Lifeboat Foundation

Self-driving cars, trucks and buses might get the bulk of the headlines, but a team at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB) is developing a smaller kind of autonomous vehicle. With the aim of providing a relatively inexpensive alternative to owning an autonomous car, the team is creating a self-driving trike that may even open up the possibility of an automated ride-sharing network, like a bike version of Uber’s or NuTonomy’s proposed services.

In the near future, we’re going to see an increasing number of Collision Avoidance System-equipped cars on the roads. Stated simply, the technology uses an integrated forward-looking radar system to alert drivers when they’re rapidly approaching obstacles such as other vehicles. If those other vehicles are bicycles, however, their rear profile can make them difficult for the radar to detect. That’s where iLumaware’s Shield TL comes in.

Inventors Chris Mogridge and Alexis Stobbe created the device by analyzing how stealth technology works, then essentially going in the opposite direction – whereas stealth vehicles are designed to evade radar signals, the Shield is made to catch those signals and reflect them back to the cars. It does this purely via its unique shape, not emitting any actual signal itself.

In field tests, it boosted bicycles’ radar signature by up to 100 percent, and thus increased the distance at which they could be detected by Collision Avoidance Systems.

Continue reading “Simple gadget puts bikes on cars’ radar” »

The Tesla Gigafactory is key to the automaker’s planned production ramp up to 500,000 cars per year by 2018. It is expected to both significantly reduce the cost of Tesla’s battery packs, which will enable Tesla to reach the $35,000 price point for the Model 3, and to secure a large supply of battery cells.

Those two products, battery cells and battery packs, were until now the only products expected to be manufactured at the factory.

We now learn that Tesla plans to also manufacture drive units at the plant. With vehicle battery packs, the automaker will be closer to producing its entire next generation powertrains at what is expected to be the largest factory in the world by footprint.

Continue reading “Tesla is building new ‘drive unit production lines’ at the Gigafactory, will not only manufacture battery packs” »

As Uber pushes ahead with plans for self-driving cars, there are differing views on the roles of drivers in that future.

In Brief:

• Fedeli says that their electric Maserati could be released before 2020, maybe even 2019.
• The EV is expected to be a sleek, low-volume coupe, with a target market differing from the four-door Tesla Fighter

Cruising in a Maserati screams luxury, comfort, elegance. Now Maserati will be associated with energy-efficiency, too.

Today ladies and gentlemen we are able to travel beyond our solar system — May i present you The Alba Clockwork — A successful approach in dealing with previously unstable Alcubierre Drive and its effect on separating space. Previous designs would be obliterated immediately after the generator is powered and would crush upon itself. This new technology creates an energy bubble that can fend off the negative mass generated by the warp field. — Ikarus Shipyards tl;dr — Personal view on a functional Alcubierre driven vehicle with shield to fend off negative mass.

Alcubierre drive : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Continue reading “The Alba Clockwork — Shielded Alcubierre drive concept” »

As part of our regular “One Big Question” series, we put a very similar question to Steven Shladover at the University of California, Berkeley. Shladover is a research engineer who was instrumental in creating California’s PATH program (Partners for Advanced Transportation Technologies), whose mission is to “develop solutions that address the challenges of California’s surface transportation systems through advanced ideas and technologies and with a focus on greater deployment of those solutions throughout California.”

The exact question we put to Shladover and his response follows.

Despite being self-driving, big rigs will still need truckers to ride along and take control of in case of emergency situations. But some say they may be the last generation to do their jobs.

Through the past few decades of summer blockbuster movies and Silicon Valley products, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly familiar and sexy, and imbued with a perversely dystopian allure.

What’s talked about less, and has also been dwarfed in attention and resources, is human intelligence (HI).

In its varied forms — from the mysterious brains of octopuses and the swarm-minds of ants to Go-playing deep learning machines and driverless-car autopilots — intelligence is the most powerful and precious resource in existence. Our own minds are the most familiar examples of a phenomenon characterized by a great deal of diversity.

Continue reading “The combination of human and artificial intelligence will define humanity’s future” »