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Category: business – Page 113

Like electric vehicles – traditionally seen as expensive and niche – solar power is now becoming a realistic option for many households, as well as businesses wishing to decarbonise their operations. While the upfront costs of installing a photovoltaic (PV) rooftop system can be expensive, home solar will usually pay for itself within 5–10 years – and then provides the owner with an essentially free, limitless supply of clean energy, decentralised and unaffected by price volatility. Unlike the world’s increasingly scarce, finite supplies of coal, oil and gas, our Sun will continue to shine for another five billion years. Home solar can also be combined with batteries (which, like solar, are rapidly declining in cost) for energy storage at night.

At the utility scale, gigantic solar projects are now emerging in many countries. Recent years have seen the first gigawatt-scale (GW) facilities. The largest has a nameplate capacity of 2.3 GW. China is the world leader, accounting for 30% of all solar electric generation, followed by Europe (21%) and then the USA (16%). The vast majority is produced from PV modules, with a small fraction obtained by concentrated solar power (using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight onto a receiver).

Following decades of rapid growth, the worldwide installed capacity of solar power has passed 1 TW this month, according to PV Magazine, an international trade publication headquartered in Berlin, Germany. The magazine has based its analysis on data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

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Every industry will be affected by quantum computing. They will alter the way business is done and the security systems in place which protect data, how we battle illnesses and create new materials, as well as how we tackle health and climate challenges.

As the race to build the first commercially functional quantum computer heats up, here we discuss a handful of the ways quantum computing will alter our world.

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A UK consortium wants to build the world’s largest and longest “drone superhighway,” connecting towns and cities across the United Kingdom.

Also read: 14 amazing drone photos from DJI SkyPixel contest winners

The idea is to enable businesses in these regions to develop and grow through the commercialization of new drone-based products, processes, and services. However, a decision on whether the project would receive the green light is not expected for a few weeks at least.

Continue reading “World’s longest 165-mile ‘drone superhighway’ proposed in the UK” | >

Kinova, a Canadian company that specializes in robotic arms, is launching Link 6, a new generation industrial robot designed for all businesses looking to benefit from automation.

The Link 6 collaborative robot features automation solutions that enable greater daily efficiency while improving the quality and consistency of production results. Kinova’s newest robot helps you start producing faster thanks to a rich interface on its wrist, feed-through of power and data, optional Gigabit Ethernet adapter, and optional wrist vision module.

The company says its Link 6 controller provides the highest processing power and memory capacity on the market, making it ready to use with the AI solutions of the future while keeping the size of the controller compact. Link 6 robotic arm is developed and designed with any user in mind: an experienced industrial integrator and an operator with no particular robotic skills.

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Mikhail Kokorich is the founder of Destinus. This serial entrepreneur has been dubbed Russia’s Elon Musk by his public relations team. The Russian businessman says his business, Destinus, is developing a hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions transcontinental delivery drone that can travel at speeds up to Mach 15.

Destinus plans to combine the technological advancements from a spaceplane with the ordinary and straightforward physics from a glider to create a hyperplane that will meet the many demands of a hyper-connected world.

This hyperplane will use clean hydrogen fuel to transport cargo between Europe and Australia in mere hours. The hyperplane will be fully autonomous; it will take off from ordinary runways, traveling leisurely to the coast before accelerating to supersonic speeds.

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Decentralizing talent

More than 50 million creators are driving their own economy of talent, attracting in excess of $800 million in venture capital. Such figures are but a shadow of what they can become later, as new venues are rapidly becoming available.

The development of blockchain technologies has resulted in a sweeping revolution across financial markets, empowering individuals instead of institutions and channeling ownership of data and funds to their holders. The qualities of the blockchain — immutability, full transparency and the trustless nature of operations — have permeated many industries, swooning the balance of business orientation from centralized corporate reliance to decentralization. This shift in the basic concepts that govern relations between participants to transactions, facilitated by smart contracts, has not gone unnoticed in the creator economy.

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After about three rounds of trying to get workers back to an office setting, this time it looks real. The uptick in Covid-19 cases caused the first foray into returning to headquarters to be pushed back. When things looked better, Delta and Omicron variant waves hit, forcing businesses to relent on their plans to get employees out of their homes and into cubicles.

Two years after the start of the pandemic, it looks like this time the executives will have their wish. Companies in all sectors—ranging from tech to Wall Street—are announcing their timelines for returning. The dominant style of work is the hybrid model, in which people will be asked to go to work for two or three days a week at their office and the rest of the time from home or wherever they so choose.

We will likely soon see a showdown. Many surveys over the last year or so showed that employees adamantly responded that they would rather quit than commute back to an office. It’s easier said than done. Saying something in a survey isn’t binding. You may have a preference of how you want to work, but it’s another thing to resign without another job lined up.

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Steadicopter, a leader in the Rotary Unmanned Aerial Systems (RUAS) industry, and Smart Shooter, a world-class designer, developer, and manufacturer of innovative fire control systems that significantly increase the accuracy and lethality of small arms, have unveiled the Golden Eagle — the first-ever unmanned helicopter with precise hit capabilities. The two companies will present the solution at the ISDEF exhibition in Tel Aviv.

Based on the combat-proven Black Eagle 50E platform, the Golden Eagle incorporates AI-based technology and Smart Shooter’s SMASH Dragon system. The AI-based technology enables superior situational awareness and autonomous multi-target classification and tracking. The SMASH Dragon, a remotely-operated robotic weaponry payload, locks on the target, tracks it and ensures precise target hit. SMASH Dragon integrates a unique stabilization concept with proprietary target acquisition, tracking algorithms and sophisticated computer vision capabilities that allow accurate hitting of static and moving targets while mounted onto the Golden Eagle.

“Using artificial intelligence, the new system provides a field combat solution for the modern battlefield. Forces on the ground can now send a helicopter for autonomous intelligence gathering into the relevant area and, having identified and classified the targets, send in another helicopter with precise attack capabilities.”

Dr. Abraham Mazor, VP Marketing & Business Development at Smart Shooter: “Using AI, computer vision and advanced algorithms, Smart Shooter’s SMASH technology enhances every mission effectiveness through the ability to accurately engage and hit ground, aerial, and naval, either static or moving targets during both day and night operations. Our SMASH Dragon lightweight robotic weaponry payload can be deployed on different unmanned aerial platforms, and we are honored to collaborate with Steadicopter and jointly offer the Golden Eagle RUAS.”

Continue reading “Teadicopter and Smart Shooter unveil the Golden Eagle — a groundbreaking RUAS with precision hit capabilities utilizing the SMASH technology” | >

As the U.S. corporate world continues its withdrawal from Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine, a growing stigma against anything Russian is reverberating in Silicon Valley as tech start-ups and venture capital firms reassess their exposure and limit risks.

DoorDash and GrubHub recently cancelled deals with now-shut U.S. food delivery start-ups launched by Russian founders. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology pulled out of a multi-year partnership with Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, while Index Ventures halted further deals in the country.

For Silicon Valley, the issues with Russian business run to the heart of immigrant founder-led culture and a global world of institutional investors that in recent years sought more access to top VC ideas.

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