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Circa 2012


It’s okay, you’ve not clicked on “Green Plane Reports”, but every so often something from beyond the world of cars catches our attention.

This time, it’s electric flight. The concept is nothing new, and it’s even been alluded to by people like Elon Musk of Tesla, but for the time being it remains a true flight of fancy, rather than a working concept for passenger transportation.

The video above suggests one such way of making the concept workable. We’ll leave you to form your own thoughts, but we can forsee a few disadvantages.

In a new paper, the researchers explain how the robot can impressively locate and retrieve an item, even if it is covered by other objects and completely out of view of the main camera. All the robot’s owner has to do is attach RFID tags — cheap, battery-free tags that send signals to the antenna — to their valuable possessions.

“This idea of being able to find items in a chaotic world is an open problem that we’ve been working on for a few years. Having robots that are able to search for things under a pile is a growing need in industry today. Right now, you can think of this as a Roomba on steroids, but in the near term, this could have a lot of applications in manufacturing and warehouse environments,” senior author Fadel Adib explained in MIT’s statement.

Circa 2018


Inspired by the children’s TV show Transformers, engineers have developed a robot that becomes a car.

Japanese firm Brave Robotics and amusement park ride manufacturer Sansei Technologies worked together on the development.

The designers say it’s the first time a machine of this kind has been able to carry people in a functioning vehicle.

Tesla’s impressive third-quarter delivery performance overshadowed the automotive industry’s ongoing struggle with the semiconductor chip shortage. Among all of the world’s automakers, Tesla has been basically the only car company to avert the crisis as it has not had any overwhelmingly public stoppages in vehicle production. Morgan Stanley’s new investor note, drafted by lead analyst Adam Jonas, examines Tesla’s ability to avoid detrimental production stoppages, which effectively helped the company capture its best quarter in company history.

Jonas titles Morgan Stanley’s most recent investor note, “How Did Tesla Find Chips?” In all honesty, this riddle was solved during the Q2 2021 Earnings Call, where Tesla stated in its Shareholder Deck that it used a combination of in-house microcontrollers to avoid any major catastrophes in the manufacturing of its vehicles. The company wrote:

“Our team has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to react quickly and mitigate disruptions to manufacturing caused by semiconductor shortages. Our electrical and firmware engineering teams remain hard at work designing, developing and validating 19 new variants of controllers in response to ongoing semiconductor shortages.”

Boston-based company Regent has taken US$465 million in pre-orders for its super-fast electric “Seaglider.” Using the wing-in-ground effect, this 180-mph (290-km/h) beast promises twice the range of an electric aircraft, and a revolution in coastal transport.

“The speed, comfort, and navigation systems of an aircraft with the convenience, maneuverability, and affordability of a boat,” reads the Regent press release, marking approximately the first time boats have ever been called affordable or maneuverable.

So, what is this thing? Well, it’s the latest incarnation of a ground-effect vehicle, or GEV – with a couple of twists. GEVs are aircraft designed to fly so low (within one wingspan of the water’s surface) that they ride on an air pressure cushion between the wing and the surface, giving them extra lift and radically boosting their efficiency. They can’t – or at least, don’t – fly outside the ground effect, enabling them to be certified and registered as boats in certain areas.