This
past September, an Uber executive revealed that the company was
entertaining the idea of launching some type of flying vehicle that
could enable it to transport customers in the sky rather than on the
road
Uber will start testing flying cars in the next 3 years
This past September, an Uber executive revealed
that the company was entertaining the idea of launching some type of
flying vehicle that could enable it to transport customers in the sky
rather than on the road. The flying vehicles would be of the VTOL
variety — that is, they would be aerial vehicles that take off and land
vertically. Now the company has revealed that it will begin testing such
‘flying cars’ within the next three years, and that the testing will,
at least, take place in Dallas-Forth Worth and Dubai.
Uber announced the news in Dallas today, saying that it is entering
into partnerships with various companies to get the foundation for this
testing in place. Both Dubai and the Dallas-Fort Worth region are on
board for letting Uber test its flying vehicles, something that will
take place by the year 2020.
The move is an ambitious one for the troubled company, which has also
been dedicating ample resources towards the development of its own
self-driving car fleet. While cars on the road won’t be going anywhere
any time soon, cities have a growing problem with congested roads and
long commute times, something that causes, among other things,
environmental harm as masses of cars idle on the road.
Uber has long positioned its service as a way to help address these
issues — rather than someone taking their own vehicle out, they can
utilize the service of an Uber car which can transport many people to
their destinations in a single day. The benefits, in this regard,
improve with things like Uber’s carpooling feature, allowing multiple
customers to share the same vehicle.
Still, growing cities will need to develop new ways to handle the
number of drivers that need to get around, and that may be achieved by
taking to the skies, instead. Previously, Uber indicated that its VTOL
flying vehicles may be able to travel at more than 100MPH, operate
quietly due to electric motors, and travel more than 200 passenger-miles
on what works out to the equivalent of a single gallon of fuel. Whether
battery technology will be sufficiently developed within three years to
sustain these vehicles is yet to be seen.
SOURCE: Bloomberg
Neither
matter nor light can escape a black hole due to its intense
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cassini
huygens mission spacecraft probe nasa jpl caltech PIA21438 An
illustration of the Cassini spacecraft over Saturn's north pole with its
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Google paid its self-driving car boss $120 million — and then he left for Uber
Embattled engineer Anthony Levandowski
collected USD 120 million from Google, despite involvement with at least
one start-up that would ultimately compete with the company, according
to new legal filings.
Embattled engineer Anthony Levandowski collected USD 120 million
from Google, despite involvement with at least one start-up that would
ultimately compete with the company, according to new legal filings.
Levandowski
was already trying to staff up his competing start-up, Otto, while he
worked at Google — but he waited until he got his payout to make the
details of Otto public, a lawsuit said.
Levandowski is at the
nexus of a battle between what is now Alphabet's self-driving car
company, Waymo, and ride-hailing start-up Uber. Waymo alleges that
Levandowski stole thousands of documents and trade secrets for Otto,
which went on to be rapidly acquired by Uber.
New court documents
allege that Levandowski's conflicts of interest may have been much
deeper. Not only did Levandowski try to poach Google employees, the
lawsuit said, but he may have been involved in competing side businesses
called Odin Wave and Tyto Lidar.
Levandowski denied having
ownership interested in Odin Wave when questioned in mid-2013, the
lawsuit said, and also helped Google do due diligence for a potential
acquisition of Tyto — a company that Otto later acquired.
"Throughout
this process, Levandowski never disclosed a relationship with Tyto and
its employees," the lawsuit said. "Google now believes that Levandowski
in fact had a relationship with Tyto and its employees that conflicted
with Levandowski's duties to Google."
Levandowski hasn't been the
only engineer to get hefty sums from Waymo. In the suit, Google said it
has had to provide incentives" to convince numerous other employees not
to follow Levandowski to Uber. Uber and Waymo did not immediately
respond to requests for comment.
Bloomberg has previously reported
that high paychecks prompted attrition at Google's car project.
Bloomberg also reported that Levandowski had a long history of side
projects during his time at Google, many sanctioned by founders Larry
Page and Sergey Brin.
"Anthony is a rogue force of nature," former
Google self-driving car executive told Bloomberg. "Each phase of his
Google career he had a separate company doing exactly the same work."
Levandowski
has invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination in
the lawsuit, according to a transcript obtained by The New York Times.
Lawyers for Levandowski could no immediately be reached.
Proponents
of self-driving cars are sure they’ll help save the planet and empower
large groups of people with the freedom of mobility. But will the people
who need the technology the most ever be able to afford it? Not anytime
soon.
