Innovation Factory
By Sérgio Figueiredo Jr | "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" (Alan Kay)
Audi’s new technology is the beginning of the end of traffic lights
Audi has announced it is rolling out a feature in some of its new vehicles that allows them to communicate with traffic lights. It’s a neat trick …
TrafficGE is building America's first offshore wind farm with turbines twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty
The US uses an astounding amount of energy: about 97 quadrillion BTUs, or about 18% of world's total energy consumption. And demand is only going to increase over time.<p>The majority of the energy the country generates — which powers America's homes, internet, and urban infrastructure — comes from …
Wind PowerFacebook Plans to Beam Internet to Backwaters with Lasers
By detecting light in a new way, engineers can easily send data at 2.1 gigabits per second.Engineers from Facebook’s Connectivity Lab have published …
FacebookBoeing wants to bring back supersonic air travel – and take us to Mars
Boeing celebrated its 100-year anniversary by laying out plans for the future of travel<p>Boeing marked an event to celebrate its 100th anniversary by laying out new grand ambitions for the future of the company, which could see the return of supersonic air travel as well as passenger trips into space.<p>…
Robot doctors will 'absolutely' replace surgeons
<i>From helping humans live longer and hacking our performance, to repairing the body and understanding the brain, [i]WIRED Health</i> will hear from the innovators transforming this critical sector. Read all of our WIRED Health coverage here.[/i]<p>It's only a matter of time before robots replace surgeons …
UK NewsArtificial intelligence is nearly better at poker than you
Poker playing artificial intelligence has already "approached the performance" of human experts and can use "state-of-the-art methods" in its gameplay.<p>Researchers from University College London - including a staff member from DeepMind's Go defeating team - have created a series of reinforcement …
PokerWhat We Can Learn from Robots
On a crisp october day last year, Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute kicked off its 25th-anniversary celebration, as the world’s …
AlphaGo and the Declining Advantage of Big Companies
Last week, machine learning took a big leap forward when Google’s AlphaGo, a machine algorithm, beat the world champion, Lee Sedol, in the game Go. An ancient Chinese board game that dates back nearly 3,000 years, Go is played on a 19-by-19 square grid, with each player trying capture the …
IBM WatsonExclusive: In boost to self-driving cars, U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers
| WASHINGTON/DETROIT<p>U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step toward ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads.<p>The National Highway Traffic …
AutomotiveDriving a car will be illegal by 2030
Our economy will be severely impacted as millions of lorry drivers, cabbies and delivery people are put out of work. In this era of endless innovation, humanity's century-long relationship with the automobile is about to be permanently disrupted. The reason has nothing to do with millennials, Uber …
UK NewsWill LiFi Take Big Data And The Internet Of Things To A New Level?
The enormous demand for WiFi and transmissions of mass quantities of data is putting a strain on the current technologies. With the predicted exponential growth of mobile devices, by 2019 more than ten billion mobile devices will exchange 35 quintillion (1018) bytes of information each month — and …
ITSelf-driving cars will kill the auto industry
LONDON (MarketWatch) — A state-of-the-art vehicle that picks up your kids from school, and delivers them home while you finish off some work at the office. Fleets of computer-controlled vans dropping parcels off at your house. Executives sitting in comfort and catching up on some e-mail while a …
AutomotiveCarl Zeiss thinks it can make smart glasses you'll want to wear
The German company is developing lenses that can make smart glasses subtle and fashionable.<p>After the initial bubble of excitement, Google Glass was ultimately rejected by the public and sent back to the drawing board, all for one simple reason: Despite repeated attempts to tone down the design of …
Carl ZeissThe Ehang 184 is a self-piloting drone you can ride inside
Drones are currently best at carrying cameras for recording (sometimes-illicit) videos of sunsets, skyscrapers and sporting events, and, well, not much else.<p>The future, though,will probably see our skies grow increasingly cloudy with swarms of actually-useful drones: Amazon (and many others) want …
DronesThe Rise Of Thinking Machines: How IBM's Watson Takes On The World
