Apple Confirms that Tattoos are a Problem for the Apple Watch

As reported by The Verge:In an updated support document, Apple has acknowledged what some new Apple Watch owners quickly discovered over the last week: the Watch may not work properly for those with tattoos. The Watch's heart-rate monitor works by shining infrared or green light through the skin, but tattoos can interfere with that and prevent the Watch from getting a reading. "Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart-rate sensor performance," Apple writes. "The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings."  

Apple's description is vague about what type of tattoos will and won't pose a problem, perhaps because it doesn't precisely know. What's been widely suggested is that darker tattoos are the ones causing issues, preventing too much of the Watch's light from getting through. This isn't just a problem related to reading heart rates. Apple also uses those sensors to detect when the Watch has been removed from a person's wrist — if the Watch doesn't think it's being worn, it won't receive notifications; it can also cause the Watch to lock if a passcode is enabled. There are work arounds for anyone running into this problem, but they remove some of the conveniences and security that are supposed to be built in.

Uber's SOS Button Will Send Live GPS Updates to Police in India

As reported by The Verge: Uber added an "SOS" button to its app in India following the alleged rape of a passenger last year, and today Uber has announced plans to start improving that button in a significant way. Starting in the city Kolkata and potentially rolling out elsewhere, activating the SOS button will now send live GPS updates to local police, provide police with information on the driver, and send details on the passenger reporting the issue, in addition to initiating a phone call with the police as it initially did. That information, which should enable police to track an Uber vehicle, will appear on a display that Uber installs for the local police.

Uber says that it's been testing the service in Kolkata and is now in "advanced discussions" with "multiple cities" in India to roll it out in other areas. That'll be the big hurdle here, as the feature isn't going to be very meaningful if most people can't use it. It's certainly a step in the right direction, though. Uber has frequently received criticism about rider safety, and while these features are only in India for now, it's a signal that Uber is starting to take the problem more seriously. Last year, it also began working to improve its screenings of drivers in India.

Amazon Announces Pilot Program to Test Tesla Stackable Battery Units

As reported by SlashGear: This week Tesla made a big announcement with a new Tesla Energy arm that aims to produce batteries that can be used in homes to store power. While that early announcement focused mainly on consumer applications, there are also some serious commercial applications for the battery tech Tesla Energy has. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it has started a pilot of the new stackable battery units Tesla unveiled.

AWS has announced that it has rolled out a 4.8-megawatt hour pilot of the energy storage batteries in the Northern California region. AWS committed late in 2014 to running exclusively on renewable energy and these batteries will help it reach that goal.

According to Amazon's James Hamilton, these Tesla batteries can help AWS bridge the gap between intermittent power producing tech like wind generators and the constant need for power from a large data center. AWS says that the batteries can also help businesses save money by allowing them to buy power when it's at the lowest rates, store the power, and then use it when rates are higher.

The batteries are seen as another option to backup generators to provide power during an outage. The batteries could help AWS gain a competitive edge in a very competitive market where slight cost savings can make a big difference.

Elon Musk Unveils Tesla's Powerwall Battery and Company's Move Into Renewable Energy

As reported by Huffpost Tech: Elon Musk has announced Tesla's latest product, the company's long awaited diversification from automobile technology.

On Thursday night, Tesla's billionaire co-founder unveiled Powerwall, a wall-fitted rechargeable home battery which could eliminate the need for power grids by providing clean solar energy for residential homes.

Using the company's existing battery technology, the units feature rechargeable lithium-ion cells which stock up on electricity from solar energy and use it to power your home.

A Powerwall unit

Each Powerwall battery can also harness electricity from a grid to ensure smooth operation, using "smart" technology to harness grid power while costs are low.

"The issue with existing batteries is that they suck," Musk said as he announced Tesla Energy. "They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way."

But his company's solution is different, he says. Each Powerwall unit will cost $3,500 (£2,275) for 10kWh and $3,000 (£1,950) for 7kWh and can provide back-up energy in the event of a power outage.

The units can also be used together, up to nine at a time

Pre-orders are already open on the product and units will begin shipping as early as this summer.

The technology will also continue Tesla's usual trend of open-sourcing patents to allow the world to come closer to Musk's goal of running entirely on renewable energy.

"This is within the power of humanity to do," he said. "It is not impossible, it is something that we can do. But there’s going to [need to] be other companies involved."

The company is also developing a larger scale version, called Powerpack, which hopes to provide clean, sustainable energy for businesses and industry.

"Our goal here is to change the way the world uses energy at an extreme scale," Musk said.

