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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,483

Mile-long, slow-moving diesel trains loaded with cargo chugging slowly across the U.S. could be a thing of the past one day if stealth startup Parallel Systems has its way. The Los Angeles company thinks the future of freight lies in autonomous battery-powered trains that squeeze far more capacity out of existing rail lines.

Founded by a trio of former SpaceX engineers, including CEO Matt Soule, Parallel’s idea for smaller, flexible zero-emission trains pulling no more than 50 cars and operating with greater frequency than traditional behemoths that haul over 150 boxcars at a time caught the attention of tech-oriented venture firms, including Anthos Capital, Congruent Ventures, Riot Ventures and Embark Ventures. With their backing and from other investors, Parallel just raised $49.6 million to refine prototypes and software for its futuristic trains and, eventually, shift more freight hauling from trucks.

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L.A.-based Parallel Systems, which just raised $50 million, thinks it can squeeze far more capacity out of existing rail lines.

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After 22 weeks of data gathering.

The demonstration test of the world’s first fully autonomous ship navigation system was successfully carried out in Japan on January 17, according to a press release.

The large ferry has autonomously navigated over a 149 mile (240 km) stretch of Japan’s Iyonda Sea at the speed of 26 knots (30 mph or 48 kph) and also performed the docking procedures at the end of its voyage.… See more.

The Soleil, mounted with Mitsubishi’s autonomous ship navigation system has successfully completed its first demonstration.

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Parallel Systems bursts out of stealth mode with a SpaceX pedigree and a plan for launching the nation’s railways into the space age with autonomous electric railcars.

Electric trains have been much in the news lately. Adding to all the hoopla today is the US startup Parallel Systems, which has just busted out of stealth mode with a recipe for replacing thousands of trucks on the highways with zero emission short-haul autonomous electric railcars. The company sports a leading lineup of three former SpaceX electronics and battery experts, so let’s see what all the fuss is about.

Autonomous Electric Railcars

The idea of electric locomotives is beginning to catch on, but Parallel Systems is calling its version a “rail vehicle” because it has no resemblance to a locomotive. Think of it as a train without locomotives, and the picture comes into sharper focus.

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MIT team develops steerable soft thread-like robot capable of navigating tiny blood vessels

Snake robots are among the most familiar type of mechanical device for working in confined spaces. Flexible, tubular robots have been used for applications such as working in the interior of nuclear reactors, water distribution systems and inside the human body to aid surgery. The MIT team, mechanical engineers affiliated to the institution’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, have downsized the snake paradigm to the scale of a thread half a millimetre in diameter, which can be remotely controlled by magnetic fields to worm its way through the convoluted blood vessels of the brain to deliver clot-busting drugs or devices to break up and remove the blockage. Such robots have the potential to quickly treat a stroke and prevent damage to the brain, the team claims.

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For enterprises that are looking to bring a zero trust approach as a way to better secure identities and permissions, leveraging advanced AI is now essential in order to achieve accuracy and scalability, ForgeRock CEO Fran Rosch told VentureBeat.

While traditionally, zero trust decision-making has relied mostly upon rules–for instance, rejecting a user request based on an impossible geographic location– ForgeRock adds in AI algorithms that enable far greater accuracy, Rosch said. This accuracy equates to dramatically enhanced security, he said–citing an example of a recent customer that increased its entitlement rejections by 300% after deploying ForgeRock.

“Because it was previously all done by these rules, and people were rubber-stamping these entitlement requests, they were letting these things go that they should never have approved,” Rosch said in a recent interview. “That was increasing the risk to the company. Because there were people who had no business accessing HR data, and no business accessing sales data, that were getting that information. So by leveraging the AI, a 300% increase in request rejections really tightened up the security of the organization.”

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