Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Tesla Buys Grohmann Engineering
November 8th, 2016Via: Tesla: After increasing our output target to 500,000 cars per year by 2018, we began searching for the best engineering talent in automated manufacturing systems. Today, we are excited to announce that Tesla has entered into an agreement to acquire Grohmann Engineering, a world-renowned engineering company in Prüm, Germany, which will become Tesla Grohmann […]
The Pentagon’s ‘Terminator Conundrum’
October 25th, 2016Almost unnoticed outside of defense circles… I’ve been posting about this on here since 2002. 😐 Via: New York Times: Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars […]
Self Driving Truck Makes First Commercial Delivery
October 25th, 2016Via: New York Times: The futurists of Silicon Valley may not have seen this one coming: The first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer. On Tuesday, Otto, the Uber-owned self-driving vehicle operation, announced the completion of its first commercial delivery, having delivered its beer load from Fort Collins, […]
Google Co-Founder’s Reported ‘Flying Car’ Spotted Hovering in Hollister
October 25th, 2016Via: Monteray Herald: In Hollister, population 40,000, the first rule about Zee.Aero is you don’t talk about Zee.Aero. Related: Airbus Wants to Build a Self-Flying Taxi Called Vahana
Police Drones Zapping Suspects with Stun Guns: ‘The Public Is Going to Initially be Alarmed by This’
October 21st, 2016Via: Wall Street Journal: In a conference room away from the busy San Diego Convention Center floor where law-enforcement officials from around the world perused the latest police technology, a Taser employee showed some police leaders a drone, and discussed how different things could be attached to it, including a camera, a light and a […]
Tesla: Self-Driving Car Navigates Around Palo Alto, Drives Through Intersections, Finds Parking Spot
October 20th, 2016“Google’s cars drive around like that,” you might say. Yep, but you can’t buy one of those, and Google is nowhere near having a car for sale. My guess is that Tesla’s practice of iterating their AI from cars that actual customers are driving is causing their lead over everyone else to keep widening. Watching […]
Watch DARPA’s Robot Copilot Fly a Cessna
October 20th, 2016Via: Popular Mechanics: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—DARPA, that is—is currently working on a robotic copilot called the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS). The project is designed to decrease the number of airmen needed to fly military missions as a method of reducing cost. Aurora Flight Sciences recently tested the robotic arm by […]
Microsoft Speech Recognition Achieves ‘Human Parity’
October 20th, 2016Via: Newsweek: A “historic” landmark in artificial intelligence research has been reached by Microsoft, which has announced a new speech recognition technology that it claims is the first to be on par with humans. Details of the software were published this week in a paper titled ‘Achieving Human Parity in Conversational Speech Recognition,’ authored by […]
All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Hardware Capable of Level 4 Autonomy
October 19th, 2016A validation period of unspecified length will be required before the fully autonomous features become available. Here’s a sentence in the press release that’s worth noting: Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, we will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and […]
Bloomberg: Apple Rethinking Car Plans
October 17th, 2016Via: Bloomberg: Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project. Hundreds of members of the car team, which comprises about 1,000 people, have been reassigned, let go, […]
