Waymo's Robotaxis Can Now Use the Highway, Speeding Up Longer Trips The Alphabet company's self-driving cars are opening up shop in more and more cities. When Google's self-driving car project began testing in the Bay Area back in 2009, its engineers focused on highways by sending its sensor-laden vehicles cruising down Interstate 280, which runs the length of Silicon Valley's peninsula. More than 15 years later, the cars are back on the freeway--this time without drivers. On Tuesday, the project, now an Alphabet subsidiary we all know as Waymo, announced that its robotaxi service would now drive on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The new service marks another technical leap for Waymo, whose robotaxis currently serve five US metros: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Eddington" is a slog, but a slog with ambitions--and its director and screenwriter, Ari Aster, is savvy enough to cultivate an air of mystery about what those ambitions are. His earlier chillers, "Hereditary" (2018) and "Midsommar" (2019), had their labyrinthine ambiguities, too, but they also had propulsive craft and cunning, plus a resolute commitment to scaring us stupid. Then came the ungainly "Beau Is Afraid" (2023), a cavalcade of Oedipal neuroses both showy and coy, in which Aster didn't seem to lose focus so much as sacrifice it on the altar of auteurism. With "Eddington," his high-minded unravelling continues. No longer a horror wunderkind, Aster, at thirty-nine, yearns to be an impish anatomist of the body politic.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes explains how drones are frequently used at the southern border to transport drugs, raising concerns from both sides of the aisle. As reported crossings have dropped dramatically at the border, there is still work to be done on matters of stopping drugs from making their way into the United States, especially in the border state of Arizona, a top state official says. One of the ways that cartels transport drugs is by using drones, a tactic that gained attention after bipartisan legislation signed in the Grand Canyon State gave law enforcement the power to shoot down the small aircraft. "I think what has changed is that we have gotten more control over people crossing over the border, but unfortunately what has not changed is we still have a huge amount of fentanyl that is coming across our border here in Arizona, and that is being flown over the by the Mexican drug cartels with drones," Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said. Fentanyl is being delivered across the border by cartels on drones.

When it comes to autonomous vehicles on city roads, that's been the approach in most of the world's countries. But on Tuesday, the UK announced it would put a cautious foot on the pedal, when the Department of Transport said it would accelerate plans to allow companies to operate self-driving cars on public roads in limited pilot programs starting spring of next year. The British government had initially planned to open up its roads for self-driving vehicles more than a year later, in the second half of 2027. "We can see what a massive economic opportunity this technology presents," Transport secretary Heidi Alexander tells WIRED in an interview. The department estimates the autonomous vehicle industry will create 38,000 jobs and generate 42 billion pounds ( 57 million US) for the country by 2035.

Argonne National Laboratory ABSTRACT Nuclear waste management requires rigorous regulatory compliance assessment, demanding advanced decision - support systems capable of addressing complex legal, environmental, and safety considerations. This paper presents a multi - agent Retrieval - Augmented Generation (RAG) system that integrates large language models (LLMs) with document retrieval mechanisms to enhance decision accuracy through structured agent collaboration. Through a structured 10 - round discussion model, agents collaborate to assess regulatory compliance and safety requirements while maintaining document - grounded responses. A case study of a proposed temporary nuclear waste storage site near Winslow, Arizona, demonstrates the framework ' s effectiveness. Results show the Regulatory Agent achieves consistently higher relevance scores in maintaining alignment with legal frameworks, while the Safety Agent effectively manages complex risk assessments requi ring multifaceted analysis. The system demonstrates progressive improvement in agreement rates between agents across discussion rounds while semantic drift decreases, indicating enhanced decision - making consistency and response coherence. The system ensure s regulatory decisions remain factually grounded, dynamically adapting to evolving regulatory frameworks through real - time document retrieval. By balancing automated assessment with human oversight, this framework offers a scalable and transparent approach to regulatory governance. Future research will explore multi - modal data integration and reinforcement learning to enhance response coherence and decision efficiency. These findings underscore the potential of AI - driven, multi - agent systems in advancing ev idence - based, accountable, and adaptive decision - making for high - stakes environmental management scenarios.

Tesla has been granted a permit to operate a taxi service in California, a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities Commission, a state regulator, said Tuesday. It marks the first step towards Tesla's and CEO Elon Musk's vision of operating a driverless taxi service in the state. One day, Musk has said, Tesla owners should be able to rent out their cars as sort of self-driving Ubers while they're not using them. He has said current owners should be able to operate their Models 3 and Y autonomously in the state later this year--a plan that faces both technological and regulatory hurdles. But despite the permit, Tesla's driverless taxi future still seems far off in California, which has the perfect climate for self-driving cars but some of the strictest regulatory requirements in the US for testing and operating them.

General Motors is officially ending its support for Crusie's beleaguered fleet of self-driving "robotaxis." In a surprise announcement this week, the US carmaker said it will "realign its autonomous driving strategy" to end robotaxis and instead focus on eventually creating an autonomous personal vehicle. Cruise, which previously operated as a subsidiary, will now be fully absorbed by GM. That's all a major departure for the driverless car company which had its sights set on offering paid robotaxis rides in multiple cities next year. Cruise previously proclaimed it planned to have close to a million of its autonomous vehicles flooding US streets by the end of the decade.

This paper delves into various robotic manipulation control methods designed for dynamic contact tooling operations on a robotic repair platform. The explored control strategies include hybrid position-force control, admittance control, bilateral telerobotic control, virtual fixture, and shared control. Each approach is elucidated and assessed in terms of its applicability and effectiveness for handling contact tooling tasks in real-world repair scenarios. The hybrid position-force controller is highlighted for its proficiency in executing precise force-required tasks, but it demands contingent on an accurate model of the environment and structured, static environment. In contrast, for unstructured environments, bilateral teleoperation control is investigated, revealing that the compliance with the remote robot controller is crucial for stable contact, albeit at the expense of reduced motion tracking performance. Moreover, advanced controllers for tooling manipulation tasks, such as virtual fixture and shared control approaches, are investigated for their potential applications.

This paper introduces a dual-arm telerobotic platform designed to efficiently and safely execute hot cell operations for nuclear waste disposition at EM sites. The proposed system consists of a remote robot arm platform and a teleoperator station, both integrated with a software architecture to control the entire system. The dual-arm configuration of the remote platform enhances versatility and task performance in complex and hazardous environments, ensuring precise manipulation and effective handling of nuclear waste materials. The integration of a teleoperator station enables human teleoperator to remotely control the entire system real-time, enhancing decision-making capabilities, situational awareness, and dexterity. The control software plays a crucial role in our system, providing a robust and intuitive interface for the teleoperator. Test operation results demonstrate the system's effectiveness in operating as a remote hotbox for nuclear waste disposition, showcasing its potential applicability in real EM sites.

Amazon has started making deliveries via drone in parts of Phoenix, according to reporting by TechCrunch. We knew this was coming and now it's here. Customers in the West Valley Phoenix Metro area should now have access to a selection of products that will arrive at doorsteps via the friendly skies. These include household, office, health and beauty supplies, among others. Phoenix residents will be able to click on a drone delivery icon before checking out.