Otto's California Truck Testing May Depend on Whether Drivers Keep a Foot on the Accelerator or Not When Otto first began testing its technology in California last year, a co-founder of the company sought to assure regulators it was developing driver-assistance systems on the state's public roads and not self-driving semi trucks. Otto, which hopes to develop fully self-driving trucks, would not be required to obtain an autonomous-testing permit from the state if it was only testing driver-assistance features. But it would be Read More ... Places: Americas North America United States West Pacific California Why is Ford investing $1 billion over five years in a Pittsburgh startup called Argo AI? It's looking to gain an edge in self-driving car technology in the four-year countdown to 2021. That's when Ford has said it will be shipping cars with autonomous driving. Several other automakers said in 2016 they'd have self-driving cars within five years, too.

MIT announced today that it's developed a speech recognition chip capable of real world power savings of between 90 and 99 percent over existing technologies. Voice technology has, of course, become nearly ubiquitous in mobile devices, thanks to the exponential growth of smart assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Home – but the new chip could help branch out in much simpler electronics. The team gives IoT devices a potential use case – devices designed to go months on end without charging or changing batteries. Speech input will become a natural interface for many wearable applications and intelligent devices. The miniaturization of these devices will require a different interface than touch or keyboard.

Up, up and away: Dubai hopes to have a passenger-carrying drone regularly buzzing through the skyline of this futuristic city-state in July. The arrival of the Chinese-made EHang 184 -- which already has had its flying debut over Dubai's iconic, sail-shaped Burj al-Arab skyscraper hotel -- comes as the Emirati city also has partnered with other cutting-edge technology companies, including Hyperloop One. The question is whether the egg-shaped, four-legged craft will really take off as a transportation alternative in this car-clogged city already home to the world's longest driverless metro line. Mattar al-Tayer, the head of Dubai's Roads & Transportation Agency, announced plans to have the craft regularly flying at the World Government Summit. Before his remarks on Monday, most treated the four-legged, eight-propeller craft as just another curiosity at an event that views itself as a desert Davos.

SEOUL: Hyundai Motor Group has hired a former General Motors researcher to oversee its centre to develop fully autonomous vehicles, joining other automakers and Silicon Valley giants in accelerating efforts on the fast-growing technology. Lee Jin-woo, 47, who has previously led autonomous driving technology development at General Motors (GM) for more than a decade, will head the newly established Intelligent Safety Technology Centre – a combined research body for Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors – starting on Feb 13. "The new centre will not only enhance existing Advanced Drive Assistance System technologies but also conduct research into artificial intelligence related self-driving car technologies with the aim of commercializing those technologies," Hyundai Motor said in a statement on Feb 13. Hyundai Motor and Kia, together the world's fifth-largest automaker, aim to develop highly automated vehicles by 2020 and fully autonomous vehicles by 2030. However, experts say Hyundai needs to do more to catch up with rivals in the self-driving car race. Earlier, Ford Motor Co announced plans to invest US$1bil (RM4.44bil) over the next five years in autonomous vehicle tech firm Argo AI, while GM made a billion-dollar bet a year ago with its acquisition of Silicon Valley self-driving startup Cruise Automation.

When Japanese mobile phone company SoftBank offered 1000 of its emotionally intelligent Pepper robots for the consumer market last summer, the entire run sold out in under a minute. At CES this year, SoftBank announced that IBM would be bringing Watson's artificial intelligence to Pepper, a bid to ready the robot for broad adoption in the home. Now SoftBank is planning to branch into the U.S. At Google IO today, the company announced that it's opening up a new developer portal and adding SDK Android Studio to enable the development of custom applications for Pepper, continuing to evolve it's capabilities ahead of its U.S. launch, which it's planning later this year. "We'll also be announcing the opening of SoftBank's U.S. office, headquartered in San Francisco, which will be driving the efforts surrounding the launch of Pepper in the U.S.," a company spokesman told me. Today's announcement came along with a demonstration of Pepper's functionality and features for developers.

Intensix raises $8.3M for machine-learning tech to head off ICU complications Intensix, which is harnessing machine learning in the ICU, reeled in an $8.3 million Series A. The funds are pegged for the expansion of its sales and marketing ops in North America as well as further development of its predictive analytics platform. The Intensix platform applies machine learning to the early detection of life-threatening complications in intensive care. A proliferation of structured and unstructured ICU data--from vital signs to historical and demographic data--goes into the system, is run through a set of models and results in predictions, CEO Gal Salomon said. ICU staff and management could use these predictions to head off deterioration before it happens. Studies have shown that the tech could potentially save lives, reduce the length of hospital stays and lower costs, the company said in a statement.

Ford Motor Co. says it's investing $1 billion over the next five years in a Pittsburgh startup called Argo AI to develop the virtual-driver system for Ford's autonomous vehicles. Argo AI was founded only a few weeks ago by CEO Bryan Salesky, who directed hardware development for Google's self-driving cars; and chief operating officer Peter Rander, who led Uber's program to develop self-driving cars. Salesky and Rander, as well as other Argo AI executives, have worked on robotics and AI at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which helps explain the placement of the startup's headquarters. The technology coming out of the collaboration could be licensed to other companies, Ford President and CEO Mark Fields said today in a statement announcing the deal. "We believe that investing in Argo AI will create significant value for our shareholders by strengthening Ford's leadership in bringing self-driving vehicles to market in the near term and by creating technology that could be licensed to others in the future," Fields said.

Ford is investing $1bn (£801m) over the next five years in tech startup Argo AI to help the Detroit company achieve its goal to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle by 2021, the companies announced on Friday. Pittsburgh-based Argo AI was founded last year by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander who previously worked at Google and Uber respectively on the companies' self-driving vehicle initiatives. "We've made significant progress and are on track to achieve our goal," Ford president and CEO Mark Fields wrote in a Medium post. "At the same time, we know rapidly evolving technologies and fierce competition require us to remain flexible and open to new ways of strengthening our team." In August last year, Ford announced plans to sell fully autonomous self-driving cars, without steering wheels, for urban ride-sharing fleets by 2021.

Ford Motor Co. is investing $1 billion in a months-old startup founded by two pioneers in the nascent autonomous vehicle sector. The Pittsburgh-based artificial intelligence company Argo AI will develop the brains -- specifically, a virtual driver system -- for the fully autonomous vehicles Ford has promised to bring to market in 2021. Founders Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander are former leaders of the self-driving car teams at Uber Technologies Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. "This is a unique partnership," Mark Fields, Ford's chief executive officer, said in an interview. "A lot of tech companies are looking for customers and a lot of OEMs are looking for technology partners. We are getting expertise, and Argo AI is getting a customer in Ford."

Seemingly out of the blue, Ford announced today that it's investing $1 billion in Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based company building self-driving technology. Ford is effectively buying the previously unknown startup, which was founded by engineers from Google and Uber. Argo AI will operate as an independent subsidiary and will focus on developing a software platform for Ford's self-driving car, which the company is targeting for 2021. Notably, Ford is also planning to license the technology out to other companies. While the extent of the deal is surprising, it makes sense for Ford, especially after GM acquired the self-driving car startup Cruise for over $1 billion last year.