Many people know Watson as the IBM-developed cognitive super computer that won the Jeopardy! gameshow in 2011. In truth, Watson is not actually a computer but a set of algorithms and APIs, and since winning TV fame (and a $1 million prize) IBM has put it to use tackling tough problems in every …
IBMFord and Google Could Be Making the Model T of Automated Driving
A deal between the mass-market automaker and the company furthest ahead in automated driving would accelerate adoption.In what could turn out to be a …
GoogleGoogle's Quantum Dream Machine
Physicist John Martinis could deliver one of the holy grails of computing to Google—a machine that dramatically speeds up today’s applications and …
GoogleNASA's using PlayStation VR to train its space robots
The simulated demo is designed to control humanoids on a shuttle.<p>Virtual Reality tricks the human brain. With a headset strapped on your face, you can pet a dino, visit restricted sites or even experience the horror of being devoured by a shark. But outside the realms of entertainment and news, the …
NASAGoogle's Verily is developing surgical robots
Verily Life Sciences - formerly known as Google Life Sciences - has partnered with Johnson & Johnson medical devices subsidiary Ethicon to form Verb Surgical Inc. The new company "aims to develop a comprehensive surgical solutions platform that will incorporate leading-edge robotic capabilities and …
GoogleHere’s what the world will be like in 2045, according to DARPA’s top scientists
The world is going to be a very different place in 2045.<p>Predicting the future is fraught with challenges, but when it comes to technological advances and forward thinking, experts working at the Pentagon's research agency may be the best people to ask.<p>Launched in 1958, the Defense Advanced Research …
DARPAComputer learns like a human and (sort of) beat the Turing Test
There is a fundamental difference between the way computers learn and the way humans learn. Humans can see one example and intuit what that object or symbol might be used for and quickly identify similar things. A computer can only arrive at the same conclusions after being fed thousands and …
Artificial IntelligenceMercedes-Benz Wants to Beat Google, Uber to Our Driverless Future - Recode
At a recent tour of the Mercedes-Benz research and development lab in Sunnyvale, Calif., a space meant to showcase a command of innovation for the future of transit, the luxury carmaker did something counterintuitive: It led with the past.<p>The company began with a brief history of its German …
GoogleFortune Prediction: Apple Will Buy Tesla
What better way to jump-start their electric-car project?<p><i>The staff of Fortune recently assembled its predictions for 2016. Here’s one of our forecasts.</i><p>Apple AAPL has announced plans to build an electronic car, targeting 2019. Apple could dramatically accelerate this timetable by buying Tesla TSLA . …
PredictionsHow Google Aims to Dominate Artificial Intelligence
Crafting human search algorithm may soon be over after <b>Google</b> announced a new artificial intelligence referred to as <b>RankBrain</b>. It is meant to process …
Google Aims to Make VR Hardware Irrelevant Before It Even Gets Going
Smartphones have sidelined digital cameras and other special-purpose devices. Now Google thinks mobile phones will shove virtual-reality headsets …
GoogleThe future of drones is apps — Quartz
Phones used to just call people. Then we put cameras and the internet in them, and a man in a mock turtleneck created one that revolutionized the way we communicate. You might be surprised to hear it, but we’re near a similar inflection point with drones. Right now, they’re seen either as scary, …
Unmanned Aircraft5 Cities With Driverless Public Buses On The Streets Right Now
Last week it was announced that the US will be getting its first driverless bus fleet in a Bay Area office park as soon as next year. But say you …
TransportationSelf-driving taxis will begin trials in Japan next year
Self-driving cars are a few years away from becoming a thing, right? Not in Japan, where the company Robot Taxi has announced that it'll start testing robotic taxis in 2016. A report by the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> reveals that the firm will begin by offering autonomous rides to 50 people in Kanagawa …
JapanHarvard Business School really has created the classroom of the future
Whether they’re in Beijing, Warsaw, or San Francisco, every student in Harvard’s HBX Live! virtual classroom now sits front and center.<p>(Poets&Quants) — The day’s Harvard Business School case study poses a simple question: Is Uber really worth $50 billion?<p>Bharat Anand, a Harvard strategy professor, …
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