CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) is the biggest tech convention of the year. It helps set the stage for all the wonderful gadgets we're going to see over the next 12 months. However, among all the quadcopters, questionably benevolent robots and devices with fancy flexible screens, there's a lot of small things that go into making CES a one-of-a-kind event. To highlight some of the silly, stupid and occasionally wholesome things we encountered at the show this year, we humbly present the very unofficial Dumb Fun awards for CES 2025. Komatsu's PC01E-2 looks like a children's playground toy, except that it actually works and is really goddam cute.

A hoverbike that can travel at 62 miles per hour for up to 40 minutes made its U.S. debut this week at the North American Auto Show in Detroit. The flying bike is the work of Aerwins, a Delaware-based company that makes drones and unmanned vehicles. Although it conjures up futuristic Jetsons visions of s oaring high above New York City's notoriously clogged streets, you probably won't be riding the hoverbike out to John F. Kennedy Airport anytime soon. The Xturismo currently costs $777,000, although Aerwins says it will develop a smaller model next year, as well as an all-electric model in 2025 to sell for about $50,000. 'I feel like I'm literally 15-years-old and I just got out of Star Wars and I jumped on their bike,' Thad Scott, co-chair of the auto show, told Reuters.

A former Merrill Lynch derivatives trader with a passion for Star Wars is preparing to take his flying motorbike startup public in Japan. Technologies Inc. was founded by Shuhei Komatsu as a drone maker in 2016 before moving on to more ambitious ventures, opening sales of its XTurismo Limited Edition hoverbike in October. The ¥77.7 million single-person transporter can hit a max speed of 80 kilometers per hour and travel up to 40 minutes per charge, according to the company. The bike has so far largely figured as a curio at public events such as a recent baseball game, but A.L.I. Technologies President Daisuke Katano says there's strong interest in it from Middle Eastern nations. "The need for these bikes will be higher in places with desert or other difficult terrain," Katano said in an interview.

This is an excerpt from the AI case studies bible. Make sure to get your copy now! There is a growing potential and use of AI in the construction industry in real life use cases like designing, planning, and logistics. AI in construction is being used to rethink construction operations in radically new ways. AI in construction leads to time saving, safety and efficiency.

Caterpillar's autonomous driving technology, which can be bolted on to existing machines, is helping the U.S. heavy equipment maker mitigate the heavy impact of the coronavirus crisis on sales of its traditional workhorses. With both small and large customers looking to protect their operations from future disruptions, demand has surged for machines that don't require human operators on board. Sales of Caterpillar's autonomous technology for mining operations have been growing at a double-digit percentage clip this year compared with 2019, according to previously unreported internal company data shared with Reuters. Fred Rio, worldwide product manager at Caterpillar's construction digital & technology division, told Reuters that a remote-control technology, which allows users to operate machines from several miles away, would be available for construction sites in January. The company is also working with space agencies to use satellite technology to allow an operator sitting in the United States to remotely communicate with machines on job sites in, say, Africa or elsewhere in the world, he said.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Question: How can a company like Caterpillar CAT.N try to counter a slump in sales of bulldozers and trucks during a pandemic that has made every human a potential disease vector? Caterpillar's autonomous driving technology, which can be bolted on to existing machines, is helping the U.S. heavy equipment maker mitigate the heavy impact of the coronavirus crisis on sales of its traditional workhorses. With both small and large customers looking to protect their operations from future disruptions, demand has surged for machines that don't require human operators on board. Sales of Caterpillar's autonomous technology for mining operations have been growing at a double-digit percentage clip this year compared with 2019, according to previously unreported internal company data shared with Reuters. By contrast, sales of its yellow bulldozers, mining trucks and other equipment have been falling for the past nine months, a trend that's also hit its main rivals including Japan's Komatsu Ltd 6301.T and American player Deere & Co DE.N .

Technologies Inc. aims to release a mass-market flying motorcycle by 2022, Chief Executive Officer Shuhei Komatsu said. Technologies, which mainly develops small drones, hopes to sell the product, called a "hover bike," in emerging economies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia with poor road infrastructure. Many companies around the world are developing flying cars. Technologies is among those trying to enter the market. "We'll create a (flying) bike first, in order to get flying cars widely used in society eventually," Komatsu said.

They went mainstream only a few years ago, but drones are already making a big splash in the market. Thanks to the ability to buy them off of a shelf, drones are being adapted for commercial use. There are only so many human controllers can do though and, future drone models may not see this limitation thanks to the use of AI, freelance blogger Jake Carter tells us more. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has existed for some time now. If we could develop an AI that could operate drones without humans, what could this mean?

Results from Fanuc Corp. and Komatsu were a mixed bag Monday. Factory-automation giant Fanuc reported an 8.4 percent drop in fiscal first-half operating income and saw its shares rise, while construction-equipment-maker Komatsu posted an 80 percent profit surge that was rewarded with a stock decline. Put that perplexing share reaction down to the topsy-turvy world of machinery-makers, where investors tend to view dismal earnings as a sign that a company is nearing the bottom, and good results as a warning that it's close to the top. The overall picture, though, is that concerns sparked by U.S. bellwether Caterpillar Inc. last week of late-cycle cost pressures and a deteriorating China outlook have been overdone, at least as far as the Japanese firms are concerned. China's faltering economy has been a key focus. Fanuc's sales in the country, already shrinking, fell a further 42 percent in the quarter through Sept. 30, compared with the previous three months.

We're now in a phase of computing increasingly characterized by engineering complex systems of automation by applying several new and convergent technologies including: deep learning, cloud computing and massive arrays of data-producing sensors. NVIDIA's deep learning GPUs have been at the center of partnerships or agreements with a multitude of companies and customers. For example, NVIDIA partnered with U.S.-based Tesla Motors to provide deep learning GPUs for autonomous driving, Japan-based FANUC Robotics to create a deep learning "factory manager" to oversee manufacturing robots that manufacture other manufacturing robots, U.S.-based Amazon Web Services to provide a web platform to create deep learning applications, China-based Hikvision to power the company's sophisticated systems of video surveillance, and Japan-based Komatsu's SMARTCONSTRUCTION mining and construction equipment vehicles. If you stop to take account of how many deep learning partnerships NVIDIA has entered into with powerful commercial entities in various sectors of global industry, it quickly becomes overwhelming. But how does NVIDIA and its manufacturing partners apply deep learning along the supply chain that produces NVIDIA GPUs?