The Innovation Report
How Self-Driving Cars Could Shape Our Future
Self-driving cars are a shared ambition among Google, Tesla, Apple, Uber and Lyft, among other automotive, tech and ridesharing companies. For Uber and Lyft specifically, it's a matter of cutting costs. However, fiscal expediency is not the main benefit of...
Uber and Lyft Can’t Rely on Driverless Cars to become Profitable
With Uber and Lyft both announcing large quarterly losses last week, it’s clear they have a long way to go to reach profitability, and analysts are increasingly focused on the long-term viability of the industry. One potential pathway is the advent and utilization of...
Choosing the Right Industrial IoT Platform For Smart Manufacturing
As a manufacturing company that is looking to leverage industrial Internet of Things for smart manufacturing, or, AI-enabled connected asset offerings, companies are faced with a plethora of platform choices. Wading through the marketing talk and figuring out what...
DeepMind’s Losses and the Future of AI
DeepMind, likely the world’s largest research-focused artificial intelligence operation, is losing a lot of money fast, more than $1 billion in the past three years. DeepMind also has more than $1 billion in debt due in the next 12 months. Does this mean that AI is...
U.S. Army Wants To Microwave Drones in Midair
The U.S. Army, as part of a broad counter-unmanned aerial systems strategy, is pushing forward with the U.S. Air Force to develop a high-powered microwave weapon. A microwave would short out the electronics of a drone in flight, causing it to crash. The weapon's broad...
Advanced Traffic Management Next Big Thing
Traffic congestion is rising in cities around the world. Contributing factors include expanding urban populations, aging infrastructure, inefficient and uncoordinated traffic signal timing and a lack of real-time data. The impacts are significant. Traffic data...
Cane-based Companion Robot Supports Mobility-impaired
Taking inspiration from the traditional cane, a team of researchers from Columbia Engineering in New York has come up with a LiDAR-enabled robotic assistant which offers light-touch support for the mobility-impaired. Dubbed Canine, the device improves the user's...
Teaching Robots to Build Their Own Tools
When the robot revolution comes, the weapons robots use to destroy us could be cobbled together from the scraps of our own society. You’ve been warned. More realistically, though, researchers like a group at Georgia Tech are trying to figure out how robots can help us...
Walmart Files Patent for Blockchain-Backed Drone Communication
Walmart has reasserted its interest in blockchain-backed drones with a recent patent application. The commerce giant filed for an application entitled “Cloning Drones Using Blockchain” in January 2019 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishing...
IBM Introduces Blockchain-based Supply Chain Verification Network
Enterprise services company IBM announced a blockchain-based supply chain verification network, aptly named "Trust Your Supplier" (TYS). In its press release, IBM said that TYS is "designed to eliminate manual time-consuming processes and help reduce the...
