Google Tests its Driverless Cars in Austin, the Age of Autonomous Taxis Nears

As reported by CNET: If you spot a Lexus SUV driving itself to your favorite Austin barbecue joint, don't panic. Google's self-driving car has arrived in Texas.

In a Google+ post Tuesday, Google announced that it has picked Austin as the next location for its self-driving vehicle tests. To rev up the project, one of the company's Lexus SUVs is already driving around a few square miles north and northeast of downtown Austin -- with a backup driver behind the wheel for good measure.

Austin marks the second testbed for Google'srobo-cars. The company has already been driving around the streets of Mountain View, Calif., with its fleet of modified Lexus RX450h cars and Toyota Prius models. But expanding the program to another city is important at this point as the cars need to learn how to navigate the different roads, driving conditions and challenges offered in other locales.

So just how have the cars been faring without a driver?

In May, Google released a report on its self-driving car project, revealing that over the course of six years and more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving, its cars have been involved in 12 minor accidents. In all of those cases, according to Google, a human being driving the other car was the cause of the accident rather than one of Google's robo-cars-- and no injuries occurred. Still, that opens up the thorny issue of how Google's cars can learn to share the road with human drivers, who may be more apt to make mistakes than the self-driving cars themselves.

Google has acknowledged the challenges involved when man meets machine.

"Even when our software and sensors can detect a sticky situation and take action earlier and faster than an alert human driver, sometimes we won't be able to overcome the realities of speed and distance; sometimes we'll get hit just waiting for a light to change," Chris Urmson, director of the company's self-driving car program, said in a blog post in May. "And that's important context for communities with self-driving cars on their streets; although we wish we could avoid all accidents, some will be unavoidable."

What, if anything, has Google been doing to try to avoid accidents caused by other cars?

"Our sensors give us 360-degree visibility around the vehicle at all times, out to a distance of nearly two football fields, and the vehicle never gets distracted," a Google spokeswoman said. "We've also baked-in defensive driving behavior: We do things to avoid getting into a tricky situation in the first place -- e.g. staying out of other drivers' blind spots, nudging away from lane-splitting motorcycles or wobbling vehicles, pausing 1.5 seconds before proceeding into an intersection after a red light turns green, etc. It still amazes us how many times people have rear-ended us while we've been completely stopped at a stoplight for several seconds."

So far, the backup or -- as Google calls them -- safety drivers in the prototype cars have had a steering wheel, accelerator pedal and brake pedal that allows them to take control if needed. The speed of the cars have been capped at 25 miles per hour. But what happens when the cars don't have a backup driver and start driving at normal speed limits? That prospect is still a number of years away, which is why testing the cars in different cities and different scenarios is crucial.

"It's important for us to get experience testing our software in different driving environments, traffic patterns and road conditions -- so we're ready to take on Austin's pedicabs, pickup trucks and everything in between," Google said in its post. "Keep it weird for us, Austin, and visit our website to let us know how we're driving."

A second self-driving Lexus will arrive in Austin later this week, the spokeswoman said.

Since the self-driving project got off the ground in 2009, most of Google's testing has taken place in its home base of Mountain View. Now the company not only wants to work with driving conditions elsewhere but also "learn how different communities perceive and interact with self-driving vehicles, and that can vary in different parts of the country," the spokeswoman added.

Beyond Google, major automakers such as Ford, Audi and Nissan have all been experimenting with self-driving cars. In March, Carlos Ghosn, CEO of the Nissan-Renault Alliance, said he expects autonomous-driving to have three phases: a first wave emerging in 2016, followed by self-driving cars that navigate a highway by 2018 and then cars that can negotiate city driving by 2020. That same month, Elon Musk, CEO of electric-car maker Tesla Motors, said he expects self-driving cars to be the norm within 20 years.

Self-driving cars may still be a rare sight on the roads as they've typically been restricted to testing facilities under controlled conditions. But they are coming, sooner or later. If Google and the automakers can hammer out the challenges of navigating the roads, self-driving cars could potentially save some of the more than 1 million people killed each year in car accidents worldwide.

A Real-Time Map of All the Objects in Earth's Orbit

As reported by Gizmodo: Fellow space nerds, I come bringing sweet internet relief for the Monday doldrums. It’s stuffin.space, a real-time, 3D-visualized map of all objects looping around Earth, from satellites to orbital trash.

A view of the US GPS constellation satellite tracks.

The site updates itself daily using the latest satellite data from Space Track, a US Department of Defense website, which monitors satellites and space junk that are at least the size of a standard softball. (This excludes top-secret military satellites, of course.) In total, stuffin.space tracks 150,000 objects. Type in a satellite name to scope out its altitude, figure out its age, group satellites by type, and so on.

It started as a passion project in April for 18-year-old James Yoder, an alum of FIRST Robotics, the high school robotics competition. He wanted to learn more about 3D graphics programming and WebGL, a JavaScript API.