Fetch Unveils Robot Duo to Adapt Warehouses for Quick-Delivery Era

As reported by Xconomy: Consumers are getting spoiled—not only do they want movies on demand via digital networks, they also want physical things like books and diapers delivered almost as fast.

Amazon, which has fueled these consumer expectations, uses colonies of Kiva robots in automated warehouses to help achieve its fast shipping times. Modest-sized retailers and distribution centers can’t afford that kind of technology, so last summer San Jose, CA-based Fetch Robotics set out to create human-scale robot workers to help those smaller companies compete in the on-demand era. While Amazon can afford to rebuild its warehouses to accommodate the extensive Kiva system, Fetch decided to make robots that would work in existing buildings with a minimum of retrofitting.

Fetch kept its evolving robots under wraps for five to six months while they were being designed and fabricated, says CEO Melonee Wise. But today the company is unveiling its first robot duo—named Fetch and Freight—to attract potential customers interested in trying a pilot project.

Fetch is an automaton about as tall as a middle-school child. Its single arm ends in a two-fingered gripper that can pick boxes off warehouse shelves and pass them to its sidekick, Freight. That robot co-worker consists of a wheeled base—similar to the one propelling Fetch around—that can be fitted with a collection bin or a set of shelves to hold the items Fetch selects. Once the order has been assembled, Freight can carry the goods to a shipping station at speeds faster than Fetch can move, because Freight’s center of gravity is lower.

Wise says Fetch is one of the few robotics companies that combine a gripper function with the mobility to travel along warehouse shelves to pluck out goods. Other companies are developing robots with similar talents, such as Billerica, MA-based Harvest Automation’s rolling bots for agricultural use. Those robots can pick up potted plants and place them on a conveyer belt, for example. Boston-based Rethink Robotics tailors robots for manufacturing chores, such as circuit testing or feeding fabric into automated industrial sewing machines.

It’s hard to make head-to-head comparisons just yet between robots like those made by Harvest, Rethink, and Fetch, which focuses on logistics. That’s the art of managing the transport of goods from factories or storehouses to consumers. But what’s clear is that a market is emerging for dexterous and mobile robots in retail, distribution, and manufacturing.

Amazon itself is funding the Amazon Picking Challenge competition next month at the ICRA 2015 conference in Seattle, where $26,000 in prizes will be awarded to inventors who create robots that can select objects from a shelf and move them to a table. Amazon hasn’t mastered automated picking yet—its boxy 330-pound Kiva robots move whole shelving units to areas where human staffers pluck out items for an order. However, this saves workers the time they would have spent searching through vast warehouse spaces.

Fetch’s robots are designed to function in smaller, human-scale environments where people are also working amid the same shelves and tables. The 250-pound Fetch can extend its reach because of its telescoping spine—it can adjust its height from about 3 feet 7 inches to roughly 4 feet 10 inches. Its vision isn’t good enough to recognize specific objects, but the depth camera in its, er, head can perceive three-dimensional shapes such as boxes and the spaces between them on a shelf, Wise says.

The Fetch robots and accompanying software could be adapted for a range of different uses beyond order fulfillment chores, Wise says—from packaging kits of multiple parts to joining parts together in a light assembly process. Fetch’s flexible arm has the equivalent of three human joints: a shoulder, elbow, and wrist.

The Fetch robot model and Fetch Robotics CEO Melonee Wise

“We think the design is pretty good,” Wise says. “The vision for these robots is that they can do a lot of things.” In February, Fetch announced it had raised $3 million in Series A financing from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Shasta Ventures. The funds are being used to bring Fetch’s first robots to market.

Although Fetch and Freight can operate autonomously to fill customer orders, humans can also interact with them via connected devices including smartphones and tablets, Wise says. The robots can also dodge around people in corridors, and follow a human co-worker by fixing its gaze on the person’s legs and tracking them continuously.

But why would a modest-sized company spend money on such technology when it can just hire more workers and give them rolling ladders?

Wise says human workers come with their own operating limits. Many distribution centers struggle to hire enough reliable employees, and suffer high turnover, she says. And unlike robots, humans are associated with what Wise judiciously calls inventory “shrinkage,” or “goods unintentionally leaving the warehouse.”

Robots could also help companies that face specific challenges, Wise says. A pharmaceutical products warehouse may need to keep close tabs on controlled drugs whose distribution is carefully regulated. It may also need to monitor the building temperature or other storage conditions that are key to drug safety and effectiveness.

Fetch’s robots can take temperature readings and snap photos of goods as they pick them up, Wise says. “You could have a full record of how that drug or that medicine was handled,” she says.

