The Innovation Report
Smart Cities Need a Human Touch
This is a tale of two cities — Toronto and Barcelona — that may hold important lessons for others around the world. Both have big ambitions to change the way they operate but reflect very different visions of how smart cities should be run. In Toronto, citizens have...
MIT Breaks New Ground in AI with Knitting
A hot trend in artificial intelligence in recent years has been the rise of impressive fakes -- fake headshots, fake videos, fake text. Deep learning techniques, part of machine learning, have gotten better and better at taking real-world data and using it to make...
New York City’s First Self-driving Shuttle Service
New Yorkers pride themselves on having seen it all, but if there’s one thing they have yet to set their grime-coated eyeballs on, it’s hoards of self-driving cars roaming their streets. For better or worse, New York City has remained AV-free, thanks to ambivalent...
The Most Exciting Emerging IoT Application: Smart Grids
Of all emerging applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), we're most excited about smart grid technology and its potential to increase cost and energy efficiency, according to a PCMag survey. In the survey of 2,000 US consumers conducted on May 10, 24 percent of...
For Struggling Legacy Transit Systems, New Mobility Options Present Challenges and Opportunities
Despite decades of ridership and revenue growth, the country’s busiest transit systems have struggled in recent years both at the turnstile and in the farebox, even as operating costs and unmet capital needs continue to grow. Metropolitan transit agencies serving...
SpaceX ‘Rideshare’ Program Launches $2.5 M Satellites
For space tech startups and other small companies doing research, one of the biggest hurdles is actually getting to space. SpaceX is looking to change that. Today, it announced a SmallSat Rideshare Program, which will allow small satellite...
Wayne State Launches Self-driving Technology Program
Wayne State University engineering students this fall can enroll in classes on autonomous driving and mobility fundamentals. The Center for Advanced Mobility is a product of the university's college of engineering and the Michigan Mobility Institute, an...
Amazon Delivery Robots on the streets in California
Amazon has officially rolled out its last-mile delivery robots in a Southern California testbed. Called Scout, the delivery robot is designed to autonomously ferry parcels from urban distribution points to Amazon Prime customers, removing the need for vans and...
JPMorgan Picks AI Over Humans to Write Ads
According to the bank, an AI-generated, pilot Chase promotion titled “LIMITED TIME OFFER: We’ll reward you with $5 Cash Back when you go paperless” generated nearly double the “unique clicks” compared with JPMorgan Chase copywriters’ original “Go paperless and earn $5...
Branson-backed Cryptocurrency Firm Takes on Coinbase
Blockchain, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency wallet platforms, says it’s launched a digital currency exchange aimed at delivering “lightning-fast” trades. The company’s exchange, called The PIT, is the result of a behind-the-scenes effort led by a team of...
