Lifeboat Foundation

Nuro is focused on last-mile deliveries with its completely driverless prototype.

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A few steps ahead, BMW is designing for 2040.

Elon Musk’s latest product is the next in a long line of PR stunts for companies like Tesla, The Boring Company and more.

“Yesterday (Jan. 28), 23 African countries launched the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) initiative by the African Union (AU). ”

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The battery-powered autonomous ships will move goods across Belgium and the Netherlands, helping pull up to 23,000 polluting trucks off the road.

Planes that can fold their wings to different angles while in the air have the potential to fly faster than their peers, and NASA has recently made headway into their development. The space agency has conducted a series of test flights proving that it can control the wings it designed to move into any position and that they have aerodynamic benefits. While the technology has existed for a long time, it typically requires the use of heavy hydraulic systems. NASA’s version doesn’t need that kind of machinery: it relies on the properties of a temperature-activated material called shape memory alloy instead. Upon being heated, the alloy activates a twisting motion in the tubes serving as the wings’ actuator, moving the wings’ outer portion up to 70 degrees upwards or downwards.

The foldable wings will give typical planes like commercial airliners a way to adapt to different flight conditions. They can give pilots more control over their aircraft and could even lead to more fuel efficient flights. Planes designed to fly at supersonic speeds (faster than the speed of sound), however, will get more out of this technology.

Tesla has managed to ship several high-end electric vehicles to consumers, but commercial trucking is the company’s next big move. After showing off its design for an electric semi truck, the company has been working on an aggressive release schedule. However, the vehicle hasn’t been spotted in real life until now. A video uploaded to YouTube shows Tesla’s sleek electric semi cruising down a road in California.

There are few details to glean from this short clip (below). The original prototype trucks Tesla unveiled several months back did not have side mirrors, leading some to suspect Tesla had some fancy alternative in mind. The truck just spotted in the wild does have mirrors, though. That’s necessary for it to be street-legal, so Tesla probably just omitted the mirrors for the announcement to make the truck look cooler.

Continue reading “Tesla Semi Spotted on California Street” »

Robots can walk, talk, run a hotel … and are entirely stumped by a doorknob. Or a mailbox. Or a dirty bathtub—zzzzt, dead. Sure, the SpotMini, a doglike domestic helper from Boston Dynamics, can climb stairs, but it struggles to reliably hand over a can of soda. That’s why some roboticists think the field needs to flip its perspective. “There are two approaches to building robots,” says Maya Cakmak, a researcher at the University of Washington. “Make the robot more humanlike to handle the environment, or design the environment to make it a better fit for the robot.” Cakmak pursues the latter, and to do that, she studies so-called universal design—the ways in which buildings and products are constructed for older people or those with disabilities. Robot can’t handle the twisting staircase? Put in a ramp. As for that pesky doorknob? Make entryways motion-activated. If you want droids at your beck and call someday, start thinking about robo-fitting your digs now.

1. Wide-Open Floor Plan Any serious sans-­human housekeeping needs a wheeled robotic butler with arms, Cakmak says. That means fewer steps, plus hallways wide enough for U-turns. Oh, and hardwood floors. Thick carpeting slows a bot’s roll.

2. Visual Waypoints Factory robots work so fast in part because their world is highly structured—conveyor belt here, truck over there. So for your robo-home, create landmarks that anchor the bots in space—a promi­nent light fixture, say, that tells them, “You’re in the dining room.” (RFID tags will help bots locate smaller objects, like cleaning supplies.)

Continue reading “How to Optimize Your Home for Robot Servants” »

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