GM Requests Green Light to Ditch Steering Wheel in Its Self-Driving Cars – This Week in Tech – 12/29/2019
GM Requests Green Light to Ditch Steering Wheel in Its Self-Driving Cars
Climb into a self-driving car today and there’ll be a steering wheel right there where you’d expect, and probably a backup driver, too, ready to step in should something go awry during the journey. Not for long…
Tesla’s Neural Net Can Now Identify Red and Green Traffic Lights, Garbage Cans, and Detailed Road Markings
During Tesla’s Autonomy Day last April, Director of AI Andrej Karpathy joked that the attendees of the event only used a pair of cameras to navigate themselves to the venue. Emphasizing this point and Tesla’s aversion to LiDAR, the AI Director even joked that the attendees must not have shot lasers from their eyes when they were making their way to the event. These jokes, while lighthearted, show Tesla’s all-in bet on Elon Musk’s idea that a suite of cameras and a Neural Network are enough to teach a fleet of vehicles how to drive autonomously…
Tesla Patents New Chemistry for Better, Longer-Lasting and Cheaper Batteries
Tesla has made a lot of battery moves this year and it is closing the year by filing a patent on a new chemistry for better, longer-lasting and cheaper batteries…
Artificial Intelligence Identifies Previously Unknown Features Associated With Cancer Recurrence
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP) in Japan has successfully found features in pathology images from human cancer patients, without annotation, that could be understood by human doctors. Further, the AI identified features relevant to cancer prognosis that were not previously noted by pathologists, leading to a higher accuracy of prostate cancer recurrence compared to pathologist-based diagnosis. Combining the predictions made by the AI with predictions by human pathologists led to an even greater accuracy…
FDA Approves Augmented Reality Surgery Tool That Gives Surgeons ‘X-Ray Vision’
Right now, augmented reality technology is most commonly associated with gaming or, perhaps, pick and placing your virtual Ikea furniture. But soon it will be used to give surgeons a type of “X-ray vision” when they carry out procedures — and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just given it the green light…
LG Indoor Gardening Appliance Lets You Grow Your Own Veggies at Home
Perhaps next to its mobile and TV products, LG is also known for its home appliances. Many of those appliances are getting smarter, relying on mobile technology and automation to introduce convenience to household chores. Perhaps the most extreme example of that is coming next month when LG showcases a smart appliance that will let you grow vegetables indoors inside cabinets that look like overgrown refrigerators…
Flash Forest Aims to Use Drones to Plant a Billion Trees by 2028
We looked at the concept of forest regeneration using drones back in 2016 with the Droneseed initiative, now a team of Canadian science and engineering graduates is pitching a dream to plant a billion trees by 2028 using drones. The project is dubbed Flash Forest and combines the use of drones with specially-designed pods and an accelerated seed germination process. According to Flash Forest, its technology can plant trees 10 times faster than a single worker and at a cost that is 80 percent cheaper than traditional tree planting methods…