Japan enforced the revised road traffic law Saturday, allowing so-called Level 4 autonomous driving, or fully automated driving under certain conditions, on public roads. The revised law requires autonomous driving service providers to submit operation plans to the public safety commissions of prefectural police under a new permit system. The rule change is seen giving rise to passenger mobility services operated under remote supervision on specific routes in depopulated areas. It will not affect privately owned vehicles. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.

We consider a class of restless bandit problems that finds a broad application area in stochastic optimization, reinforcement learning and operations research. We consider $N$ independent discrete-time Markov processes, each of which had two possible states: 1 and 0 (`good' and `bad'). Only if a process is both in state 1 and observed to be so does reward accrue. The aim is to maximize the expected discounted sum of returns over the infinite horizon subject to a constraint that only $M$ $(

The central government on Friday adopted a bill to revise the road traffic law that would legalize delivery robots and driverless cars under certain conditions. The bill, to be introduced during the current session of parliament, also calls for the creation of a permit system for businesses providing such services. Also planned are new rules on the use of electric kick scooters. If the bill covering what the government calls Level 4 autonomy is enacted, the new rules will come into force within a year for driverless cars and delivery robots and within two years for electric scooters. By the end of March 2023, the government aims to realize mobility services using unmanned autonomous vehicles as a means of transportation for elderly people in depopulated areas.

Subaru Corp. aims to start selling vehicles equipped with the equivalent of "level-2" autonomous technology, which can steer, accelerate and slow down on ordinary roads, in the second half of the 2020s, company officials said Tuesday. But developing such vehicles to run on ordinary roads has been a challenge, due to the need to respond to unexpected scenarios such as pedestrians' movements in order to avoid accidents. Subaru plans to develop a next-generation system using its EyeSight Driver Assist Technology and artificial intelligence to recognize a traffic lane even when the white line on the roads cannot be seen. Level-2 technologies allow drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel under certain conditions, but drivers are still required to monitor the vehicle's driving at all times. Earlier this year, Toyota launched new models of its luxury sedan Lexus LS and hydrogen-powered Mirai that are equipped with level-2 assistant technologies.

You wake up; your wristwatch has recorded how long you've slept, and monitored your heartbeat and breathing. You drive to work; car sensors track your speed and braking. You pick up some breakfast on your way, paying electronically; the transaction and the calorie content of your meal are recorded. Then you have a car accident. You phone your insurance company.

Playing video games like Minecraft may help to get your child's creative juices flowing, new research suggests. Video games that foster creative freedom can increase creativity under certain conditions, according to a study from Iowa State University (ISU). Their experiment compared the effect of playing Minecraft, with or without instruction, to watching a TV show or playing a race car video game. Those given the freedom to play Minecraft without instruction were most creative, experts found. Playing video games like Minecraft may help to get the creative juices flowing, new research suggests.

You wake up; your wristwatch has recorded how long you've slept, and monitored your heartbeat and breathing. You drive to work; car sensors track your speed and braking. You pick up some breakfast on your way, paying electronically; the transaction and the calorie content of your meal are recorded. Then you have a car accident. You phone your insurance company.

Patients may one day be diagnosed by computers, not doctors, according to health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Mr Hunt said: 'So what might medicine look like when the NHS is 80 [in 2028]? Well, the first thing is we may well not be going to doctors for a diagnosis, we might be going to computers instead'. Artificial intelligence could help in diagnosing patients by analysing X-rays and samples to determine conditions such as cancer, according to NHS England bosses. In as little as a decade's time, patients may even be diagnosed with disorders before they develop symptoms as DNA screening is set to become accessible to the masses, Mr Hunt said.

The human brain could be enhanced by tiny robotic implants that connect to cloud-based computer networks to give us'God-like' abilities, according to a leading computer scientist. Ray Kurzweil, an author and inventor who describes himself as a futurist who works on Google's machine learning project, said such technology could be the next step in human evolution. He predicted that by the 2030s, humans will be using nanobots capable of tapping into our neocortex and connecting us directly to the world around us. This will allow people to send emails and photos directly to each other's brains while also backing up our thoughts and memories. Speaking at an event organised by the Singularity University at Moffett Field in California, which he helped found and TheWorldPost, Mr Kurzweil said they could also expand our capacity for emotions and creativity.

Although the idea of living forever seems to be rooted firmly in the realms of science fiction, it may not be the futuristic pipe dream once thought. Ray Kurzweil, an author who describes himself as a futurist and works on Google's machine learning project, predicts that by 2029, humans will be extending their lives considerably or even indefinitely. He also believes the human brain could be enhanced by tiny robotic implants that connect to cloud-based computer networks to give us'God-like' abilities. Ray Kurzweil (pictured), who describes himself as a futurist and works on Google's machine learning project, predicts that by 2029, humans will be extending their lives considerably or even indefinitely. He also believes the brain could be enhanced by implants that connect to cloud-based networks to give us'God-like' abilities However, he admitted computers won't take over us until they learn to love and laugh.