Autonomous Vehicles

Alphabet (Google) subsidiary Wing has become the first company in the United States to deliver packages by drone. In Christiansburg, the small Virginia town chosen as Wing's test location, the 22,000 residents can order products normally shipped by FedEx, medicine from Walgreens and a selection of candy from a local business -- all of which will arrive via drone. Wing, which already operates in two Australian cities as well as Helsinki, announced in a statement that the first drone-powered deliveries had taken place Friday afternoon in Christiansburg, "paving the way for the most advanced drone delivery service in the nation". One family used the Wing app to order Tylenol, cough drops, Vitamin C tablets, bottled water and tissues, the statement said. An older resident ordered a birthday present for his wife.

Trust me, I have no intention of trusting autonomous vehicle braking. One of the terms we see pop up in almost every technical vector is autonomous vehicles. As with 5G, the autonomous vehicle landscape is fraught with hype. That has even spilled over to the consumer marketing arena with tons of ads for automobiles showing hands-off braking, lane navigation, self-parking, and more. Depending upon with whom one speaks, autonomous vehicles are anywhere from level 3 to level 5. Of course, the only one who believes we are at level 5 is Elon Musk, with his claims for Teslas.

Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Automotive Market has valued 566.80 Mn in 2016 and is estimated to reach US$ 10,600.3 Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Automotive Market is segmented by technology, offering, process, application, and geography. By technology, Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the automotive market is divided into Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Context Awareness, natural language processing. Based on the offering, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Automotive Market is categorized hardware and software. By process, the market is fragmented into Data Mining, Signal Recognition, and Image Recognition.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) will begin its journey on 6 September 2020 and cross the Atlantic Ocean, from Plymouth to Plymouth. Like its namesake in 1620, MAS will rely to some extent on favourable weather to complete its crossing as it will be powered by state-of-the-art hybrid propulsion system, utilizing wind, solar, state-of-the-art batteries, and a diesel generator. MAS will carry three research pods containing myriad sensors that scientists will utilize to conduct persistent, ground-breaking research in meteorology, oceanography, climatology, biology, marine pollution and conservation, and autonomous navigation. MAS is being coordinated through a partnership lead by ProMare, a non-profit charity established to promote marine research and exploration throughout the world. The research pods will be coordinated by Plymouth University, a world-leading centre of excellence for marine and maritime education, research and innovation.

The Assam Company India Ltd on Friday said it is aiming to increase its output by nearly fivefold to 50 million kg within next five years with introduction of advanced technologies. The company acquired by Abu Dhabi-based BRS Ventures a year ago and currently has 15 tea gardens, is looking to utilise artificial intelligence, including smart drones, in the field of tea farming to achieve its target. "Our aim is to bring technology and innovation at the forefront of the tea industry. This will not only impact the lives of 26,000 farmers at our estates, but the entire workforce employed in the tea sector across the country," BRS Ventures Chairman B R Shetty said at a press conference here. The company is optimistic that focus on enhancing the lives of the farmers and upgrading the production facilities by optimizing efficiencies will see a remarkable change in the Indian tea industry in the days to come, he added.

The development of driverless car technology is on the rise, and automakers are investing millions and billions to be the first to market with their lineup of autonomous vehicles. But which company has made the largest investment in self-driving cars? Here's a look at what some of the top companies have invested in their driverless vehicle programs so far. The investment into the autonomous vehicle industry has reached over $100 billion, with the leader in spending investing more than half of this number, according to a report by Leasing Options. The report indicated that Volkswagen is driving the charge when it comes to driverless technology with an investment of $54.2 billion and 57 percent share in total industry investment of self-driving cars.

If you have seen one of the many schematic charts full of logos illustrating the autonomous vehicle ecosystem, you would be forgiven for being confused. Most, like the one linked to in the above paragraph, dive deep into the layers of technology involved in enabling cars to drive themselves. It provides a nice summary for people in the industry (with good eyesight). To the layperson, however, this can add to the confusion about how autonomous vehicles work. Also, it is important to note that the majority of the companies and the technologies represented only have to do with the vehicles.

AI is poised to benefit a multitude of industries in a variety of different ways. What does artificial intelligence in the near-term look like? How is it impacting industries and what should companies know about AI to remain competitive over the next few years? What are the early adopters of AI doing right now? Early adopters of AI include everything from automotive to marketing.

Machines' ability to learn by processing data gleaned from sensors underlies automated vehicles, medical devices and a host of other emerging technologies. But that learning ability leaves systems vulnerable to hackers in unexpected ways, researchers at Princeton University have found. In a series of recent papers, a research team has explored how adversarial tactics applied to artificial intelligence (AI) could, for instance, trick a traffic-efficiency system into causing gridlock or manipulate a health-related AI application to reveal patients' private medical history. As an example of one such attack, the team altered a driving robot's perception of a road sign from a speed limit to a "Stop" sign, which could cause the vehicle to dangerously slam the brakes at highway speeds; in other examples, they altered Stop signs to be perceived as a variety of other traffic instructions. "If machine learning is the software of the future, we're at a very basic starting point for securing it," said Prateek Mittal, the lead researcher and an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton.

Earlier this month the thermal imagery manufacturer FLIR bought the UAV developer Aeryon Labs for $200 million, beating their previous record in publicly disclosed drone investments of $134M. This has been yet another signal that even though the drone industry suffered some hard hits in 2018, the period of consolidation, larger investments and serious R&D advances is ahead. In fact, if one were to look at merely the investment figures for 2018, it wouldn't even be that easy to tell that the drone industry struggled. Records were set, partnerships formed, and accelerators continued to support exceptional start-ups. A total of $702 million was invested into the drone industry in 2018 (up from $625M in 2017), $483 million of which was funnelled into the top 20 drone deals.