You’ve
seen the video on YouTube: Steve Mahan, a visually impaired,
conservatively dressed, white-haired gentleman with a walking cane and
Ben Hogan-style hat on his head, climbs behind the wheel of one of
Google’s nautical blue-colored self-driving Toyota Prius. He makes a
“Run for the Border.” Then Mahan, who has lost 95% of his eyesight,
picks up his dry cleaning, takes a joy ride around his middle class
looking community while munching on tacos. Then he returns to his
driveway, exits the car (tacos in hand), and heads off camera toward the
house, safe and sound, never having touched a steering wheel, brake or
accelerator.
The clip is amusing and
tremendously uplifting–showing how autonomous driving technology can
empower a person, giving them a sense of independence and freedom to do
whatever they want, when they want to do it. Problem is, most Americans
(disabled or not) can’t afford such a vehicle, even if one were
available, let alone the advanced driving assist systems that are
available to the public now, and serve as the building blocks of
autonomous automobiles. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association,
the average American spends around $30,000 on a new car or light truck.
In contrast, Interest.com’s 2013 Car Affordability Study says that the
average American can only afford to spend $20,806 on a car. The featured
Prius, which starts at around $24,000, is optioned up with a $75,000 to
$80,000 Velodyne LIDAR system, visual and radar sensors estimated to
cost about $10,000, and a nearly $200,000 GPS array. Not to mention the
cost of the driving computer and software. Put into context: The
staid-looking Toyota Prius Mahan “drove” around in the video costs more
than a Ferrari 599. At $320,000, that’s an exclusive purchase, and well
above the mean cost of a car, truck or SUV. Image: Flickr user Sarah Joy
So,
who, exactly are self-driving cars for? Proponents to make fantastic
claims about autonomous vehicles and ADAS technologies, then automakers
and other advanced safety system developers turn around and charge
exorbitant prices for their creations, failing to factor in the need for
mass adoption in the plan for success.
Fairness aside, cost will
be an issue for driverless and self-driving car technologies well into
the future. To provide all the vehicle electronic functionality,
automakers must add complexity and unnecessary weight (wires, sensors
and other components/modules) to a car. This can affect the cost of the
vehicle, its performance, and how much it costs to keeping the vehicle
on the road.
According to a recent study, “Emerging Technologies:
Autonomous Cars—Not If, But When,” IHS Automotive forecasts that the
price for the self-driving technology will add between $7,000 and
$10,000 to a car’s sticker price in 2025, a figure that will drop to
around $5,000 in 2030 and about $3,000 in 2035, the year when the report
says most self-driving vehicles will be operated completely independent
from a human occupant’s control.
“It’s a chicken and egg thing,
the have’s versus the have not’s,” says John Absmeier, director for
Delphi’s Silicon Valley Innovation Center. “When people start buying the
technology the cost will come down, but the cost has to come down
before most people will buy it. Consequently, [SDC technology] will come
in through the luxury, high-end market and penetrate down as economies
of scale kick in.”
The incremental decreases in cost are projected
based on the adoption of the technology (i.e., projected increases in
sales of cars with SDC technology). IHS predicts that annual sales
between 2025 and 2035 will jump from 230,000 to 11.8 million. That’s
about 9% of all the world’s auto sales in 2035. Seven million of those
11.8 million vehicles will rely on a mix of driver input and autonomous
control, with the remaining 4.8 million vehicles relying entirely on
computers to get around. Combined with vehicles from previous model
years, IHS also forecasts that there will be 54 million autonomous
vehicles on the road by 2035. When will sales of autonomous cars
outnumber those of conventional cars? IHS expects this tipping point to
occur by 2050. By then, IHS says the majority of vehicles sold and those
in use are likely to be autonomous, with conventional vehicles becoming
increasingly rare.
Companies like
Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have a leg up on the competition in this
case simply because their clientele is more affluent. “Our customers
demand the latest technologies and are willing to pay for them,
especially when it comes to safety technologies,” says Rupert Stadler,
Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Audi AG. “We are simply giving
them what they want, and anticipating what the customer of tomorrow will
demand from us.”
However, more mainstream brands, such as Ford,
are looking more pragmatically at the bottom line. “We are not jumping
into the self-driving arena simply to prove we can make a vehicle that
can pilot itself under controlled situations,” says Paul Mascarenas,
Chief Technical Officer and Vice President of Research and Advanced
Engineering at Ford. “We know we can do that. We need to deliver it in
the most efficient, cost-effective way possible, and still have an
excellent user experience.” Image: Flickr user Ant Jackson
The
consensus in the automobile industry is that Google’s idealistic
approach to the driverless car won’t bring the price of these
technologies down far enough in price to make its car a mass-market
proposition. So most outfits are working on less exotic but much cheaper
approaches to the driverless problem: They’re looking at ways to
consolidate and simplify the hardware.
