Well, the Chinese startup is happy to announce that they've started to deliver the ES8 all-electric SUVs to its customers. One of the USPs of the ES8 is that the SUV has something called NOMI artificial intelligence technology, claimed to be the world's first in-car AI system for production vehicles. The NOMI can see her owner's arrival and quickly setup the seats and steering wheel position. She can also do things like take a selfie via roof mounted camera or play the desired music, when asked to do so. Another USP is that the ES8 features swappable battery technology, where the SUV can go into a swapping station to get its entire battery pack swapped within 3 minutes.

In the following sections, we will present a few examples of how power management electronics can come to the rescue in each case. The smaller PCB size that results from miniaturization presents a challenge for thermal dissipation. Thermal management options, such as heatsinks, are ruled out since board space is at a premium. Fans for forced airflow cannot be used due to sealed enclosures that prevent ingress of dust and pollutants. Therefore, it is crucial that the power-supply solution is extremely efficient, while delivering higher power and occupying a smaller area than ever before. Industrial applications are characterized by a 24V nominal DC voltage bus that has its history in old analog relays and remains the de-facto industry standard. However, the maximum operating voltage for industrial applications is expected to be 36V to 40V for non-critical equipment, while critical equipment, such as controllers, actuators, and safety modules, must support 60V (IEC 61131-2, 60664-1, and 61508 SIL standards). Popular output voltages are 3.3V and 5V with currents varying from 10mA in small sensors to tens of amps in motion control, CNC, and PLC applications. Thus, the obvious choice for industrial control applications is a step-down (buck) voltage regulator (Figure 4).

If the robotics world had a celebrity it would be Spot Mini of Boston Dynamics. Last month at the Robotics Summit in Boston the mechanical dog strutted onto the floor of the Westin Hotel trailed by hundreds of flickering iPhones. Marc Raibert first unveiled his metal menaagerie almost a decade ago with a video of Big Dog. Today, Mini is the fulfillment of his mission in a sleeker, smarter, and environmentally friendlier robo-canine package than its gas-burning ancestor. Since the early 1990s, machines have relied on rechargeable lithium ion batteries for power.

Taking a look back at another week of news from Cupertino, this week's Apple Loop includes the new iPhone designs for 2018, production starting on the A12 chips, Apple issuing credit notes for battery replacements, a big decision over the MacBook Air, thoughts on WWDC's announcements, Razer's macOS graphics enclosure, Apple working with VW, and an important date for macOS. Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days (and you can read my weekly digest of Android news here on Forbes). Apple is expected to announce three new iPhone handsets in September, and the one that is catching the most attention right now is the'replacement' for the iPhone SE - all the features of the iPhone X but in a much smaller form factor. Gordon Kelly reports on the latest leaks around the design of the super small smartphone: So what do we learn? That Olixar is convinced Apple will fulfill the dreams of millions of iPhone fans, by releasing a new iPhone X variant which crams a bezel-less front display and Face ID technology into a chassis the same size as the iPhone SE. Backing this up, Mobile Fun has passed me new CAD designs showing the new iPhone's dimensions as 121.04 x 55.82 mm (4.8 x 2.2-inches) - fractionally smaller than the 123.8 x 58.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31-inches) of the iPhone SE.

Once a computer scientist's pipe dream, artificial intelligence is now part of our daily lives in the form of voice recognition systems, product recommendation platforms and navigation tools. All of these rely on computer algorithms that process information and solve problems in a way similar to – and sometimes superior to – the human mind. Yet artificial intelligence is doing more than just recommending new restaurants and the best routes to them. It is also changing the way scientists across diverse disciplines are studying the world. Aided by the close proximity of medical researchers, computer scientists, psychologists and more, Stanford researchers are deploying artificial intelligence to map poverty in Africa, find safer alternatives to conventional rechargeable batteries and perhaps even understand our own minds.

LJUBLJANA – Electrical equipment-producer Yaskawa, which is building an industrial robot factory in Slovenia, has decided to build another factory in the country to produce electrical components. The new factory will make inverter drives, servo drives and servo motors, Yaskawa said Monday. "Expanding our production capacity will enable us to further improve the supply chain, shorten our lead times and enhance the service for our European customers," Manfred Stern, head of Yaskawa Europe, said in a statement. Yaskawa did not reveal the value of the new investment, but according to local media it will be worth some €25 million ($30 million) and will create up to 250 new jobs. The company already makes industrial robot parts in Slovenia.

Here come the cyborg beetles. Electronic-filled backpacks have been used to create controllable flying bio-robots. Male M. torquata beetles had electrodes implanted into four of their flight muscles. Small electric pulses were then administered to steer them left or right. Their acceleration could be increased by upping the frequency of the pulses.

Lithium (Li) metal electrodes are not deployable in rechargeable batteries because electrochemical plating and stripping invariably leads to growth of dendrites that reduce coulombic efficiency and eventually short the battery. It is generally accepted that the dendrite problem is exacerbated at high current densities. Here, we report a regime for dendrite evolution in which the reverse is true. In our experiments, we found that when the plating and stripping current density is raised above 9 milliamperes per square centimeter, there is substantial self-heating of the dendrites, which triggers extensive surface migration of Li. We show that repeated doses of high-current-density healing treatment enables the safe cycling of Li-sulfur batteries with high coulombic efficiency.

For the last eight months, farms near Kisarazu City in Japan have been home to a horrifying robot wolf. But don't worry, it wasn't created to terrorize local residents (although, from the looks of the thing, it probably did). Its official name is "Super Monster Wolf," and engineers designed it to stop animals from eating farmers' crops. In truth, the story of the robowolf is more than a little sad. As Motherboard reports, wolves went extinct in Japan in the early 1800s.

Japanese farmers are using terrifying robotic wolves with beaming red LED eyes to scare off wild boars, deer and other pests from grazing on the country's rice and chestnut crops. The "Super Monster Wolf" stands at 50cm tall, is 65cm long and runs on rechargeable solar-batteries, using motion-sensors to detect when other mammals approach and letting out an alarming primal howl in response. The robo-wolf can cover distances of up to half a mile and has been used in trials to patrol fields near Kisarazu City, Chiba, as a deterrent to pests, effectively acting as a moving scarecrow. In addition to its satanic stare, the creature features a realistic fur hide and snarling rubber jaws. Chikao Umezawa of the Japan Agricultural Cooperative, the man who commissioned it, said he has seen a significant drop in the number of crops devoured by animals since the beast was unleashed.