Hyperloop Announces $26 Million in New Funding for the Pneumatic Metal Tubes of the Future

As reported by Mashable: The dream of rocketing through a metal tube at 800 mph took another big step forward on Thursday with the announcement that Hyperloop has added another $26 million to its war chest of cash.

Hyperloop is on its second major round of funding, known as a series B, while it tries to build a high-speed pneumatic tube transportation system to zip people from one place to another.

Making the announcement about the new funding at the Web Summit in Ireland, CEO Rob Lloyd said the company is confident the company will achieve its goal of meeting its full $80 million series B round by the end of the year.

Lloyd, the former president of Cisco Systems, joined Hyperloop as CEO in September, replacing Brogan BamBrogan, who is now the company's chief technology officer.

The $26 million comes from convertible note financing, which is a type of debt. Convertible notes are bonds that investors buy to help a company raise money; at a certain point in the future, when the bond reaches its maturity, they get the option to trade in the bond and take stock in the company instead.

In the series B, Lloyd, who joined the company in September, said Hyperloop had added investors from around the world including Khosla Ventures. All of its series A investors are participating, which would include Russian businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov's Caspian VC Partners, Sherpa, and ZhenFund.

He said the funding would give Hyperloop's CTO and co-founder Brogan BamBrogan and team "every pound of steel required to achieve our Kitty Hawk moment one year later."

"We've ordered the steel, so we need to fill in the purchase order with the 'ship to' address pretty quickly," he said.

Hyperloop has previously said it will achieve a test loop of 700 mph by the end of 2016. 

"The excitement around our vision and execution is palpable," Lloyd said in a statement on Hyperloop's website after the on-stage announcement.

He was joined on stage by Sherpa Capital's Shervin Pishevar who said that making Thursday's announcement in Dublin was particularly significant for him because it's where Hyperloop closed out its first, or series A, funding in 2014.

And it happened at the same hotel where the investor and entrepreneur signed the term note for that other transportation company he invested in, Uber. "I thank Ireland for the luck of the Irish," he said.

Rob Lloyd, CEO, announces $26M in financing from @KhoslaVentures & others as part of $80M Series B. #WebSummit2015 pic.twitter.com/bfMAmcOqTb

— HyperloopTech (@HyperloopTech) November 5, 2015

Commenting on when things would move past the test stage, Lloyd said three Hyperloop projects will be underway by 2017 and close to completion by 2020 — adding that he and BamBrogan were leaving Dublin and travelling in opposite directions around the globe in search of the right locations.

The theoretical transportation system, which investors say will turn the world into a village, moves people in vacuum-like tubes that they say will be able to travel at up to 800 mph.

Tesla and Space X's Elon Musk dreamed up the idea and is still "supportive of the efforts" according to the company.

The Future of Flight: Will You be Flying on One of These Superjets in 5 Years?

A series of next-generation super planes are currently being designed that promise to transform flight as early as 2020.

As reported by T3: Since the grounding of Concorde, flying has become pedestrian, with almost all journeys still taking as long as they did 30 years ago. Thanks to projects such as Skylon, N+2 and more though, that is about to change.

Skylon

Reaction Engines' Skylon superjet has just been supplied funding by the UK government.

The brainchild of Reaction Engines and BAE Systems, the Skylon super plane is a hypersonic aircraft that utilises a pair of revolutionary Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engines. Dubbed SABRE, these aerospace engines allow the aircraft to operate both in the Earth’s lower stratosphere - the layer that most commercial jets operate in - and also in low Earth orbit.

A cutaway image of a SABRE engine. A series of internal heat exchangers cool hot airstreams incredibly fast.

This ability to skim space will mean that the Skylon will be capable of taking off from a traditional commercial jet runway, fly to the edge of space, and then land anywhere else in the world within just 4 hours. For context, right now it takes just under 4 hours for a commercial jet to get from London to Istanbul, and three times that to get from London to Tokyo.

One of the unique selling points with Skylon is its ability to take off and land at standard, commercial airports.

The key piece of tech that is making this all possible is the next generation heat exchangers that allow the SABRE units to cool hot airstreams from over 1,000°C to minus 150°C in less than 1/100th of a second.