If a distributor eventually uses an all-robot staff, it can operate a warehouse at temperatures or other conditions that human beings couldn’t tolerate, Wise says.

“You can have lights-out operations,” Wise says. “That’s a big cost savings.”

Wise says it’s hard to name a price range for the Fetch robots, which would be sold as a part of a system tailored to meet a customer’s particular needs. The software and the numbers of Fetch and Freight robots would vary, and some degree of retrofitting might be required, she says.

Fetch has already been in touch with potential partners, but by showcasing its robot technology it’s hoping to get the word out to a broader range of companies that might want to set up a pilot project for an interesting new application, Wise says. After a short pilot run for a specific use, Fetch expects to be able to supply robots not only to the original partner, but also to offer them for sale to similar companies.

The Fetch robots have a modular design that could accommodate new types of sensors, collection containers, and grippers to handle new tasks or larger products, Wise says. Fetch can now pick up items weighing up to 13 pounds, and Freight can transport as much as 150 pounds. There are plenty of new challenges to tackle, Wise says. At this point, for example, Fetch couldn’t handle selecting items of clothing from a group of garments.

The company plans to continue adding new capabilities to its robot pair, which can operate as a team or separately. “It really depends on the interest we find for different capabilities,” Wise says.

If anyone could be expected to predict a rapid expansion of robot uses over the next decade or so, Wise would seem to be that person. Starting as a college student intern, she has worked on projects including autonomous boats and cars, personal robot butlers, and robots that can plug themselves in for a re-charge. But Wise says she doesn’t expect to see scads of high-complexity robots commercialized in the near future, and certainly not at low cost.

“I know how hard it is,” Wise says. Designers have already whittled down the cost of robot components, but they’ll need to make even further gains, she says. And they’ll have to overcome many snags as robots begin to operate in the messy environment of the real world.

“I think it will take a good 50 years to do the things that everyone thinks will be done 10 years from now,” Wise says.

Out-Of-Control Russian ISS Cargo Vessel Will Plummet Back to Earth

As reported by Engadget: The Russian space agency (Roscosmos) has given up trying to regain control of Progress 59 and the 6,000 pounds of food, water, clothes and equipment on board. It reportedly told TASS, the country's news agency, that it's merely waiting for the vessel to plunge and burn as it reenters the atmosphere anytime from May 5th to 7th. The vehicle was supposed to shuttle all those supplies to the ISS, but it ended up tumbling wildly in the wrong orbit soon after it reached outer space. According to TASS, the engine of the Soyuz rocket that launched the vessel might have been "overworked" due to a control system glitch, causing it to burn overtime and to send the cargo craft into an uncontrollable spin.

Since Roscosmos failed to establish communication with Progress, it would be impossible to even attempt a rendezvous with the space station -- besides, it would be extremely dangerous to dock a spinning spacecraft. This is the second time in six months that a resupply mission to the ISS has failed to reach its goal.

Back in October 2014, Orbital Science's rocket exploded six seconds into launch, along with 5,000 pounds of supplies. The ISS crew has enough food and water to last them until early August despite the two failures -- the real loss here is the propellant included in Progress' cargo, which they need to maintain the space station's altitude. Hopefully, the crew can get by until SpaceX's Dragon capsule gets there with more supplies in June.

Amazon CEO's Company, Blue Origin, Unveiled a Video of Yesterday's New Shepard Launch

As reported by The Verge: If you didn't hear that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' secretive rocket company Blue Origin tested a rocket yesterday, you can be forgiven: unlike many launches, the first test flight of New Shepard wasn't streamed live. But the company has now released a video showing the successful launch from a base in Texas.

Blue Origin's goal is to create a cheap means of private space flight, and earlier this month, the company's president announced that it was prepared for test flights of its New Shepard rocket this year. "The engine is ready for flight... and ready for other commercial users," company president Rob Meyerson said. He didn't offer a timetable, but it appears the craft was closer to launch than most expected.

"Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return," Bezos writes in a note about the launch on Blue Origin's site. There was at least one hitch, however: "Of course one of our goals is reusability, and unfortunately we didn’t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent," Bezos writes, adding that new versions of the propulsion module are already being made.

The New Shepard is a suborbital craft that will be able to fly 62 miles above land, but it won't be able to make a full orbit of the planet. Although the craft can hold three people, Blue Origin previously said the first launch will be uncrewed, and it will stay that way for a while: the company says it wants to complete about a dozen tests before sending people aboard.

Blue Origin also released a less polished tracking shot of the launch, which is available to watch below.