Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 531
Oct 25, 2016
Self-Driving Truck’s First Mission: A Beer Run
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
SAN FRANCISCO — The futurists of Silicon Valley may not have seen this one coming: The first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer.
On Tuesday, Otto, the Uber-owned self-driving vehicle operation, announced the completion of its first commercial delivery, having delivered its beer load from Fort Collins, Colo., to Colorado Springs, a roughly 120-mile trip on Interstate 25.
In recent years, Uber has predicted a future in which you can ride in a self-driving car that will take you where you want to go, no driver necessary. But the idea that commercial trucking could be done by robot is a relatively new idea — and a potentially controversial one, given the possibility that robots could one day replace human drivers.
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Oct 25, 2016
Watch a student-designed Hyperloop pod LEVITATE for the first time
Posted by Carse Peel in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability, transportation
The future of travel is here: Watch a Hyperloop pod designed by students LEVITATE for the first time…
A team of more than 60 students from the University of Cincinnati came up with the prototype as part of Tesla boss Elon Musk’s Hyperloop design competition.
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Oct 21, 2016
UK demos self-driving cars talking among themselves
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
While self-driving vehicles will be revolutionary, having self-driving vehicles communicate with one another and with road infrastructure will take that revolution to the Nth degree. In a UK-first, a cross-company collaborative demonstration of these technologies working together has taken place.
Oct 20, 2016
Safe new storage method could be key to future of hydrogen-powered vehicles
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: sustainability, transportation
Hydrogen is often described as the fuel of the future, particularly when applied to hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. One of the main obstacles facing this technology — a potential solution to future sustainable transport — has been the lack of a lightweight, safe on-board hydrogen storage material.
A major new discovery by scientists at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Cardiff in the UK, and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia, has shown that hydrocarbon wax rapidly releases large amounts of hydrogen when activated with catalysts and microwaves.
This discovery of a potential safe storage method, reported in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could pave the way for widespread adoption of hydrogen-fuelled cars.
Oct 18, 2016
Watch: Robotic Copilot Demonstrated By Aurora Flight Sciences
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
Aurora Flight Sciences is flying a Cessna Caravan fitted with a robotic copilot as it completes work under Phase 2 of a DARPA program to demonstrate automation that could reduce the crew required to fly existing aircraft.
Under DARPA’s Alias (Aircrew Labor In-cockpit Automation System) program, Aurora has also demonstrated its technical approach on a Diamond DA42 piston twin and is installing the system in a Bell UH-1 helicopter.
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Oct 18, 2016
Quantum Teleportation Could Revolutionize Modern Phone And Internet Communication
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: encryption, finance, internet, mobile phones, quantum physics, space, transportation
I never get tired of articles highlighting the potential around leveraging Quantum teleporting as a method to replace networks and communications. Now the real question is how soon and how much of the existing infrastructure will need to be replaced to begin taking advantage of this technology earlier than others? As with most things, governments are often early adopters as well as Financial Services and ISPs are a close 2nd in the adoption of such technologies.
An experiment conducted about quantum teleportation could improve and transform the modern phone and Internet communication by having highly secure and encrypted messaging.
A recent study has suggested that comet outbursts are caused by avalanches and not geysers.
Oct 17, 2016
Autonomous tricycles could form the basis of urban taxi systems
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
Self-driving cars, trucks and buses might get the bulk of the headlines, but a team at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB) is developing a smaller kind of autonomous vehicle. With the aim of providing a relatively inexpensive alternative to owning an autonomous car, the team is creating a self-driving trike that may even open up the possibility of an automated ride-sharing network, like a bike version of Uber’s or NuTonomy’s proposed services.
Oct 16, 2016
Simple gadget puts bikes on cars’ radar
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: futurism, transportation
In the near future, we’re going to see an increasing number of Collision Avoidance System-equipped cars on the roads. Stated simply, the technology uses an integrated forward-looking radar system to alert drivers when they’re rapidly approaching obstacles such as other vehicles. If those other vehicles are bicycles, however, their rear profile can make them difficult for the radar to detect. That’s where iLumaware’s Shield TL comes in.
Inventors Chris Mogridge and Alexis Stobbe created the device by analyzing how stealth technology works, then essentially going in the opposite direction – whereas stealth vehicles are designed to evade radar signals, the Shield is made to catch those signals and reflect them back to the cars. It does this purely via its unique shape, not emitting any actual signal itself.
In field tests, it boosted bicycles’ radar signature by up to 100 percent, and thus increased the distance at which they could be detected by Collision Avoidance Systems.
Oct 15, 2016
Tesla is building new ‘drive unit production lines’ at the Gigafactory, will not only manufacture battery packs
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: sustainability, transportation
The Tesla Gigafactory is key to the automaker’s planned production ramp up to 500,000 cars per year by 2018. It is expected to both significantly reduce the cost of Tesla’s battery packs, which will enable Tesla to reach the $35,000 price point for the Model 3, and to secure a large supply of battery cells.
Those two products, battery cells and battery packs, were until now the only products expected to be manufactured at the factory.
We now learn that Tesla plans to also manufacture drive units at the plant. With vehicle battery packs, the automaker will be closer to producing its entire next generation powertrains at what is expected to be the largest factory in the world by footprint.