Will it happen? Well, right now, it certainly looks promising, as the UK government has just driven a dump truck load of cash up to Reaction Engines and BAE Systems, with the current deadline for a working system set at 2020.

AS2

Is the Aerion AS2 going to be the new Concorde?

AS2's luxurious cabin.  The perfect environment to drink 'business juice'.

Costing over $100 million (£60m) and set for launch in 2019, the Aerion AS2 is another superjet with slightly more modest goals. Pitched as a business jet, the AS2 looks like it wants to be the new Concorde, with the aircraft looking like it and featuring some similar specifications. For example, the AS2 is capable of flying at up to 1,217mph (Concorde could fly up to 1,350mph) and can complete a journey from London to New York in just 3 hours (Concorde’s record was 2 hours 54 minutes and 30 seconds).

The AS2 will be constructed primarily from carbon fibre composite materials.

Right now the AS2 is set for trial runs in 2019, certification in 2021 and for its first flights to commence in 2022. The design of the aircraft promises to be revolutionary, with its superstructure made from carbon fibre composite, its wings sculpted to reduce overall drag by 20 per cent (this is largely thanks to Aerion’s Supersonic Natural Laminar Flow Technology) and cabin offering stupid levels of comfort for its passengers.

Will it happen? Of all the projects currently in development, it seems like the Aerion AS2 is the one that will almost definitely happen. Aerion are already taking orders for the jet and, considering the latest global economic meltdown has now largely blown over for the corporate world, the money needed to buy and fly on these will be readily available. Here at T3.com though, we’ll probably just stick with the T3 dirigible.

N+2

The N+2 has been designed for mass commercial transport, with its cabin housing 80 passengers.

One of the biggest problems engineers have faced in bringing supersonic flight back and developing it further is the issue of sonic booms. Sonic booms are caused when violent disturbances of air pressure around a plane travelling faster than the speed of sound merge to form enormous shock waves. These shock waves create the thunderous sonic booms that became famous thanks to Concorde. The problem is that they are so loud that right now legislation is in place that forbids jets to fly over land, as the booms are deemed to loud to be exposed to the public.

The N+2 project, a collaborative effort between Lockheed Martin and NASA, aims to solve that problem, with its futuristic commercial jet promising to carry 80 passengers at a time from New York to Los Angeles in just 2 hours 30 minutes. For context, that journey takes over 5 hours today using standard subsonic commercial jets. Crucially though, thanks to the N+2’s unique tri-engine design, where one engine is mounted on top of the aircraft and the other two installed below, sonic booms will be reduced to a level which will make them acceptable for over-ground travel.

The tri-engine design, with one on top and two below, reduces the sonic boom effect significantly.

Will it happen? Our gut feeling here at T3.com is that the N+2 is the most likely never to see the light of day. Lockheed Martin and NASA in specifically have track records of pushing the envelope in terms of technological design and innovation, however often the technology remains just that. The N+2’s technological innovations will most likely be used, just not on the N+2 superjet.

Unmanned Army Black Hawk Passes Autonomous Flight Tests

As reported by Wireless Design Mag: Upon hearing “unmanned aerial vehicles,” most people probably think of those pesky drones flying over little league baseball games—not so much four-bladed, twin engine, 180 mph military choppers. But recently, the United States Army’s Black Hawk has passed a critical test in autonomous helicopter flight and robot teaming, an Army official said.

Flying autonomously, the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk successfully delivered an amphibious all-terrain vehicle (AATV) to a Florida drop zone last Tuesday. After picking up the AATV, the helicopter flew five to seven kilometers, delivering the vehicle to its specified ground location. The AATV (also unmanned) then proceeded to travel through a ten kilometer scenario, facing various chemical and biological hazards and relaying that data back to the chopper via satellite.

The success of the Black Hawk and AATV’s joint (autonomous) mission points to a new level of robotics emerging in the United States military. It also marks an important step in the venture to make the Black Hawk an optionally manned aircraft—something Sikorsky, the company that builds the Black Hawk, has been working on, following an announcement last year. Since then, the company has been conducting remotely piloted flight tests and advancing its hardware-software kit, dubbed the Matrix, to allow for greater self-steering.

The Army currently has 2,500 Black Hawks at its disposal, and refashioning them to include the unmanned technology would grant military commanders greater flexibility in prioritizing manned operations: crews could focus on more “sensitive” missions, while the autonomous vehicles would fulfill resupply missions without increasing fleet size.

