Lifeboat Foundation

The momentum of self-driving cars on the road is accelerating with the question clearly becoming “when” not “if” the widespread use of self-driving cars will be allowed. A 2015 Business Intelligence Report forecasts a compounded annual growth rate of 134% from 2015 to 2020 with at least 10 million cars on the road by 2020.

This should not come as a surprise, the descriptors for a car are heavily technology based with the importance of the car’s brains (software) rivaling its brawn (styling). Cars are already equipped with the ability to conduct specific tasks with varying degrees of driver interaction such as fully autonomous emergency breaking and semi-autonomous driver assisted parallel parking that are performed more adroitly — and safely — then the vehicle is operated by the driver. But the narrative of the self-driving car isn’t evolutionary but thought of as leapfrogging breakthroughs. Perhaps what has painted the imagery with futuristic color is the vocabulary of artificial intelligence. Fully autonomous driverless cars such as Google’s use an artificial intelligence system to pilot the car. In February the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration posted on its website that it informed Google that the artificial intelligence system pilot in a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law.

Continue reading “Self-driving Cars and an Underappreciated Impact They Will Bring” »

Fleets of self-driving busses will soon be deployed in the Netherlands.

They’re taking over everything.

20 automakers that sell vehicles in the US made a pact to make automatic emergency braking system a standard feature in new cars in less than a decade.

FBI — You have a connected car/ self driving car in the US; be careful because the hackers are coming.

That’s why the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a bulletin warning about the increasing vulnerability of motor vehicles to hacking.

The FBI warns drivers to ensure their car’s software is up to date, to be careful making unauthorized modifications to their car’s software and when connecting to third-party devices, and be wary of who has physical access to their vehicle. Instead it’s meant to educate the public after a series of publicly known hacks of cars in 2015, including a Jeep intentionally hijacked by researchers while driving down the highway.

Continue reading “Watch out for these malware attacks on your vehicle — Federal Bureau of Investigation to drivers” »

The image above has been splashed all over the net over the last week. It looks like a scene out of The Flight Of The Navigator, but really, that tarp could be hiding the future of American air power.

The image was taken by Arizona resident Charlene Yazzie on Arizona Route 77, with the convoy of trucks and black SUVs from the Department of Public Safety heading south toward the town of Holbrook, Ariz.

Continue reading “Pretty Certain This Tarp-Covered Object Isn’t A UFO But It Is Very Intriguing” »

BEIJING China’s production and sale of electric cars will more than double this year, the industry minister said on Sunday.

More than 300,000 electric cars were sold in China last year, Miao Wei, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told reporters on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament on Sunday.

The reliability, mileage and lifespan of electric batteries needs improvement and China needs to speed up the installation of electric car charging stations, Miao said.

Beginning in June, the Army will road-test communications technology that could lead the way to autonomous big-rig convoys.

Baidu Inc. will soon start testing autonomous cars in the U.S., part of the Chinese tech giant’s effort to introduce a commercially viable model by 2018.

The move, disclosed by Baidu’s chief scientist Andrew Ng in an interview late Tuesday, is a significant step for the company, which is trying to get ahead in the race to build autonomous cars and is now calling on the resources of its Silicon Valley tech center to advance the effort. At the same time, Baidu is advocating for better coordination with the U.S. government, which the company says is necessary to get self-driving cars on the road.

Central to the push is Mr. Ng, an artificial-intelligence scientist who conducted groundbreaking research at Stanford University and at Alphabet Inc.’s Google. He’s also a co-founder of online-learning company Coursera Inc.

Continue reading “Baidu to Test Drive Autonomous Cars in the U.S” »