NAVYA, an autonomous mobility systems leader, announces a new partnership with Inverness Campus to deploy a new project with a Navya Autonom shuttle. Inverness Campus is hosting the first Autonomous Vehicle (AV) passenger service pilot in Scotland. The AV vehicle has arrived in the Highlands and the eagerly awaited trials are now underway and will continue until March, next year. Promoting the scheme is HITRANS, the regional transport partnership for the Highlands and Islands, which is committed to encouraging multi-modal travel and moving away from private car use. HITRANS has attracted European funding – through the Planning for Autonomous Vehicles (PAV) project, funded by the Interreg North Sea Region Programme – and is working with a number of partners to deliver the project.

China plans to open its new space station up to'tourism' within the next decade - sparking what the country hopes is a race to compete with the likes of private American space tourists such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson. China launched its Tiangong space station in 2021 - its first long-term space station project - with the final modules set to launch later this year. The country's announcement also comes as China continues to produce new billionaires at a blistering pace - much faster than any other nation on Earth. While there were no specific details included to determine what the future of space tourism in China will look like, officials have said it is likely that people without formal astronaut training could be launched into orbit'relatively soon.' Yang Liwei, who became the first Chinese astronaut back in 2003, said tourists visiting Tiangong'is not a matter of technology but of demand.' China is also thought to be working on a more tourist-friendly reusable spacecraft that could take up to seven astronauts at a time into space.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered food carts have begun delivering lunch to office workers in Beijing, courtesy of Chinese eCommerce shopping giant Meituan-Dianping. The company recently began a trial run for its new AI food and meal delivery service, with orders arriving on average 17 minutes after they were placed, Pandaily reports. Meituan debuted the new service on National Day, which commemorates the founding of the People's Republic of China, at Shougang Park, a closed business park. In efforts to make an even bigger splash internationally, Meituan also plans to use the robotic delivery vehicles in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The food carts are just one part of an AI-powered, brick-and-mortar store that Meituan has opened in Beijing, where orders are fielded and packed into the AI delivery vehicles.

Officials in Taiwan make no secret about turning the island into a hub for artificial intelligence R&D. It's an area that's expected to grow into a $390.9 billion market by 2025, according to Grand View Research. Taiwan has been the world's hardware hub for decades, so the shift toward AI makes the most of the existing inexpensive engineering talent. A refocus on AI, however, reduces reliance on hardware, which can easily be made somewhere else, such as China, at lower costs. Multinational tech companies have already shown interest in tapping Taiwan's talent in software, including AI.

When Uber announced on 18 August that it would let the public hail self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh before the end of the month, some autonomous vehicle experts could not believe it was happening so soon. In fact the 60bn multinational has just been scooped by Nutonomy, a small MIT spin-out whose electric self-driving cabs have already started picking up real customers in a Singapore business park. Initially, riders will use Nutonomy's own app to summon hail a Mitsubishi i-Miev or a Renault Zoe, ramping up to a dozen vehicles in the coming months. Like Uber's upcoming rides, this is a controlled experiment with a safety driver behind the wheel and a limited service area. Nevertheless, it is the first time anywhere in the world that anyone will be able to hitch a lift from a robotic vehicle on public roads.