Autonomous Vehicles

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel shot down a pilotless aircraft that tried to enter its airspace at its Golan Heights frontier with Syria on Tuesday, the Israeli military said. In four years, number of students with access to high-speed internet has increased tenfold. North Korea and Iran will be front and center in the president's first address before the U.N. General Assembly. Following North Korea's latest missile launch, the U.S. practices attack drills.

Amid heated global competition over developing next-generation cars such as self-driving automobiles and electric vehicles, Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled Tuesday a new sports car brand inspired by its expertise in motor sports. Under the brand name GR, which comes from Toyota's motor sports brand Toyota Gazoo Racing, the auto giant unveiled seven cars remodeled as sports editions, including the Vitz compact, Voxy and Noah minivans, and the Prius and Mark X sedans. The main target of the new brand is younger customers, who are often said to have lost their passion for driving their own cars, Gazoo Racing President Shigeki Tomoyama said. Toyota's launch of the sports car brand apparently runs counter to the global focus on next-generation vehicles such as EVs.

Research by the University of Oxford and Deloitte last year predicted more than 850,000 public sector jobs could be lost by 2030 through automation. Asda operates a fully automated distribution warehouse in west London; white-collar tasks are being automated by PwC, the accountancy firm, and Linklaters, the law firm, which have been developing software robots that use artificial intelligence to learn to do research tasks usually undertaken by junior accountants and lawyers. The RSA warns that artificial intelligence and robotics will "undoubtedly cause the loss of some jobs, whether it is autonomous vehicles pushing taxi drivers out of business or picking and packing robots usurping warehouse workers". A care company in London, Three Sisters Home Care, will soon trial the use of robots for lifting people so only one care worker will be needed rather than two.

To achieve these numbers, the GNSS system must embed a combination of core GNSS technologies. These include multi-constellation GNSS reception for large numbers of measurements and a multi-band signal reception for minimal convergence time as well as 3D automotive dead reckoning to smooth multipath effects and to maintain positioning in tunnels, parking facilities and other indoor settings. This combination of technologies can cope with the level of interruptions to carrier phase lock and the multipath distortion caused by bridges, signs, trees and buildings in such environments.

"Our sense is management believes that investors still severely underestimates the impact of AI and the size of the potential market," Evercore analyst C J Muse wrote in a note on Friday after hosting Nvidia's management. Nvidia has been rapidly expanding into newer technologies including artificial intelligence, cloud computing and self-driving cars, away from designing graphics-processing chips for which the company was known for. Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Arya listed Nvidia a "top pick", basing his view "on (Nvidia's) underappreciated transformation from a traditional PC graphics vendor, into a supplier into high-end gaming, enterprise graphics, cloud, accelerated computing and automotive markets," according to Seeking Alpha. In May, Nvidia announced a partnership with Toyota Motor Corp through which the Japanese car maker would use Nvidia's AI technology to develop self-driving vehicle systems planned for the next few years.

While smart cities have been depicted in TV shows and movies for years, showing futuristic worlds where cars can fly or where drones buzzing overhead is the norm, the truth is a version of this reality is closer than you think. Many companies investing in smart city technologies are too focused on the consumer side of IoT (the "flashy side") and are hindered by outdated, inefficient backend infrastructure forcing them to rethink their strategy. Knowing that things will go wrong in the early years of smart cities and IoT technology adoption, it will take a select few to be the first movers, take the risk, and carve the path for others. Despite what many might believe, we'll likely see rural areas – not major cities – adopt smart technologies such as delivery drones and autonomous vehicles first.

SAE International has created the now-standard definitions for the six distinct levels of autonomy, from Level 1 representing only minor driver assistance (like today's cruise control) to Level 6 being the utopian dream of full automation: naps and movie-watching permitted. Many of the features of AI-assisted driving center around increased safety, like automatic braking, collision avoidance systems, pedestrian and cyclists alerts, cross-traffic alerts, and intelligent cruise control. A connected vehicle could also share performance data directly with the manufacturer (called "cognitive predictive maintenance"), allowing for diagnosis and even correction of performance issues without a stop at the dealer. Although it may not at first appear directly tied to automotive AI, the health and medical industry stands to experience some significant disruptions as well.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto wasted no time making his intentions of wooing the giant company clear. Kansas City mayor Sly James also gave his city's bid a shout-out on Twitter and linked to a Kansas City Star editorial board piece that noted all the plusses in Kansas City. Amazon to Chicago would certainly bolster the tech scene...but ya know, maybe our the Chicago tech scene is doing just fine. It's probably going to go to Denver anyway, so good job, good effort, everyone else.

The two companies, which are among the leaders in the race to develop driverless car technology, officially announced their partnership in a blog post penned by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. There were no financial terms revealed, and other details about the partnership were not disclosed, but we did gain some new insights about Waymo's driverless vehicle platform. We now know that Waymo was using Intel's tech well before the partnership was made official earlier today. Intel played a big part in developing Waymo's in-house self-driving hardware platform, which is used in its fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans.

The world's largest computer chipmaker said Monday that it will take on a more collaborative role with Waymo's new self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans. Waymo's Chrysler Pacifica fleet is fitted with Intel technology for sensor processing, general computing and connectivity. "As Waymo's self-driving technology becomes smarter and more capable, its high performance hardware and software will require even more powerful and efficient compute," Intel Chief Executive Bryan Krzanich said in a prepared statement. BMW, Intel and Mobileye announced an autonomous vehicle partnership last year.