“Using those orbital parameters, stuffin.space uses a propagation model to predict the location of every satellite in real time, with an accuracy of within a few kilometers, and displays the data using a WebGL visualization with an accurate view of the Earth’s rotation and sunlight angle,” Yoder told Gizmodo in an email.

Yoder heads to college this fall to study electrical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. A homemade site mapping Earth’s orbital bric-a-brac in real-time? Not a bad project for an incoming freshman to have under his belt.

Making All Cars Driverless Could Reduce Emissions by 90 Percent

As reported by Popular Science: With large tech companies like Google and Uber circling driverless cars, the conversation has mostly been one of “how soon can we do this?” and not “should we?” Of course, autonomous cars would be cool, but what are the advantages besides the obvious luxury of not needing an error-prone, human hand behind the wheel?

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California say another advantage exists — an environmental one. If a fleet of autonomous electric taxis were to replace everyone’s gas-powered, personal cars, we could see more than a 90 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and almost 100 percent decrease in oil consumption from cars, all while saving money in the long run. Right now that may seem like a long shot, but a study earlier this year said that 44 percent of Americans would consider buying a driverless car in the next 10 years, even if it would cost $5,000 more.

Now this may seem obvious: if you started to only build electric cars, emissions and oil consumption will fall. But what surprised Berkeley researchers was how most efficient such a system would actually be, even with the relatively high cost of electric vehicles today.

“You don’t often find that, where the cheapest is also the greenest,” said Jeff Greenblatt, co-author of the study.

A fleet about 15 percent of the size of all private cars could service the same population, if scheduled correctly, estimated Greenblatt. But the real savings would be found in the operating cost. Even when estimating that an electric, driverless car would cost $150,000 up front, researchers say that a car that could drive 24/7, not require a salary and use no gasoline would pay for itself before five years. The paper says that price will drop drastically, citing an IHS study that says autonomy will only add around $5,000 to a car’s current sticker price by 2030.

When asked about the limiting range of electric cars (right now the popular Nissan Leaf gets 84 miles per charge), Greenblatt told Popular Science that a fleet would be able to compensate for that range, versus a single-owner car—when the battery is low, a car would simply drive back to the main station, to be replaced in the field by a charged car.

Researchers relied heavily on the idea they called “right-sizing,” meaning the car dispatched would be fit to the trip’s needs. For instance, a different car would be sent for one-person trip, versus a group of four people heading out for a long-distance road trip. Greenblatt said that if based purely off current technology, that might be a situation where an autonomous hybrid car would be deployed.

The biggest issue right now: these cars don’t commercially exist. However, it seems both Google and Uber are looking to change that, and according to Berkeley press, researchers from this study already have talks scheduled at Google.

Uber CEO To Tesla: Sell Me Half A Million Autonomous Electric Cars In 2020

As reported by Green Car Reports: Tesla Motors is one of several automakers planning to put a self-driving car on sale sometime in the next few years, and it already seems to have at least one big fan.

This person isn't a celebrity owner or safety advocate, but rather the CEO of preeminent ride-sharing company Uber.

If Tesla can build a fully-autonomous car by 2020, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says his company would it. In fact, he'd buy every one Tesla builds.  Yes, all 500,000 electric cars Tesla expects to produce in that year, according to Forbes (via Charged EVs).

That boast comes not directly from Kalanick himself, but from Steve Jurvetson--an early Tesla investor and board member.

UberCab app

Jurvetson relayed what he claimed were Kalanick's remarks at the recent Top 10 Tech Trends dinner, hosted by the Churchill Club.

He used his speaking time there to extol the virtues of autonomous cars.  "I believe they are already safer than my parents," he said, "and I would trust my kids with them."  He claimed that autonomous driving could significantly reduce the number of taxis on New York City streets, and still allow patrons to get a ride within 30 seconds of hailing one.

Those benefits are of course theoretical and dependent on a number of variables--including Tesla's ability to meet its autonomy and production-volume goals.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously said he expects the company to build 500,000 cars per year by 2020.

That prediction was reconfirmed by Tesla chief technical officer JB Straubel at a conference in Washington, D.C. last month.

London anti-Uber taxi protest: June 11, 2014 (photo by Flickr user David Holt)

This would bring Tesla's cumulative output to 1 million vehicles by that point.

But will any of those vehicles be able to drive themselves?

Tesla Model S P85D, 2015 Detroit Auto Show

Tesla has been building cars equipped with hardware for the first phase of its "autopilot" autonomous technology since last fall, although the system still isn't available to consumers.

Initially, cars will be able to pass other vehicles with no involvement from the driver other than the flick of a turn signal.

Musk has said that Tesla plans to develop the technology to the point that a car can be summoned from a garage to meet its owner.

Tesla may not offer this technology on all of its models, though.  By 2020, much of Tesla's sales volume will consist of the Model 3, a 200-mile electric car priced at $35,000 before any incentives.  The lower price point may mean Tesla will skimp on features like autonomous driving.

That would mean Uber would take delivery of somewhat fewer Tesla cars, but still an impressive amount.