Robert Sadowski, a roboticist for the Army's Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), told Defense One, “If you can retrofit [the Black Hawks], you can do autonomous logistics when the crew is resting. It gives you the ability to have an enhanced operational tempo. It can be retrofitted across the older UH-60s. In fact, they’re trying to do that to show that it can be done.”

Tesla is Already Making Grid Batteries at the Gigafactory

As reported by Fortune: Electric car maker Tesla Motors is already assembling batteries to be used by utilities and building owners at its huge battery factory, the Gigafactory, just outside of Reno, Nev. The company made the announcement during its third quarter earnings on Tuesday.

Earlier this year Tesla announced that it would start selling batteries that could be plugged into the power grid, connected to buildings, or paired with solar panels. Business owners and home owners can use Tesla’s batteries to lower electricity bills by powering buildings when grid electricity rates are high. Utilities can use the batteries to operate their grids more smoothly and to avoid building additional expensive and dirty power plants.

Tesla said that it started assembling these batteries—called the Powerpack and Powerwall—at its factory in Fremont, Calif. in the third quarter of this year. In the early part of the fourth quarter, Tesla says it “relocated production from Fremont to an automated assembly line at the Gigafactory.” These Powerpack and Powerwall battery packs are likely using battery cells from its battery partner Panasonic.

Previously Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk had said that the company would move production of the grid batteries to the Gigafactory next year in the first quarter.

At the end of 2016, Tesla will make the Powerpack and Powerwall battery packs using battery cells that it produces at the Gigafactory, says Tesla.Overall, Tesla says it’s accelerating and expanding its plans to make the grid batteries. The company is seeing strong demand for the Powerpack and Powerwalls, in particular in Australia, Germany and South Africa.

Earlier this year Musk said the company had $1 billion-worth, or 100,000 in orders, for the grid batteries. As a result the grid batteries are sold out in 2016 already. Musk has also said that there’s been so much demand for Tesla’s grid batteries that they “went viral” and were “crazy off the hook.”Previously Musk has estimated that just the grid battery orders could deliver between $40 million to $45 million in sales for the fourth quarter of this year. Sales for the battery business could be “ten times that number next year” — or presumably $400 million to $450 million in a quarter — after that.

Beyond next year, the business could reach “a few billion dollars in 2017,” Musk said earlier this year. “It’s sort of growing by a half order of magnitude to an order of magnitude per year.”

Tesla didn’t give any more details on the volumes of grid batteries it has been assembling at the Gigafactory on the earnings call. But Tesla CTO JB Straubel confirmed on the call that Tesla had just started assembly in the factory and said battery assembly will be done in a separate part of the building than where the battery cells will be manufactured.

Tesla is Going to Lock Down Autopilot so It's Harder to do Stupid Things With It

As reported by The Verge: It's no secret that some Model S owners have been doing truly dumb things with their cars since Tesla rolled out autopilot — the temptation to let go of the wheel and let the car take total control is strong, even though Tesla calls it a "beta" and insists that drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times. In an earnings call Q&A this afternoon, CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that some scary videos had made it onto the internet of autopilot making scary decisions, saying that the company is planning "some additional constraints" around when the feature can be enabled in order to "minimize the possibility of people doing crazy things with it."

He didn't detail what those constraints might be, but it's easy to imagine that Tesla could, for instance, have more rigor around insisting that hands are placed on the wheel — if hands are removed for more than a few seconds, the system could automatically disengage, as some lane-keep systems in other vehicles do today. That'd reduce the chances that an inattentive driver could get caught off-guard by the car doing something unexpected.

Musk's comments come on the heels of Google's October self-driving report, where the company laid out why it decided to work on a fully autonomous car — because drivers aren't very good at taking control of self-driving cars that need to disengage their autonomous functionality. Some Model S owners are learning that better than anyone at the moment, though there's a lot of hope that Tesla's system will get better over time: the company has noted that data from cars in the field is continuously being uploaded in order to refine its maps and algorithms.

Testing Cars is so Physically Punishing on Humans, Ford is Licensing Automakers a Robotic Replacement

As reported by The Verge: When humans can't hack it, it's time to call in the robots.

