Ford Puts Its Driverless Cars on the Snowy Streets of Michigan

As reported by NBC News: Ford is getting a head start on making their autonomous cars feel at home in the snow, a condition that can be tricky for driverless vehicle systems. The winter weather coats the ground, covering up lane markers, signs and other features the cars use to navigate the road — and, of course, it's slippery.

"In the real world you don't always have perfect sunny weather," said Ford's director of autonomous vehicles and controls, Randy Visintainer, in a video put out by the company.

Until now, testing has largely been done under good conditions in sunny states like California, Nevada and Texas. Google's driverless cars only recently encountered rain, and had to be outfitted with tiny wipers for their sensors.

Related: Self-Driving Google Cars Keep Rain Off Sensors With Tiny Wipers

Ford / YouTube

"It's important to test in weather like snow," Visintainer said, "but also to let the public know we are looking at these conditions."

Ford's cars memorize the positions of signs and other landmarks, allowing them to locate themselves to within a centimeter in places the system has mapped.

Related: Welcome to MCity: GM, Honda, Others Fund Fake City for Driverless Cars

The company's cars are cruising around MCity, a fake couple of city blocks built by the University of Michigan specifically for testing autonomous vehicles.

Ehang Unveils Autonomous Passenger Drone (Video)

As reported by the Motor Authority: Small, remote-controlled drones, usually with cameras mounted to them, have become a popular gadget for tech buffs, but a company from China took the concept of a personal drone to a whole new level at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show. That company is drone-maker Ehang, which showed off an autonomous drone big and powerful enough to carry a human.

The idea was conceived by Ehang CEO and founder Huazhi Hu following the passing of two close acquaintances in separate flying accidents. Hu was determined to create a drone capable of personal flight that was also very safe. The result was the Ehang 184, in development since 2013.

The 184 is said to be capable of carrying a person weighing up to 220 pounds and the total flying range at present is less than 2.2 miles. The 184 itself weighs about 440 lb, with carbon fiber and other composites used to offset the weight of the batteries as much as possible while maintaining strength. Ehang envisions this early version being used in crowded metropolises to beat the traffic, or perhaps in tourist spots. The maximum altitude is about 1,640 feet and top speed is approximately 60 mph. Charging, meanwhile, is said to range from 2-4 hours.

A person would simply strap themselves in, enter a destination via a 12-inch touchscreen display and then hit a “take-off” button. Everything else is controlled by the drone, including communicating with air traffic control and other aircraft in addition to navigation. The passenger can order the drone to land or hover at a stationary point, however.

Ehang says the 184 has had more than 100 successful test flights, including those carrying humans. Lift and steering is handled by eight electric motors, two each forming a bi-rotor on each of the four arms, and together they deliver an output of just over 140 horsepower. For safety, the 184 is capable of maintaining flight with three of the bi-rotors should one of them fail.


Ehang is targeting a price tag between $200,000 and $300,000 and says sales may even start this year. But don’t hold your breath, at least if you’re in the United States, as there will likely be some tough Federal Aviation Regulations to meet before the 184 can be legally sold.

Watch This Tesla Car Drive Itself With the New ‘Summon’ Option

As reported by The Next Web: Ok, this is cool. The latest version of Tesla’s software actually allows drivers to get out of the car and let the Model S do all of the work, driving itself with just a tap of the key fob.

Called ‘Summon,’ the feature allows Tesla owners to let the car park and back itself out of parking spaces at will. If the car is connected to a garage door through the ‘HomeLink’ connection, the car will also be able to operate that all by itself. So if you’re really over driving the extra few feet inside your garage or you’d just rather have your car ready to go in the morning, the Model S uses the myriad of sensors and cameras already built into the car to get the job done with no driver involved.

Plus, it just looks cool. Like James Bond cool.

The new update, v. 7.1, also features new restrictions to the car’s semi-autonomous ‘Autopilot’ feature to maximize road safety — particularly ensuring that the car does not exceed five miles above a given speed limit, and that the person operating the car must be in the driver’s seat. For those of you brave enough to take your hands off the wheel, you can do so with more safety involved.

Laser X-rays to Help Nab Nuclear Smugglers

As reported by GizMag: With over 100 million cargo containers in transit each year, screening them for illicit nuclear material is a major problem. To keep commerce flowing while maintaining an eye on nuclear terrorism and smuggling, a team of scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is developing a laser-based X-ray machine that can image a uranium disk the size of a stack of three US nickels hidden between three-inch (7.6 cm) steel panels.

Nuclear smuggling is a much larger problem than many people realize. It isn't just a question of preventing the doomsday scenario of a terrorist group trying to sneak a nuclear warhead or dirty bomb past customs. There's also the matter of stopping the smuggling or theft of civilian nuclear materials for engineering or medicine that could fall into the wrong hands or endanger the public through improper disposal.

The problem is that equipment for routine scanning is expensive and tends to be on the bulky side, with some systems running to dimensions equivalent to those of a small stadium. This is not helped by the fact that detecting radioactive material is even more difficult if it's sealed in a shielded container.

The UNL team led by Donald Umstadter, director of the Diocles Extreme Light Laboratory at UNL, is working on a nuclear material imager that uses a laser-driven X-ray source based on the laser-wakefield-accelerator-driven inverse-Compton-scattering (LWFA-ICS) device. Put very simply, this is a device developed by UNL in 2013 that scatters lasers off of an electron beam generated by a synchrotron accelerator. In the UNL imager, this scattering produces a narrowly focused X-ray beam that can be directed like a laser pointer and can travel long distances.