Watch When a Drone Flies Through Fireworks

As reported by Wireless Design Mag: Have you ever wondered what a fireworks show looked like from the “inside?” The following video, filmed with a GoPro Hero 3, was given an up close and personal view of an Independence Day fireworks display over West Palm Beach, Florida—flown into the action by a DJI Phantom 2 unmanned aerial vehicle.

You probably won’t see many drone-filmed pyrotechnic videos circulating this year, however. Since the video went viral after last year’s Fourth of July, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has declared certain areas, such as Washington, D.C., a “no-drone” zone. Other local regulations make it increasingly difficult for drone enthusiasts to operate their aircrafts during such events. Restrictions are intended to promote safety: for instance, small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) considered “recreational” in nature can’t fly higher than 400 feet or through or above surrounding obstacles, and must be visible at all times.

Even so, the video is nothing short of spectacular. Despite some close calls with a few whizzing firework shells, the aircraft emerged from the explosive show unscathed.

What if Earth's Magnetic Field Flipped?

As reported by HowStuffWorks: At the moment, the Earth's Southern Magnetic pole is actually at the North Pole, (Geographic Northern Pole) and the Earth's Northern Magnetic pole is in Antarctica.  Our compass' have a north and south magnetic direction as well - but opposite poles attract, so the northern pole of our magnetic compass is pointing to the Earth's southern magnetic pole.

Imagine though getting out of bed and finding an upside-down world. Earth's magnetic field has flipped — now Greenland is in the northern magnetic pole, Antarctica in the southern, and your compass says North is South. What should you expect from a planet where you can't trust a compass to point the way you're used to?

The magnetic field does more than provide compasses a reference point: It shields us from the full impact of the solar wind — charged particles emitted from the sun that would otherwise bombard us with ultraviolet radiation. The origins of the magnetic field start thousands of miles beneath Earth's surface, where convection in the outer core produces electrical currents that, in combination with Earth's rotation, create and sustain a magnetic field that runs through the planet like a bar magnet with two poles, north and south.

When we talk about Earth's magnetic field flipping, we mean an event where those poles reverse. Based on information stored in cooled lava rocks, we know this has already happened before — about 170 times in the last 100 million years [source: Fleming]. The last time it happened was 780,000 years ago, but the causes of these reversals remain mysterious, and there's no way to fully predict when the next one might occur [source: Roach].

However, we know that a flip doesn't happen overnight. Instead, it takes anywhere from a century to 20,000 years to complete, and it's accompanied by a decline in strength of the magnetic field. Based on measurements that began in the mid-1800s, we're in the midst of one such weakening right now, and in 2014, data from European Space Agency satellites revealed that the magnetic field loses 5 percent of its strength with every passing decade [source: Sneed]. Some say the decline could stop at any time — the strength of the magnetic field today is still stronger than it's been for most of the last 50,000 years — while others says it's an indicator that the magnetic field will flip within the next 1,500 years.

Besides today's compasses pointing south instead of north, what would happen if the magnetic field flipped? While the atmosphere would still help shield the planet from radiation, the weakening of the magnetic field that precedes the reversal could make us vulnerable to cancer-causing energy particles and cosmic rays [source: Sanders]. A flipped magnetic field could disrupt communications systems and power grids. It could also produce multiple north and south poles, and birds, whales and other migratory animals that use the field to establish a sense of direction could encounter problems.

That said, a reversal of the poles probably doesn't spell doom for humanity: There's no evidence that past flips of the magnetic field caused mass extinctions or other catastrophes. You'll definitely need a new compass though; and probably a new GPS and/or Smartphone as well.

Space-Debris Drone in Development

As reported by Engadget: The Swiss aren't big on littering, and that philosophy apparently applies to space, too. After the nation's EPFL Center for Space Engineering launched its first satellites (the tiny SwissCubes) into orbit, the very next mission planned was "CleanSpace One" to get them out of orbit. For one, the researchers didn't want to add to the reams of existing space garbage threatening other satellites and astronauts at speeds of up to 15,000mph. But mainly, they want to test a practical system for cleaning space junk with relatively small targets. After considering various systems, the EPFL has settled on a "Pac-Man" solution that will trap the satellites with a conical net.

The operation will be tricky, because just finding the 4x4-inch satellites is going to be difficult. As such, the researchers are developing a high dynamic-range camera and image processing system that can spot bright reflections coming off the SwissCubes as they spin in space. Meanwhile, if the net doesn't deploy just so, the cubes could bounce off the cleanup satellite and end up in a worse spot than before.  

The team rejected several capture options, including articulated arms with claws and a "tentacle" scheme. It settled on a cone-shaped net that unfolds and closes back down, saying "this system is more reliable and offers a larger margin for maneuvering than a claw or an articulated hand." After the Clean Space One satellite gobbles up all the cubes, it will de-orbit and burn everything up on the way back down to earth. The team has now passed the prototype phase and hopes to develop the first engineering models, with the aim of launching the space junk collection satellite by 2018.