrum article MIT and DARPA Pack Lidar Sensor Onto Single Chip.

Continue reading “New Lidar Chips for Self-Driving Vehicles are Smaller Than a Dime, Cost $10 to Manufacture” »

Aug 24, 2016

Quantum theory is starting to be put into practice

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, transportation

More folks finally seeing the Quantum light.


The story of quantum theory and its applications could be compared to the era of the horse and the arrival of the car.

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Aug 24, 2016

Uber Acquires Self-Driving Truck Startup Otto for $680 Million

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Ride-hailing giant Uber announced on Thursday that is has acquired Otto for approximately $680 million.

All of Otto’s team, which includes ex-leader of Google’s self-driving project, Anthony Levandowski, will move to Uber. They will work on the company’s self-driving project and report directly to CEO Travis Kalanick.

See also: Self-driving tech startup Otto wants truckers to keep on…napping.

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Aug 23, 2016

The Internet of Things and the city of tomorrow

Posted by in categories: internet, robotics/AI, transportation

First, there is sharing. Self-driving vehicles promise to have a dramatic impact on urban life, because they will blur the distinction between private and public modes of transportation. “Your” car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family – or, for that matter, to anyone else in your neighborhood, social-media community, or city. Some recent papers by MIT show that today’s mobility demand of a city like Singapore could be satisfied by just one-fifth of the number of cars currently in use. Such reductions in car numbers would dramatically lower the cost of our mobility infrastructure and the embodied energy associated with building and maintaining it. Fewer cars may also mean shorter travel times, less congestion, and a smaller environmental impact.

–A second change is parking. Parking infrastructure is so pervasive that in the United States it covers around 5,000 square miles, an area larger than Puerto Rico. Increased sharing of vehicles, as outlined above, would dramatically lower the need for parking spaces. Over time, vast areas of valuable urban land currently occupied by parking spaces could be reinvented for a whole new spectrum of social functions. Creative uses are already promoted across the world during Parking Day, a worldwide event held on the third Friday of September, where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public places. The same dynamic re-purposing could happen tomorrow on a much larger scale and with permanent solutions, leading to the reclamation of a large percentage of the urban fabric.

–Finally, urban infrastructure is subject to change. Traffic lights are a 150-years-old technology originally conceived for horse carriages. With the advent of widespread autonomy, slot-based intersections could replace traditional traffic lights, significantly reducing queues and delays. This idea is based on a scenario where sensor-laden vehicles pass through intersections by communicating and remaining at a safe distance from each other, rather than grinding to a halt at traffic lights. Vehicle speed could be controlled so that each vehicle reaches the intersection in synch with the assigned slot – so that stop and go is avoided. The latter, in turn, would reduce emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases caused by the acceleration and deceleration cycles.

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Aug 23, 2016

Look Up! 2017 is Going to be the Year of the Autonomous Flying Taxi

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Aircraft manufacturing company Airbus is looking to the skies for a solution to the growing traffic problem. They intend to send out a prototype for their self-flying taxi by next year.

For those of us who live in crowded cities, rush hour traffic is a daily struggle we aren’t likely to get used to. The past few years have seen an ever-lengthening travel time in different cities all over the world.

Nobody is immune, not even the most innovative minds of the world. Aircraft manufacturing company Airbus notes the irony that techies in Silicon Valley come up with all sorts of innovation every day, yet none of them has solved one of their own biggest problems: traffic congestion. “Silicon Valley may pride itself on speed, but during rush hour, everything around the IT Mecca grinds to a halt,” they wrote on their website. “The situation is even worse in cities such as Mumbai, Manila, or Tokyo,” they added. In the Philippines, an estimate says PHP 2.5 billion ($57 million) of potential income is lost to traffic every day, and will rise to P6 billion daily by 2030. In the US, this loss is estimated at $160 billion a year.

Continue reading “Look Up! 2017 is Going to be the Year of the Autonomous Flying Taxi” »

Aug 22, 2016

Indian Railways eyeing speed with Gatimaan Express, Talgo trains, but Tesla chief Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is a game changer

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, government, quantum physics, transportation

I can see ads now with Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” playing in the background.


There’s no doubt India needs faster trains. The NDA government has set the ball rolling by launching the Gatimaan Express. Trials are on with the Spanish Talgo trains on the Delhi-Mumbai route and Japan has agreed to provide soft loans for the proposed Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. But, for achieving a one-time quantum jump in technology, the possibility of introducing the Hyperloop—Tesla’s Elon Musk’s concept of moving people and goods at high speeds in capsules within tubes using powerful magnets—could be a game-changer. Going by current speeds, Hyperloop can crunch a one-way Delhi-Mumbai trip to just one hour. The advantages are numerous—much faster travel, limited land acquisition and lower building cost that could lead to cheaper travel.

It is still early days as far as Hyperloop is concerned. Two companies, Hyperloop Technologies and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, are in talks with 10 countries including China and India for introduction.

Continue reading “Indian Railways eyeing speed with Gatimaan Express, Talgo trains, but Tesla chief Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is a game changer” »