“Amazon is definitely serious about delivering its goods by an autonomous air force.”–Steven Levy
Autonomous cars. Self-navigating boats. Self-flying drones. Ah, if only there was a self-writing blog; I would sleep in more often. The vehicles of the future are all over the news this week. Let’s catch up.
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Future Transport (autonomous, electric, etc.)–According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 80% of the world’s urban buses will be electric by 2040. They also see 28% of all new car sales as electric by 2030.
Soon to be numbered?
–In December 2015, the FAA announced rules to require all flying drones over a certain size to be registered. Now a new report, also from Bloomberg, suggests that they want to take the regulations a step further, and require license plates.
—MIT, ever in the forefront of just about everything and anything autonomous and robotic, has a new invention. It’s a 3-D printed autonomous boat. The hope is it might help clear up urban road congestion. No mention yet of urban waterway congestion, though.
–While we’re talking about MIT, they have a new technology for drones, too. Its a virtual reality environment to train drones to maneuver through obstacles without putting the real world at risk.
–Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk don’t see eye-to-eye on the existential threats of artificial intelligence. But they do agree on the life-saving potential of A.I. when used to power self-driving cars.
Falcon Heavy launch. Image credit: SpaceX
Space Commerce–Elon Musk aims big; even too big, at times. But when it comes to space commerce, his SpaceX company is apparently achieving big. An analysis by Next Big Future finds that his Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets may be as much as 15 years ahead of other competitors is the commercial space race, and as much as 10 years ahead of China’s space agency.
Privacy–Facebook is apparently playing a proverbial “both sides against the middle” when it comes to talking privacy with the government. On the one hand, Mark Zuckerberg promises congress and the EU parliament better safeguards of user data privacy. On the otherhand, he’s selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies
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