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The makers of the Roomba just got government approval for a robot lawn mower

It’s been nearly a decade since the earliest whispers suggested iRobot, makers of the Roomba, were building a lawn mower. But we seem to be a bit closer to the future we were promised: the FCC has granted approval to iRobot to build a hands-free mowing-bot, Reuters reports.

Although we don’t know all of the specifics, the mower, according to Reuters, would operate through stakes in the ground that wirelessly connect to a mower and map out where it should cut. That approach required a waiver from the Commission, which was granted despite objections from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The observatory argued the mower’s signal would interfere with telescopes, but the FCC sided with iRobot, saying its limitations would insure astronomers‘ work wasn’t harmed.

But a mower still doesn’t sound like it will be available to consumers imminently. According to Reuters, iRobot says the waiver will let it “continue exploring the viability of wideband, alongside other technologies, as part of a long-term product exploration effort in the lawn mowing category.”

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Billionaire Elon Musk’s vision is out of this world

In 1989, an 18-year-old South African named Elon Musk approached a girl at a party in Canada, where he was attending college, and said, “I think a lot about electric cars. Do you think about electric cars?”

That anecdote, one of scores that make up Ashlee Vance’s biography of the 44-year-old entrepreneur, is telling. Long before Musk parlayed the $US165 million he made for his part in developing the internet-banking giant PayPal into the more than $US11 billion that underwrite Musk Industries today, he was thinking ahead, envisioning a world that merged science with science fiction, a real world that he, the hero of this story, would bring to fruition.

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Artisanopolis

See the detailed, innovative, and impressive architectural concept for a floating ocean city – Artisanopolis — created by Gabriel Scheare, Luke & Lourdes Crowley, and Patrick White of Roark 3D and Fortgalt as a gift to The Seasteading Institute, in conjunction with the Institute’s Architectural Design Contest. The images and animated video for this amazing concept are all available under a Creative Commons Attribution License and are an excellent contribution to future human progress, available for others to build upon.


August 9, 2015 by Gennady Stolyarov II Artisanopolis – Seasteading City Concept by Gabriel Scheare, Luke Crowley, Lourdes Crowley, and Patrick WhiteNo comments yet Categories: Art, Politics, Technology, Tags: aquaponics, architecture, Artisanopolis, Brighton, city, competition, England, Floating Cit…

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