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Category: transportation – Page 182

Over the last decade, Artificial intelligence (AI) has become embedded in every aspect of our society and lives. From chatbots and virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa to automated industrial machinery and self-driving cars, it’s hard to ignore its impact.

Today, the technology most commonly used to achieve AI is machine learning — advanced software algorithms designed to carry out one specific task, such as answering questions, translating languages or navigating a journey — and become increasingly good at it as they are exposed to more and more data.

Worldwide, spending by governments and business on AI technology will top $500 billion in 2023, according to IDC research.

The Field of artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging and evolving faster than ever. Here, we look at some of the major trends in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning in 2023.

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Hermeus is building the world’s fastest commercial aircraft. And we got to tour their hypersonic flight lab.

Watch the Challengers playlist ► https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXthoedLVIdKeeuwpDPSyHSC54obntRxB

The aircraft startup Hermeus is aiming to do something unprecedented: build an aircraft that can take off from sea level, hit hypersonic speeds, and land to be reused, all while using one jet engine.

To achieve that goal, Hermeus is experimenting with a demonstrator aircraft called Quarterhorse — a small single-engine autonomous vehicle designed to test the company’s one-of-a-kind engine and briefly hit Mach 5 to collect data.

Freethink asked Hermeus whether early experiments with Quarterhorse are likely to succeed. The answer? No. Failure is still the most likely outcome. “And every day that inches a little bit closer to success, a little bit closer and a little bit closer,” said the founder of Hermeus. “And there’ll be days when we go the other direction, where we learned something we didn’t know, where we fail in a test, and we take a step back. We just keep moving, keep moving a little bit by bit, until we will this into existence.”

Watch on Freethink.com ► https://www.freethink.com/series/challengers/commercial-hypersonic-flight.

Continue reading “This Mach-5 engine will do what no other can | Challengers” | >

Engineers from UNSW Sydney have successfully converted a diesel engine to run as a hydrogen-diesel hybrid engine—reducing CO2 emissions by more than 85% in the process.

The team, led by Professor Shawn Kook from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, spent around 18 months developing the hydrogen-diesel direct injection dual-fuel system that means existing diesel engines can run using 90% hydrogen as fuel.

The researchers say that any diesel engine used in trucks and power equipment in the transportation, agriculture and mining industries could ultimately be retrofitted to the new hybrid system in just a couple of months.

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New to nerfstudio? Here we walk you through a step-by-step process on how to turn your favorite capture into a trendy 3D video in minutes.

Github: github.com/nerfstudio-project/nerfstudio.
Discord: discord.gg/uMbNqcraFc.
Twitter: @nerfstudioteam.

Getting started.
0:00 Hello from nerfstudio.
0:13 Preprocess your video.
0:27 Launching training and viewer.

Viewer basics.
1:03 Viewer scene introduction.
1:20 Moving around in viewer.
1:38 Overview of Controls Panel — train speed/output options.
1:55 Overview of Scene Panel — toggle visibility.

Creating camera trajectories.
2:16 Creating a custom camera path.
2:38 Camera spline options — cycle, speed, smoothness.
2:57 Camera options — move, add, view.

Rendering a video.

Continue reading “Nerfstudio Viewer Tutorial” | >

WEIGHT IS ONE of the biggest banes for car designers and engineers. Batteries are exceedingly heavy and dense, and with the internal combustion engine rapidly pulling over for an electric future, the question of how to deal with an EV’s added battery mass is becoming all the more important.

But what if you could integrate the battery into the structure of the car so that the cells could serve the dual purpose of powering the vehicle and serving as its skeleton? That is exactly what Tesla and Chinese companies such as BYD and CATL are working on. The new structural designs coming out of these companies stand to not only change the way EVs are produced but increase vehicle ranges while decreasing manufacturing costs.

Auto companies are designing ways to build a car’s fuel cells into its frame, making electric rides cheaper, roomier, and able to hit ranges of 620 miles.

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Prof. Ehud Pines (pictured above) is an iconoclast. What else can you call a scientist who spent 17 years doggedly pursuing the solution to an over 200-year-old chemistry problem that he felt never received a satisfying answer using methods no other scientist thought could lead to the truth? Now, he is vindicated as the prestigious Angewandte Chemie journal published a cover article detailing how his experiment was replicated by another research group while being x-rayed to reveal the solution Prof. Pines has argued for all along.

The question at hand is: How does a proton move through water? In 1,806, Theodor Grotthuss proposed his theory, which became known as the Grotthuss Mechanism. Over the years, many others attempted an updated solution realizing that strictly speaking, Grotthuss was incorrect, but it remained the standard textbook answer. Until now.

Prof. Ehud Pines suggested, based on his experimental studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the Department of Chemistry, together with his PhD student Eve Kozari, and theoretical studies by Prof. Benjamin Fingerhut on the structure of Prof. Pines’ protonated water clusters, that the proton moves through water in trains of three water molecules. The proton train “builds the tracks” underneath them for their movement and then disassembles the tracks and rebuilds them in front of them to keep going. It’s a loop of disappearing and reappearing tracks that continues endlessly. Similar ideas were put forward by a number of scientists in the past, however, according to Prof. Pines, they were not assigned to the correct molecular structure of the hydrated proton which by its unique trimeric structural properties leads to promoting the Grotthuss mechanism.

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The first year of production is already sold out. Almost every major component of the car is designed, engineered, and built at Rimac weeks or months prior to each car being finished, and installed in the last phase of production – the vehicle assembly which takes about five weeks per car.

The Rimac Nevera has already won a number of awards, including being named Best Hypercar by the prestigious Robb Report, GQ and Top Gear.

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Musk hasn’t specified how many trucks, the company can roll out.

The long wait for Tesla’s Semi Trucks may have finally come to an end after CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company would begin deliveries to Pepsi Co starting December this year.

Tesla and its investors must be hopeful that the Semi Truck will herald a new age in electric trucking just as the company’s sedans did for the passenger vehicle segment. Owning a Tesla has been a matter of pride for many who took the plunge into electric vehicles way before governments could even think of electric vehicle sale mandates.

Since its unveiling in 2017, Tesla has been calling the Semi the future of trucking and has promised a whole new electrically powered beast. Here’s what Semi owners can expect with this fully electric truck.

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Amazon has announced that it will purchase 20 electric semi-trucks from Volvo Trucks to be used in its German delivery network.

Volvo Trucks has been producing electric semis since 2019, and they are continuing to expand their sales by now selling 20 electric semi-trucks to Amazon for use in Germany. The Volvo FH electric semis will be used by Amazon to complete large domestic deliveries and are expected to travel over 1 million kilometers annually.

Amazon has high expectations for its new fleet of electric-semis. Each Volvo will be expected to travel 500 kilometers daily, nearly double the Volvo FH’s 300-kilometer range. Furthermore, they will replace diesel tracks and be expected to perform well in the same role. Spokesmen from Amazon and Volvo are optimistic and see the new fleet as critical to Amazon’s efforts to decarbonize their transport system.

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