Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2016

Scientists have developed a novel system that recovers energy normally lost in industrial processes.

Each year, energy that equates to billions of barrels of oil is wasted as heat lost from machines and industrial processes. Recovering this energy could reduce energy costs. Scientists from Australia and Malaysia have developed a novel system that is designed to maximize such recovery.

Continue reading “Energy recycling heats up” »

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled a rugged new EQC 4×4 electric off-road SUV to show that electric vehicles can also be adventure vehicles.

That’s actually very much Rivian’s mission with the R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV, which it describes as “adventure vehicles.”

As for Mercedes-Benz, instead of making a new vehicle, they decided to modify their existing EQC electric SUV.

Artificial intelligence has arrived in our everyday lives—from search engines to self-driving cars. This has to do with the enormous computing power that has become available in recent years. But new results from AI research now show that simpler, smaller neural networks can be used to solve certain tasks even better, more efficiently, and more reliably than ever before.

An international research team from TU Wien (Vienna), IST Austria and MIT (USA) has developed a new artificial intelligence system based on the brains of tiny animals, such as threadworms. This novel AI-system can control a vehicle with just a few artificial neurons. The team says that system has decisive advantages over previous deep learning models: It copes much better with noisy input, and, because of its simplicity, its mode of operation can be explained in detail. It does not have to be regarded as a complex “black box”, but it can be understood by humans. This new deep learning model has now been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Humans are innately able to adapt their behavior and actions according to the movements of other humans in their surroundings. For instance, human drivers may suddenly stop, slow down, steer or start their car based on the actions of other drivers, pedestrians or cyclists, as they have a sense of which maneuvers are risky in specific scenarios.

However, developing robots and autonomous vehicles that can similarly predict human movements and assess the risk of performing different actions in a given scenario has so far proved highly challenging. This has resulted in a number of accidents, including the tragic death of a pedestrian who was struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in March 2018.

Researchers at Stanford University and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have recently developed a framework that could prevent these accidents in the future, increasing the safety of autonomous vehicles and other robotic systems operating in crowded environments. This framework, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, combines two tools, a machine learning algorithm and a technique to achieve risk-sensitive control.

My hero my love.

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a rather interesting announcement for all-electric vehicle enthusiasts in India, when he mentioned that Tesla is planning on entering the Indian automobile market in 2021. The announcement comes after years of waiting for the Indians to get their hands on a Tesla, and it definitely has got the public buzzing with excitement. Now, Musk has also stated that Tesla will be coming up with a Booking Order Configurator for the Indian customers which will be going live in January 2021.

Tesla is updating the interior of the Model 3 to let owners lock their Sentry Mode/TeslaCam storage device in the glovebox.

Sentry Mode is Tesla’s integrated surveillance system inside its vehicles using the Autopilot cameras around the car to record potential vandalism or other incidents.

Tesla owners have to plug a storage device in one of the USB ports in the center console and footage recorded by Sentry Mode and TeslaCam, the automaker’s dashcam feature, will be stored on it.

The cargo ship of the future is coming.

A wind-powered super sailboat could change how we ship cargo, reducing energy-related carbon emissions in a method still used by 90 percent of manufactured goods. The Wallenius Marine OceanBird can carry 7,000 cars at a time and is powered totally by wind.

Continue reading “This Wind-Powered Super Sailboat Will Carry 7,000 Cars Across the Atlantic” »

Tesla is looking into moving “current and future vehicle programs” to steer-by-wire with a new motor, geartrain, and chassis team in Austin, Texas.

Over the last few months, we have been reporting on how Tesla plans to establish new teams in Austin that are not directly related to the new Gigafactory under construction.

For example, we previously reported on Tesla building a new video game and user interface team in Austin.

Mankind has mastered the art of flight for well over a century, and the concept has become so normalized that we tend to take for granted this amazing accomplishment, but as advanced as modern airplanes are, we are still not much closer to developing a vehicle that can travel as well on land as it can in the air. The concept of a flying car has haunted engineers for decades, and companies such as Hyundai have dedicated some serious research and development to make this dream come true. But now an Italian upstart named Firenze has come up with a new and exciting concept that will be powered by the same electric motors that power the Tesla Model S.