Ford has announced today that it's working with ASI, a Utah-based firm that specializes in vehicle automation, to sell "robotic testing kits" that help automakers endurance test new cars. The kits effectively turn in-development vehicles into rudimentary R/C cars with a hint of self-driving — they can be programmed to hold a course within one inch of error and have sensor arrays to avoid nearby pedestrians and other vehicles — which is convenient for sending test cars down brutal stretches of test track designed to simulate potholes and other hazards that they'll encounter over their useful lives.

From Ford's release:

Robotically driven vehicles are expected to repeatedly perform tests on torturous surfaces with names like Silver Creek, Power Hop Hill and Curb Your Enthusiasm. These tests can compress 10 years of daily driving abuse into courses just a few hundred yards long, with surfaces that include broken concrete, cobblestones, metal grates, rough gravel, mud pits and oversized speed bumps.

Spending days on end hurtling a development vehicle down these kinds of surfaces sounds about as much fun as punching yourself in the face, which is where the notion of automating it comes into play: by installing Ford's kit, a car company can basically let the car test itself. Ford says the system can be disengaged quickly if an engineer needs to get in and drive, but for the bulk of the testing, the car can bounce and jerk all it wants without endangering the backs and necks of the poor employees trying to get the car ready for real roads.

Ford is refusing to reveal which automakers have picked up the kits so far, but it says that "several automotive OEMs" have gotten orders in.

Watch: MIT Drone Autonomously Avoids Obstacles at 30 MPH

As reported by Robotics Trends: Obstacle avoidance needs to be the next big thing for drones. As 3D Robotics founder Chris Anderson said, the “mass jackassery” (reckless flying) needs to stop. It’s part of the reason we now have a mandatory drone registration system looming over us.

DJI has been on the forefront of avoidance technology for drones, recently introducing its Guidance system that uses multiple stereo and ultrasonic sensors that allows the drone to automatically avoid obstacles within 65 feet.

Andrew Barry, a PhD student at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), is looking to push this technology to the next level. Barry and professor Russ Tedrake have created an obstacle-detection system that allows a drone to autonomously avoid obstacles in its flight path while flying 30 miles per hour.

CSAIL posted a fascinating video, which you can watch below, of Barry’s system helping a drone “dip, dart and dive” through a tree-filled field.

The drone in the video, which was made with off-the-shelf components for $1,700, weighs just over a pound and has a 34-inch wingspan. It has a camera on each wing and two processors that are “no fancier than the ones you’d find on a cellphone.”

CSAIL says Barry’s software runs 20 times faster than existing obstacle detection software. Operating at 120 frames per second, the open-source software allows the drone to detect objects and map its environment in real time, extracting depth information at 8.3 milliseconds per frame.

“Sensors like lidar are too heavy to put on small aircraft, and creating maps of the environment in advance isn’t practical,” Barry says. “If we want drones that can fly quickly and navigate in the real world, we need better, faster algorithms.”

So, how does it work? We’ll let CSAIL explain:

Traditional algorithms focused on this problem would use the images captured by each camera, and search through the depth-field at multiple distances - 1 meter, 2 meters, 3 meters, and so on - to determine if an object is in the drone’s path.

Such approaches, however, are computationally intensive, meaning that the drone cannot fly any faster than 5 or 6 miles per hour without specialized processing hardware.

Barry’s realization was that, at the fast speeds that his drone could travel, the world simply does not change much between frames. Because of that, he could get away with computing just a small subset of measurements - specifically, distances of 10 meters away.

“You don’t have to know about anything that’s closer or further than that,” Barry says. “As you fly, you push that 10-meter horizon forward, and, as long as your first 10 meters are clear, you can build a full map of the world around you.”

While such a method might seem limiting, the software can quickly recover the missing depth information by integrating results from the drone’s odometry and previous distances.

Barry wrote about the system in his paper “Pushbroom Stereo for High-Speed Navigation in Cluttered Environments” (PDF) and says he needs to improve the software so it can work at more than one depth and dense environments.

“Our current approach results in occasional incorrect estimates known as ‘drift,’” he says. “As hardware advances allow for more complex computation, we will be able to search at multiple depths and therefore check and correct our estimates. This lets us make our algorithms more aggressive, even in environments with larger numbers of obstacles.”