Posts Categorized: Autonomous Vehicles

Robots on the road – how close is our driverless future?

Posted by & filed under Autonomous Vehicles, self driving cars, Self driving vehicles.

It was on the motorway near Phoenix, Arizona, that I realised fully driverless cars might be quite a distant dream. And that was because our Google Waymo robo-taxi seemed incapable of leaving that motorway. We were in Arizona to record a radio documentary for the BBC World Serviceabout the progress towards creating autonomous vehicles that would… Read more »

Uber to expand its self-driving car research in Toronto

Posted by & filed under Autonomous Vehicles, Careers, Uber.

Raquel Urtasun is the chief scientist for Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, which is planning an expansion into Toronto. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company announced on Thursday that it is expanding its Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) in Toronto and opening a new engineering lab — its first in Canada. Uber says it plans to spend $200 million Cdn… Read more »

Toyota to invest $500m in Uber in driverless car deal

Posted by & filed under Autonomous Vehicles, self driving cars, Self driving vehicles.

Japanese carmaker Toyota is to invest $500m (£387m) in Uber and expand a partnership to jointly develop self-driving cars. The firm said this would involve the “mass-production” of autonomous vehicles that would be deployed on Uber’s ride sharing network. It is being viewed as a way for both firms to catch up with rivals in… Read more »

A Swiss weedkiller robot could curb our dependence on herbicides

Posted by & filed under Automation, Autonomous Vehicles, robotics, Uncategorized.

  Some $26 billion is spent on herbicides each year. These chemicals are often indiscriminately sprayed over entire fields of crops that have been genetically modified to resist the chemical onslaught. And it’s agrochemical giants like Bayer, DowDuPont, and Syngenta that usually create both the genetically modified seeds and the chemicals that are sprayed on them.  The… Read more »

Will Robots Take My Job?

Posted by & filed under Automation, Autonomous Vehicles, Careers.

In 2013 Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne of Oxford University published a report titled “The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?”. The authors examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation, by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier. According… Read more »

Electric car advocates hope for signal of government support in federal budget

Posted by & filed under Autonomous Vehicles, IT and Politics.

Electric car advocates are hoping to get a signal in next week’s federal budget that the government is prepared to support sales across the country even as Ontario overtook Quebec for selling the most electric vehicles last year. Source: The Toronto Star Date: February 23rd, 2018 Link: https://www.thestar.com/business/tech_news/2018/02/20/ontario-dethrones-quebec-as-province-with-most-electric-car-sales-in-2017.html Discussion 1) How might you become more involved in the… Read more »

Driverless trucks are coming to Canada and the impact will be profound

Posted by & filed under Autonomous Vehicles, disruptive technology.

Winter whiteout conditions like this Manitoba storm last March can bring traffic to a halt, but some experts say when driving conditions get bad, autonomous trucks will be better, and safer, than those with a human behind the wheel. Source: CBC News Date: November 21, 2017 Link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/autonomous-trucks-economy-1.4403057 Discussion 1) “…autonomous trucks will change our lives, and most Canadians… Read more »