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Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 394

Jul 23, 2018

New ‘trackless train’ which runs on virtual rail lines launched in China

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Is it a tram, or is it a train, or even a fancy bus?

The world’s first electric-powered ‘trackless train’ has been launched in China.

Using virtual rail lines on the streets of Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, the new Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART) system can travel up to speeds of 43 mph.

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Jul 23, 2018

What Are The New Jobs In A Human + Machine World?

Posted by in categories: business, employment, information science, robotics/AI, transportation

Interesting article on the limited future of human paid employment for AI, some thoughts.


By Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson

Superman versus Batman. Captain America versus Iron Man. Zuckerberg versus Musk?

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Jul 23, 2018

WARR Hyperloop pod hits 284 mph to win SpaceX competition

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, engineering, transportation

It was a hyperloop hat trick by a team of German engineering students at the third annual SpaceX pod competition on Sunday. WARR Hyperloop from the Technical University of Munich took home the top prize — and set a new record — with their self-propelled pod reaching a top speed of 284 mph (457 km/h).

WARR Hyperloop was one of three finalists to participate in the competition. The teams were tasked with developing a pod to travel down the 1.2-kilometer (0.75-mile) tube, as part of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision for a futuristic, high-speed transportation system. The pod that reached the maximum speed would be crowned the winner. The only other requirement was that all pods be self-propelled. In addition to WARR, the other qualifying teams were Delft University from the Netherlands and EPF Loop from Switzerland.

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Jul 22, 2018

Engine test anomaly deals setback to Boeing’s plans for Starliner space taxi

Posted by in categories: space, transportation

Boeing confirms that it experienced an anomaly last month during tests of the engines that would be used on its CST-100 Starliner space taxi in the event of a launch emergency.

The anomaly resulted in an unwanted leak of propellant, and although no hardware was destroyed, the issue is likely to contribute to further delays for NASA’s plan to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station on the Starliner.

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Jul 21, 2018

Hyperloop, the superfast ‘vacuum train,’ is coming to China

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, transportation

The super fast, futuristic transportation was first envisioned by Elon Musk in 2013. Now it’s coming to China.

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Jul 21, 2018

Transition To Autonomous Cars Will Take Longer Than You Think, Waymo CEO Tells Governors

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

The big roll out Was going to be 2022, now looking like maybe 2027. There has been some shady stuff happening in the background in the USA to hold up self driving cars. It seems the people who were set to lose a lot of money on the changeover have found ways to hold it up.


Despite the rapid accumulation of testing miles, Krafcik warned the governors not to end all of their infrastructure investments just yet. Responding to a question about the need for new parking facilities, he responded that there will be a very long period of overlap between personally owned human driven vehicles and shared automated vehicles from Waymo and others. He suggested that it might be possible to slow down on some massive parking structures but was non-committal on timelines.

With Waymo planning to launch its commercial service by the end of 2018, GM coming in 2019 and others including Zoox, Daimler and Voyage in the next 2–3 years, there will be shared automated vehicles on the road. However, these will be limited to locations where they are demonstrated to function reliably and there is a market for ride-hailing despite the optimistic projections of some investors and developers. Widespread adoption in the millions of vehicles globally is unlikely before the latter half of the 2020s.

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Jul 21, 2018

Waymo’s self-driving cars log 1 million miles on public roads in a month

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

The company’s autonomous vehicles just drove 8 million miles on public roads. What’s more, it took the company just one month to go from 7 million miles to 8 million miles driven.

“We’re driving now at the rate of 25,000 miles every day on public roads,” CEO John Krafcik said Friday while addressing the National Governors Association.

Waymo’s acceleration in logging miles with self-driving cars has picked up in the last year. In November 2017, it crossed 4 million miles. Less than a year later it’s doubled that figure.

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Jul 21, 2018

How These University Students Plan to Break the Hyperloop Speed Record

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, transportation

Delft Hyperloop is back, and it claims it’s about to break the speed record for hyperloop. As 20 teams gather in Hawthorne, California, for SpaceX’s third pod racing competition on Sunday, the Netherlands-based group could be one of the key drivers in a transportation revolution.

“Our objective is to go faster than the current record,” Clément Hienen, the team’s design engineer, tells Inverse. “For sure, we designed to break the record.”

It’s a bold claim, especially considering the wider industry. When Elon Musk first released his white paper for a vacuum-sealed-tube-based transportation system in 2013, he claimed pods could fly through at a theoretical maximum speed of 700 mph — cutting a six-hour drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco down to just 30 minutes. Musk’s own firms set a public speed record of 220 mph in August 2017, only for Richard Branson-backed Virgin Hyperloop One to beat the record with 240 mph in December 2017. Delft plans to beat both of these.

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Jul 20, 2018

$800 Million Says a Self-Driving Car Looks Like This

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Zoox has jokingly dubbed its prototype robot taxis “vaporware horseshit.”

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Jul 19, 2018

Akka pod with detachable wings would integrate aviation with public transit

Posted by in categories: engineering, transportation

Akka Technologies is developing pods with detachable wings that would integrate aviation and public transit. The AKKA Group is an engineering and technology consulting company with 16000 employees.

The detachable wings would make for vastly more efficient boarding and improve the utilization of the engines and wings.

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