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Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 596

Sep 17, 2015

Mercedes-Benz announces plans to develop luxury driverless cars

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

CEO of parent company, Damiler, says Mercedes premium driverless cars are a ‘concrete development goal’.

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Sep 16, 2015

MIT creates diode for light, makes photonic silicon chips possible

Posted by in categories: computing, electronics, mobile phones, transportation

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are a cornerstone of consumer tech. They make thin-and-light TVs and smartphones possible, provide efficient household, handheld, and automobile illumination, and, of course, without LEDs your router would not have blinkenlights. Thanks to some engineers from MIT, though, a new diode looks set to steal the humble LED’s thunder. Dubbed a diode for light, and crafted using standard silicon chip fabrication techniques, this is a key discovery that will pave the path to photonic (as opposed to electronic) pathways on computer chips and circuit boards.

In electronics, a diode is a gate that only allows electrons to pass in one direction (and with an LED, it also emits light at the same time). In this case, the diode for light — which is made from a thin layer of garnet — is transparent in one direction, but opaque in the other. Garnet is usually hard to deposit on a silicon wafer, but the MIT researchers found a way to do it — and that’s really the meat of this discovery.

Diode for light diagramBasically, it’s now possible, with regular chip-fab tools, to create an integrated silicon circuit with optical, rather than electronic, interconnects — both internally, and between other chips. Photons, moving through the kind of transparent metamaterials that would be required to make such a circuit, move a lot faster than electrons. Furthermore, optical channels, through wavelength-division multiplexing, can carry a lot more data than electric signals. At the moment, hundreds of copper wires connect the CPU, northbridge, and memory — with on-chip photonic controllers, a motherboard might only have 10 or 20 channels.

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Sep 16, 2015

Mercedes-Benz: Concept IAA (Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile).

Posted by in category: transportation

Click on photo to start video.

Take a look at the Mercedes-Benz: Concept IAA (Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile) for a peep into our plans for the future of automotive.

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Sep 16, 2015

How 5G will Power the Future Internet of Things

Posted by in categories: internet, mobile phones, transportation

At Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco August 18th – 20th, two Intel executives discuss how 5G network capabilities will transform the way we live.

Imagine taking a trip to a cabin in the woods to get some work done and have a mini-vacation. Today, given our need for wireless connection, that’s a sketchy proposition.

You’ve got GPS in your rental car, plus your laptop, your smartphone, maybe a tablet or a smartwatch. But what if there’s no cable? What if there’s no Wi-Fi connection? What if the cellular connection is weak?

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Sep 16, 2015

Mercedes-Benz’s Future Is The “Transformer”

Posted by in categories: futurism, transportation

Intelligent aerodynamic automobile concept.

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Sep 14, 2015

Former Hyundai CEO Will Lead Google’s Self-Driving Car Initiative

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

John Krafcik takes the wheel.

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Sep 14, 2015

New York is getting wired with traffic signals that can talk to cars

Posted by in categories: internet, transportation

Behind self-driving, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is one of the biggest sea changes in transportation technology on the horizon — it could have an enormous impact on driving safety, if it’s implemented quickly and correctly. The concept is pretty simple: cars, signs, and traffic signals all communicate to one another over Wi-Fi-like airwaves, so that drivers (and automatic safety systems built into cars) have more information about the traffic and environment around them. (I got a compelling demo of V2V tech put on by Ford at CES a couple years ago, and I can say that the promise is pretty huge.)

There’s no federal rule in place for requiring V2V yet, but the US Department of Transportation is hoping to get those rules in place by the end of this year — and in the meantime, it’s rolling out huge new pilot programs to put the technology to the test. In the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, traffic signals will be equipped with V2I hardware, while up to 10,000 city-owned vehicles will be outfitted with V2V. (It’s unclear whether drivers of these vehicles will have access to the data through instrumentation, or whether it’s just being collected as part of the DOT’s ongoing V2V research.)

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Sep 14, 2015

Future Transhumanist Tech May Soon Change The Definition Of Disability

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, transhumanism, transportation

My first article for TechCrunch. The story is on disability & transhumanism:


Radical technologies around the world may soon overhaul the field of disability and immobility, which affects in some way more than a billion people around the world.

MIT bionics designer Hugh Herr, who lost both his legs in a mountain climbing accident, recently said in a TED Talk on disability, “A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled. We the people need not accept our limitation, but can transcend disability through technological innovation.”

Continue reading “Future Transhumanist Tech May Soon Change The Definition Of Disability” »

Sep 12, 2015

Automakers Will Make Automatic Braking Systems Standard in New Cars

Posted by in categories: electronics, transportation

DETROIT — Federal regulators said on Friday that 10 automakers had agreed to install automatic braking systems, which use sensors to detect potential collisions, as standard equipment in new vehicles.

But the automakers have not set a timetable for the introduction of the systems, and regulators may still seek government rules that would require the equipment as a standard feature in all cars and trucks — just as airbags were mandated a generation ago.

Anthony Foxx, the transportation secretary, said in a prepared statement that emergency braking technology could reduce traffic deaths and injuries.

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Sep 12, 2015

Silicon Valley is raiding tech academia: “Uber would like to buy your Robotics Department”

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Your next Uber driver may not be human.


Silicon Valley is raiding technology departments of universities around the U.S.—can tech academia survive?

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