Urban air mobility (UAM) company HT Aero continues to make progress toward the “flying car” it has promised to deliver by 2024. XPeng Huitian (aka HT Aero) recently posted a video to Weibo demonstrating an eVTOL prototype taking off, flying around, and being maneuvered like a car. It has the XPeng Motors steering wheel and everything – check it out.
HT Aero is the rebranded name of XPeng Huitian, a majority-owned entity of XPeng Inc. and founder He Xiaopeng. Since its foundation in 2013, HT Aero has conducted over 15,000 safely manned flights with the goal of combining automotive and aerospace technologies to develop safe, domestic electric flying vehicles at scale.
This began with the T1 eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) vehicle in 2019, followed by the X1 in 2020, which appears to be the model demonstrated in the video below, given that it doesn’t have a roof like the X2.
A leaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.
The unprecedented leak to the Guardian of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – lays bare the ethically questionable practices that fuelled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports.
The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who tried to force the cab-hailing service into cities around the world, even if that meant breaching laws and taxi regulations.
U.K.’s Reaction Engines has revealed the start of a new testing campaign to expand the performance envelope of their high-Mach propulsion technology. Over the coming weeks, the company hopes to prove that its technology could enable current jet engines to operate from takeoff up through Mach 4 and beyond.
The new tests are being conducted in conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as a part of the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) Program at the Department of Defense. The FCT program is administered by the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering for Advanced Capabilities and is focused on the discovery, assessment, and testing of leading foreign technology with the potential to satisfy U.S. Defense technical demands. The program seeks high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) technologies that could rapidly and economically satisfy current and emerging requirements.
“FCT demonstrates U.S. commitment to a ‘two-way street’ for defense procurements with both allied and friendly nations. Reaction Engines technology is world-class and is a great fit for the FCT program,”describes William Reed, the Air Force FCT manager.
Every week we will update you about the Robotic news in Japan.
Living Human Skin for Robots. From action heroes to villainous assassins, biohybrid robots made of both living and artificial materials have been at the center of many sci-fi fantasies, inspiring today’s robotic innovations. It’s still a long way until human-like robots walk among us in our daily lives, but scientists from Japan are bringing us one step closer by crafting living human skin on robots. The method developed not only gave a robotic finger skin-like texture, but also water-repellent and self-healing functions. “The finger looks slightly ‘sweaty’ straight out of the culture medium,” says first author Shoji Takeuchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. “Since the finger is driven by an electric motor, it is also interesting to hear the clicking sounds of the motor in harmony with a finger that looks just like a real one.“ Looking “real” like a human is one of the top priorities for humanoid robots that are often tasked to interact with humans in healthcare and service industries. A human-like appearance can improve communication efficiency and evoke likability. While current silicone skin made for robots can mimic human appearance, it falls short when it comes to delicate textures like wrinkles and lacks skin-specific functions.
Artificial Intelligence that Acts More Human. A research group from the Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, has taken a big step towards creating a neural network with metamemory through a computer-based evolution experiment. In recent years, there has been rapid progress in designing artificial intelligence technology using neural networks that imitate brain circuits. One goal of this field of research is understanding the evolution of metamemory to use it to create artificial intelligence with a human-like mind. Metamemory is the process by which we ask ourselves whether we remember what we had for dinner yesterday and then use that memory to decide whether to eat something different tonight. While this may seem like a simple question, answering it involves a complex process. Metamemory is important because it involves a person having knowledge of their own memory capabilities and adjusting their behavior accordingly.
Smart Robot Helps at Narita Airport. A robot equipped with artificial intelligence has been put to work to help sort out congestion problems at Narita International Airport near Tokyo. The robot is shaped like a small vehicle and stands about 1.2 meters high. The AI instantly analyzes images taken by its cameras. The robot can quickly grasp how and where congestion occurs. It gives instructions to keep order when it detects long queues blocking the way. The robot also keeps an eye out for suspicious items. It informs the command center when baggage is left unattended for too long.