Shouyuan Chen, UNL research assistant professor of physics and astronomy, shows a uranium disk and steel casing

According to UNL, the new imager reduces the size of stadium-sized facilities to that of a trailer truck. It's lighter, more portable, and uses lower energy levels, so it's safer to use with people in the vicinity. In proof-of-principle experiments, it imaged a coin-size sample and the teams says that it can detect uranium in smaller amounts than the required one-kilogram (2.2 lb) standard through steel much thicker than that used in shipping containers.

The UNL team is currently working on improving the performance and precision of the device, so it can identify shielded nuclear materials while the US government reviews the technology. The team sees the device as having applications in not only curtailing the smuggling of nuclear materials, but also in physics research and as a nuclear site inspection tool.

"It's not unusual for scientists to go beyond basic research to develop new technologies, as we did with our device," says Umstadter. "However, the great urgency and importance of detecting smuggled nuclear materials compelled us to go even further and be the first to apply the new technology."

This Drone Can Fly Through the Air and Under Water

As reported by TNW News: While drones have been getting a bad rap for dropping from the skies at inopportune moments, a new drone from Rutgers University can swim as well as fly.

Recently a World championship skier was nearly hit by a falling
drone during the World Cup in Italy.

Funded by a grant from the Office of Naval Research, the Naviator can be deployed for either aerial reconnaissance or for snooping underwater.

“They have submarines that can launch things from the submarine and it pops out into the water and goes and does some things, but it can’t come back,” explains Marco Maia, a Rutgers doctoral student who worked on the project.

“It does one mission and one mission only. Then you have airplanes that deploy vehicles from the air that can dive into the water, from then on they’re in the water and cannot come back out. This vehicle does all those things.”

The Office of Naval Research has taken a keen interest in the project as it can help with the maintenance of ships, explains associate professor Javier Diez.

“They have a number of applications we’ve been talking about. You can do ship inspections. You can deploy from the bridge and quickly be able to make the decision on whether to call a repairman or not. If you have an oil spill you can use this to see how far and how deep the spill goes.”

The naviator is just a concept for now. But the team from Rutgers are looking to improve speed and its ability to carry bigger payloads.

➤ The Naviator, A Drone Capable of Flying in the Air and Maneuvering Through Water [Laughing Squid]

SpaceX Makes History: Successfully Launches, Lands Falcon 9 Rocket

As reported by NBC News: SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Monday night, the first from the private spaceflight company since its rocket exploded on liftoff in June.

The first stage of the rocket, used to propel the payload to 100km (62 miles) or so until the second stage takes over, then successfully landed on Earth again at a prepared landing zone. This is the first time SpaceX has ever attempted to land a rocket on land, and the first successful attempt to recover a rocket from an orbital flight. Previous attempts, all unsuccessful, were attempted on floating landing pads.

The Falcon 9's first stage seconds after landing successfully - the first time a rocket has successfully been recovered this way. SpaceX

SpaceX has come close to landing a rocket but until now, never actually pulled the feat off. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, stuck a landing last month — but SpaceX founder Elon Musk pointed out that was a suborbital trip, the requirements for which are considerably different. Creating reusable rockets is important for lowering the cost of space travel, which could make space tourism and a trip to Mars more feasible.

The launch's payload, 11 ORBCOMM satellites destined to join others in the communications company's network, was also successfully deployed with no problems.

The Falcon 9's stage 2 rocket heats up after igniting, driving the payload into orbit. SpaceX

On June 28, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft filled with cargo for the International Space Station exploded a few minutes after lift-off.

The launch was originally scheduled for Sunday night, but was delayed because there was a 10 percent better chance of a successful landing on Monday, according to Musk.

 

Below is a shot which showcases the scale of the concrete landing pad where the rocket booster landed. That’s a person standing right there in the middle in case you couldn’t tell.  
But on to the good stuff. Here we have a long exposure shot showcasing the rocket launch, re-entry, and landing burns. 

 

In this photo, we have another shot of the booster landing. 

 

Next we have a nice still of the first stage landing right before making impact. 

 

And of course, here’s the booster resting comfortably after a successful landing. 

 

Driverless Cars Always Obey the Law—Why That Could be a Problem

As reported by Business Insider: Earlier in November, Google got some interesting press when one of its cars was pulled over for, of all things, driving too slowly.  

But the incident shined a spotlight on a very real issue with driverless cars: they're too safe, and that simply doesn't mesh with the way humans drive.

The fact of the matter is humans don't obey traffic laws all the time — sometimes we zip through yellow lights or commit a rolling stop at stop signs.

 But when you combine human error with the consistent precision of driverless cars, accidents are inevitable.

That's why programmers are currently debating whether it's time to teach self-driving cars to commit infractions, according to a Bloomberg article.

“It’s a constant debate inside our group,” Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab in Pittsburgh, told Bloomberg. “And we have basically decided to stick to the speed limit. But when you go out and drive the speed limit on the highway, pretty much everybody on the road is just zipping past you. And I would be one of those people.”

When Rajkumar offered rides to members of Congress in the lab's driverless Cadillac SRX SUV, the car ended up swinging across three lanes of traffic to merge on I-395 because it didn't know how humans make room when there's a lot of traffic build up.

Although a human took control, thereby avoiding a potential accident, it showed how driverless cars struggle to interpret how humans drive.

“It’s a dilemma that needs to be addressed,” Rajkumar said.

The cop who pulled over the robot Google car that was driving too slow at 24 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone also noted the issue with driverless cars being too cautious.

"“The right thing would have been for this car to pull over, let the traffic go and then pull back on the roadway,” Sergeant Saul Jaeger, the Mountain View cop, told Bloomberg. “I like it when people err on the side of caution. But can something be too cautious? Yeah.”

To address the issue, Google is working on making its cars more aggressive to "naturally fit into the traffic flow," Dmitri Dolgov, principal engineer of the program, told Bloomberg.

“Driving is a social game," he said.