“We are looking into
miniaturization, sensor fusion and integration of controllers, [to name a
few technologies],” explains Ford’s Mascarenas. “Anything that will
make the technology more accessible.”
Delphi’s has been working on
a new type of controller that takes into consideration all three of
Ford’s concerns. Its “multi-domain controller” is designed to take all
of the data collected–from the body and security of the vehicle up
through the active safety systems — and aggregate it into one
controller, one processor that will then make the driving decisions and
direct all the subsystems and sub-controllers in the vehicle. By
combining all of the sensor inputs and processors into box, instead of
hundreds, Delphi’s controller will bring down the weight of the vehicle
(improving fuel efficiency and performance) as well as complexity of the
system (making it easier to maintain.) In addition, it makes the
vehicle cheaper to build; fewer ECUs and the corresponding wire
harnesses to drive the costs up.
Another popular target for most
ADAS developers is the sensor array. Tesla’s Elon Musk believes the
LIDAR/RADAR sensor approach is too expensive. “It’s better to have an
optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure
out what’s going on just by looking at things,” he recently told
Bloomberg.
Mobileye, a technology firm headquartered in the
Netherlands, is aiming to get most of the functionality into cars for
much less, with equipment that cost hundreds of dollars, rather than the
tens of thousands. It currently focuses on helping cars avoid
collisions and pedestrians, as well as drifting out of lanes – most of
the advanced safety features currently rolling out in higher end autos.
The longer-term goal, is more ambitious: a semiautonomous vehicle that
can handle many, but not all, driving functions without driver input. To
that end, it has developed a low-cost alternative to expensive sensor
arrays that uses a single camera and a “system-on-chip.” It works as a
third eye for the driver by supporting them in performing routine
driving tasks (e.g., distance keeping, pedestrian identification,
traffic-sign recognition) and provide timely warnings (e.g., lane
departure warning, forward collision warning) in dangerous situations.
Though he wouldn’t discuss exact prices has not been announced, Ziv
Aviram, a co-founder and the company’s chief executive, told the New
York Times that it is the “most cost-efficient system that’s out there.”
One thing is for certain, the optical approach is currently more
accessible, and Mr. Aviram is working with three powerhouses in the
autonomous business: BMW, General Motors, and Volvo.
Driverless,
self-driving, and autonomous driving technologies do have the potential
to deliver improved safety and comfort for the driver and passengers,
while reducing the vehicle’s impact on the environment around it and
reducing the cost to the driver. But don’t expect to see a scene the
like the one in Google’s video—where a blind neighbor drives by while
munching a taco—anytime soon in your neighborhood. In reality, most
people in Steve’s positionb who were head of household reported an
annual household income of $25,550, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
Currently, the technology package in the Infiniti Q50 that includes
adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, lane keeping systems,
and adaptive steering, costs an additional $6,600 above the base sticker
price of around $37.000. Mercedes-Benz driver assist package costs
around $3,000, but the base car costs just north of $92,000.
NASA
is planning to establish a deep space gateway in the orbit of the Moon
within the first few missions. The spaceport will be a gateway to deep
space and lunar surface.
(From left) Vasu Siddeswara Kalangi, Jijo Abraham and Rahul Nair
developed graphene oxide membranes that do not swell when immersed in
water. This allowed the graphene oxide sheets to sieve common salts
present in seawater.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The pore size in the membrane can be precisely controlled, which can
sieve common salts out of salty water and make it safe to drink,
researchers say
Researchers, including one of Indian origin, have developed a
graphene-based sieve capable of removing salt from seawater, an advance
that may provide clean drinking water for millions of people.
When
immersed in water, graphene-oxide membranes become slightly swollen and
smaller salts flow through the membrane along with water, while larger
ions or molecules are blocked.
Researchers from University of
Manchester in the U.K. have now successfully developed graphene
membranes and found a strategy to avoid the swelling of the membrane
when exposed to water.
The pore size in the membrane can be
precisely controlled, which can sieve common salts out of salty water
and make it safe to drink, they said.
When the common salts are dissolved in water, they always form a ‘shell’ of water molecules around the salt molecules.
This allows the tiny capillaries of the graphene-oxide membranes to block the salt from flowing along with the water.
Water
molecules are able to pass through the membrane barrier and flow
anomalously fast which is ideal for application of these membranes for
desalination, researchers said.
“Realisation of scalable membranes
with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step
forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of
desalination technology,” said Rahul Nair, professor at University of
Manchester.
“The membranes are not only useful for desalination,
but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new
opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of
filtering out ions according to their sizes,” said Jijo Abraham of
University of Manchester.
The research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
