The Innovation Report
This Swarm of Robots Gets Smarter as It Works
In a Hong Kong warehouse, a swarm of autonomous robots works 24/7. They're not just working hard, they're working smart; as they operate, they get better at their job. The Autonomous Mobile Robots were developed by Chinese startup Geek+. As they move around the...
Space Embrace: Astronauts and Robots Work Together to Service ISS
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, according to one of the three laws of robotics imagined by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. On board humanity's only outpost in space, this obedience has turned into cooperation. Astronauts and robots are...
Setting the Airways for Urban Air Mobility
Flying drones are doing great things today, from powerline inspection to security surveillance to precision agriculture (fertilizer and pesticide application). These drones have evolved from remotely piloted to fully autonomous, where the user programs waypoints and...
Artificial Intelligence Understanding Fishy Behavior
Artificial intelligence has for the first time predicted the reproductive behavior of yellowtail kingfish by tracking their movements as part of new research revealed on #WorldOceanDay. The new study, published in Movement Ecology, used machine learning...
Self-Driven Women Take The Wheel In Autonomous Tech
The self-driving vehicle industry may be young, just a bit over a decade old, but already a meaningful trend is taking shape: it’s proving to be more open to women CEOs and founders–including women of color–than the broader tech industry and for U.S. companies...
Volkswagen Floats Idea: Pay-Per-Use Self-Driving Cars
Volkswagen’s latest idea is to offer autonomous vehicle rides on a pay-per-use basis. Similar to robotaxis, the automotive OEM would offer the service as a new way to generate revenue from those consumers who are unwilling or unable to buy a self-driving car on their...
Will Your Autonomous Car Abandon You If You Miss Payments?
More than 1,400 autonomous vehicles from more than 80 companies are being tested on U.S. roads. As they continue to make headlines, their presence raises a few questions about how they might change society. These hypotheticals range from serious to...
AVs ‘Are a Switch-off’
It seems that many motorists enjoy driving too much or are else suspicious of self-driving cars, according to a major study. LESS than one in 10 UK motorists would feel safe in a fully self-driving vehicle, findings of a large survey suggest. And only 12 per cent...
California Permits Autonomous Cars to Charge Passengers
The business of autonomous vehicles is ticking away at a snail’s pace. All the players want to be the first to get their vehicles on the road, but a completely autonomous vehicle hasn’t been cleared for consumers. A small step was taken recently in California when one...
An Investment With a Big Return
The U.S. government used to devote a much larger share of the country’s resources to investing in the future. Every year from the 1950s through the ’70s, federal spending on research and development equaled at least 1 percent of G.D.P. The share peaked above 2 percent...
