Twitter is rumored to re-roll-out its flopped Twitter Blue subscription tomorrow, which will once again enable people to pay real cash money to get a blue check next to their name. Hopefully, this time, it won’t lead to mass impersonation and misinformation, but who can say? Yet already, some users are noting that when they click on an existing blue check (not of the $8 variety), they’re served with a pop-up that says, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”
This is especially funny when it appears on accounts like The White House, or even Elon Musk’s Twitter itself. To be fair, is Elon Musk really notable? He didn’t even found Tesla.
An electric vehicle for around $7,300? You heard that right. Honda announced today a new light commercial electric van set to launch in spring 2024 that’s ideal for both personal and business use.
With a starting price of 1 million yen, which currently amounts to about $7,300, Honda’s new electric commercial van is about as cheap as it gets for new vehicles (ICE or electric).
The new EV is based on Honda’s light commercial N-VAN, released in 2018. However, with the rising demand for zero-emission EV options for business and personal use, the automaker will carry the qualities current customers love the most (large storage space, ease of use, flexibility), converting it into an electric workhorse.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently provided a teaser on what will be happening during the company’s AI Day 2 event this Friday. Considering Musk’s recent comments, it appears that AI Day 2 will be filled to the brim with exciting discussions and demos of next-generation tech.
This is not Tesla’s first AI Day. Last year, the electric vehicle maker held a similar event, outlining the company’s work in artificial intelligence. During the event, Tesla held an extensive discussion on its neural networks, Dojo supercomputer, and humanoid robot, the Tesla Bot (Optimus). Interestingly enough, mainstream coverage of the event later suggested that AI Day was underwhelming or disappointing.
Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute recently created OmniWheg, a robotic system that can adapt its configuration while navigating its surrounding environment, seamlessly changing from a wheeled to a legged robot. This robot, introduced in an IEEE IROS 2022 paper, pre-published on arXiv, is based on an updated version of the so-called “whegs,” a series of mechanisms design to transform a robot’s wheels or wings into legs.
“Quadruped and biped robots have been growing in popularity, and the reason for that might be the search for ‘anthropomorphization’ that the general audience commonly engages in,” Prof. Andre Rosendo, one of the researchers who developed the robot, told TechXplore. “While ‘being capable of going everywhere we go’ sounds like an exciting appeal, the energetic cost of legs is very high. We humans have legs because that is what evolution gave us, but we wouldn’t dare to create a ‘legged car,’ as we know that this ride wouldn’t be as comfortable or energy efficient as a wheeled car ride.”
The key idea behind the recent work by Rosendo and his colleagues is that while legs make robots more relatable, giving them a human-or animal-like quality, they are not always the optimal solution to ensure that robots complete tasks quickly and efficiently. Instead of developing a robot with a single locomotion mechanism, the team thus set out to create a system that can switch between different mechanisms.
The car will allegedly have less ambitious self-driving capabilities initially and it’s debut date has been pushed back to 2026.
Apple’s ambitious electric vehicle (EV) will allegedly have fewer self-driving capabilities for its launch date, the latter of which has been pushed back by a year, from 2025 to 2026, according to a Bloomberg.
The car is still in the pipeline and is reported to be set up with more conventional car features and designs than other autonomous EVs.
Just_Super/iStock.
The company’s ambitious self-driving car plans seem to chop and change at a whim but at least it’ll cost under $100,000 when it’s finally on the market.
In sad aviation news, the latest, and final, Boeing 747 has rolled off the production line.
Since 1967, the Boeing 747 has been the icon of commercial flight for over 50 years. But today, the very last of the line has rolled off the production line, marking an end to an illustrious career for the aircraft.
For more than half a century, tens of thousands of dedicated Boeing employees have designed and built this magnificent airplane that has truly changed the world.
Boeing.
Before being delivered to Atlas Air in early 2023, the final Boeing 747 departed the company’s widebody facility, Boeing reported in a press release.
The system, with Level 4 autonomy, is in use at Stuttgart Airport for Mercedes cars and marks the start of a rollout of hundreds of systems in Germany.
The driverless parking system allows users to drop their Mercedes S-Class or EQS electric car at a drop off point after notifying an app. The system then checks that the route to a specific parking spot is clear and drives the vehicle autonomously to the correct location, wherever that might be in the parking garage.
Toyota is testing a hydrogen fuel cell-powered pickup and an SUV that burns the gas in an effort to develop alternatives to battery powered electric vehicles.
AI robots fly, sing, dance, carry cars and respond to Elon Musk. Incredible new robots join Ameca and Boston Dynamics.
To learn more about AI, please visit https://brilliant.org/digitalengine where you’ll also find loads of fun courses on maths, science and computer science.
The company claims the aerial vehicle can top any regular airliner.
The five-seater VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) Ranger, developed by Aura Aerospace, claims to fly farther than any typical airliner and boasts roof-to-roof vertical takeoff and landing capability.
Aura’s plan for doing this is quite straightforward. An octocopter system with eight 70-inch (178-cm) two-blade props hanging fore and aft of the enormous main wing is used to achieve vertical takeoff and landing. A pair of turbofan jet engines start-up to give forward power once the vehicle is in the air and the wing has folded out to its full 75-ft (23-meter) width. This system brings you onto and off of the landing pad.
