Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: transportation – Page 398

Waiting in a service station waiting room purgatory one day, Victor Darolfi had a simple thought. “I sat at America’s Tires for three hours and thought, hey, we use robots to put tires on at the factory,” the founder explains. “Why don’t we bring robots into the service industry?”

The notion was the first seed behind RoboTire, the Bay Area-based robotics company, which the former Spark Robotics CEO founded in October 2018. Now ready to come out of stealth as part of the latest batch of Y Combinator startups, RoboTire has already generated interest in the industry for its ability to change car tires in a fraction of the time of most mechanics.

“We can do a set of four tires, put in to pull out, in 10 minutes,” Darolfi explains. “It normally takes about 60 minutes for a human operator to do a set of four. Some can go faster, but they really can’t do that eight hours a day.”

Read more | >

The sophistication of autonomous systems currently being developed across various domains and industries has markedly increased in recent years, due in large part to advances in computing, modeling, sensing, and other technologies. While much of the technology that has enabled this technical revolution has moved forward expeditiously, formal safety assurances for these systems still lag behind. This is largely due to their reliance on data-driven machine learning (ML) technologies, which are inherently unpredictable and lack the necessary mathematical framework to provide guarantees on correctness. Without assurances, trust in any learning enabled cyber physical system’s (LE-CPS’s) safety and correct operation is limited, impeding their broad deployment and adoption for critical defense situations or capabilities.

To address this challenge, DARPA’s Assured Autonomy program is working to provide continual assurance of an LE-CPS’s safety and functional correctness, both at the time of its design and while operational. The program is developing mathematically verifiable approaches and tools that can be applied to different types and applications of data-driven ML algorithms in these systems to enhance their autonomy and assure they are achieving an acceptable level of safety. To help ground the research objectives, the program is prioritizing challenge problems in the defense-relevant autonomous vehicle space, specifically related to air, land, and underwater platforms.

The first phase of the Assured Autonomy program recently concluded. To assess the technologies in development, research teams integrated them into a small number of autonomous demonstration systems and evaluated each against various defense-relevant challenges. After 18 months of research and development on the assurance methods, tools, and learning enabled capabilities (LECs), the program is exhibiting early signs of progress.

Read more | >

Related: Sikorsky-Boeing’s SB-1 Defiant Helicopter Prototype Impresses Leaders in Demo

Defiant strikes an intimidating silhouette with its prominent X2 technology, which features a coaxial rotor system and a large rear propeller that replaces the tail rotor found on conventional helicopters.

Sikorsky-Boeing officials said the new aircraft design will be capable of flying at speeds of more than 200 knots, or 230 miles per hour, and maneuvering like a fine-tuned sports car.

Read more | >

CEO Elon Musk congratulated the Tesla team after the Model 3 got 350 miles of range on a single charge in a new test on range mode.

Officially, Tesla Model 3 Long Range had a range of 310 miles on a single charge, but Tesla has found some optimizations in recent months – leading to an increase of EPA-rated range to 322 miles.

Now Consumer Reports conducted its own test of the car – confirming the EPA rating.

Read more | >

#Israeli-made transportation app Moovit is continuing its global expansion and now provides its #urban mobility service in a total of 100 countries.

Moovit uses up to six billion anonymous data points daily, the company says, “to add to the world’s largest repository of transit and urban mobility data.” In addition to its popular app, the Ness Ziona-headquartered company also provides analytics platforms to cities, transit authorities and businesses, enabling optimized planning and operations for residents and employees.

“Urban mobility is the lifeline to jobs, healthcare, and education, so we are so proud that in just a few years Moovit is now providing service to millions of users in 100 countries, helping them get from A to B with confidence and convenience,” said Moovit co-founder and CEO Nir Erez.

“We have grown drastically, from offering a consumer app, to also now licensing a multitude of MaaS solutions to cities, governments, and transit agencies. We are also glad to see the likes of Uber, Microsoft, and Cubic choosing Moovit’s high-quality MaaS platform to power their mobility offering.

Moovit also announced the appointment of Uli Gal-Oz as the company’s new vice-president of business development. Gal-Oz, who most recently served as vice-president of business development at Magisto prior to its $200 million acquisition by Vimeo, will be tasked with overseeing Moovit’s initiatives with strategic partners and customers — including Uber, Microsoft and Cubic.

Read more | >

How do you make “environmentally friendly cars” by destroying the environment. This is really uncool. “What would Greta Do?” Environment activists had managed to halt the felling of the trees two days ago, arguing that Tesla’s Gigafactory would affect local wildlife and water supply. However Tesla is said to plant 3 trees for every one it cuts down. Is that good for the wildlife in the forest and the water table?

A high court in Berlin has allowed Tesla to continue clearing a 92 hectare forest for its massive Gigafactory. The court rejected pleas from environment activists and said that its decision was final.

Read more | >

Researchers at Keio University and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan have recently introduced a new design for a terahertz wave radar based on a technique known as leaky-wave coherence tomography. Their paper, published in Nature Electronics, could help to solve some of the limitations of existing wave radar.

The use of , particularly millimeter-wave radar, has increased significantly over the past few years, particularly in the development of smart and self-driving vehicles. The distance and angular resolutions of radar are typically limited by their bandwidth and wavelength, respectively.

Terahertz waves, which have higher frequencies and shorter wavelengths than millimeter waves, allow for the development of radar systems with a smaller footprint and higher resolution. As wavelengths become shorter, however, the attenuation resulting from wave diffraction rapidly increases.

Read more | >