Robopocalypse Report #18: Paper Drones Act as Cheerleaders as the 3d Printed Self Driving Cars Drive to the First Robopocalyptical Football Game

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Drones and data could significantly help oil fields in the US with the lower oil prices these days.

In the interim, there is a new market hunting for for pilots...flying drones.

Drones are becoming a problem for those seeking quiet on their vacations.

The University of Arkansas has restricted drone use over campus.

In the WTF category, motorized paper airplanes are, according to the FAA, drones and need to be licensed.

The FAA is beta testing a smart phone app that would inform drone pilots if they can fly in an area or not.

In the world of self driving cars, here is a Roadmap to a World Without Drivers.

Self driving cars may actually be really good for cyclists and pedestrians.

In the oh-noes category, will self driving cars be a terrorist's best friend?

Multiple automakers are starting to bridge the gap between todays manually driven cars and the self driving cars through safety features.

Self driving cars are now expected to be common in 5 to 10 years according to a study.  Just in time for my daughter to get her driver's license!!!  Wee!

(Some) insurance companies are welcoming their new self driving car overlords.

In manufacturing, it seems in Tesla's factories, the Robopocalypse has been realized.  That's amusingly ironic, I think.

In 3d printing, an Israeli designer had her 3d printed fashion designs hit the catwalk.

There are questions about how fast 3d printing or additive manufacturing will grow between now and the end of the decade.  Some give it a high number.  Others are more skeptical.  

In Boca Raton, Florida, a 3d Printer has been added to the library.

In general robotics, like the Japanese, a University of Illinois professor is working on robots to assist the elderly.

Is the Robopocalypse coming for FOOTBALL!?!

Another opinion piece wonders if Terminators are not a bad thing, really, if you use them to hunt terrorists.

In the software side, IBM has come up with an AI to help predict air pollution, in a project dubbed 'Green Horizion,' in Beijing 72 hours before hand.

In the economics of the Robopocalypse, robots might take your job, but first they will be your annoying coworker.

Another opinion piece states the Robopocalypse is being badly overhyped.

Could robots be part of the problem for India's PM Modi not being able to create jobs faster?  If so, then what happens when the Robopocalypse is fully realized and there are not factories to place in foreign countries?  

China releases its market projections for robotics.

Moving onto the general thoughts and philosophy of the Robopocalypse, in an interview, the DARPA head of the Robotics Challenge discusses his thoughts on the coming Robopocalypse.

Robopocalypse Report 2

Checking an aircraft for damage can be arduous and meticulous work, but last week’s issue of The Economist highlights an experimental commercial approach. In simple terms, the Remote Intelligent Survey Equipment for Radiation (RISER) drone is a quadcopter with LIDAR and forms the basis for a system to use lasers to automatically detect damage to airliners.

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Google's Self Driving Cars are Driving in Austin and DC now.

Google self-driving cars have hit the road in Austin, Tex., the first time the project’s testing program has expanded beyond the streets around its hometown in California.

Google said late Monday one of the company’s Lexus RX450h SUVs has been cruising around a few square miles north and northeast of downtown Austin for a few weeks. The car, outfitted with cameras and sensors, is creating a detailed map of the streets, lane markers, traffic signals, curb heights, “keep clear” zones, and other information that helps the driverless software understand where the car is in the world.

In recent days, the software and sensors have started doing the driving after being guided by drivers, Google said. Two safety drivers will be in the car to take over if needed and provide feedback to Google engineers about how the car is behaving, suggesting things like smoother cornering.

Since the self-driving car project began in 2009, Google has mostly tested the technology in Mountain View, Calif., near its headquarters. The company has taken cars to other places like Austin and Washington D.C. in the past to give demos for a day or two.

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Uber Wants Over 500k Driverless Teslas (that's not a sharing economy!)

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.

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Robopocalypse Report: Swiss Testing Drone Delivery, Robo Cars Good for Environment

Swiss Testing Drone Delivery

Swiss Post, Swiss WorldCargo and Matternet are jointly testing the commercial use of logistics drones. The three companies are investigating specific uses of drone technology and examining the cost-effectiveness of these business ideas. They will be carrying out drone tests in July 2015 for this purpose. The widespread use of drones is not expected within the next five years. The focus is primarily on their use in exceptional cases or the transport of special items.

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Driverless Taxis may Help Mitigate Climate Change

Imagine a fleet of driverless taxis roaming your city, ready to pick you up and take you to your destination at a moment's notice. While this may seem fantastical, it may be only a matter of time before it becomes reality. And according to a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), such a system would both be cost-effective and greatly reduce per-mile emissions of greenhouse gases.

The analysis found that the per-mile greenhouse gas emissions of an electric vehicle deployed as a self-driving, or autonomous, taxi in 2030 would be 63 to 82 percent lower than a projected 2030 hybrid vehicle driven as a privately owned car and 90 percent lower than a 2014 gasoline-powered private vehicle. Almost half of the savings is attributable to "right-sizing," where the size of the taxi deployed is tailored to each trip's occupancy needs.

The results were published online today by Nature Climate Change in an article titled, "Autonomous taxis could greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions of U.S. light-duty vehicles," co-authored by Berkeley Lab scientists Jeffery Greenblatt and Samveg Saxena.

"When we first started looking at autonomous vehicles, we found that, of all the variables we could consider, the use of autonomous vehicles as part of a shared transit system seemed to be the biggest lever that pointed to lower energy use per mile," said Greenblatt.

Many automakers and other companies are working on autonomous cars. Right-sizing is cost-effective for both the fleet owner and for passengers, and small one- and two-seat vehicles are being explored by researchers and companies. To illustrate the concept, consider a single passenger with no luggage versus a party of four passengers with suitcases. The single passenger would require a much smaller taxi than the party of four, saving money for vehicle owners and passengers. Right-sizing, of course, assumes a fleet of taxis managed by a single entity.

"Most trips in the U.S. are taken singly, meaning one- or two-seat cars would satisfy most trips," Greenblatt said. "That gives us a factor of two savings, since smaller vehicles means reduced energy use and greenhouse gas emissions."

Another factor contributing to lower emissions for autonomous taxis is a cleaner electric grid. By 2030 power plants are expected to be using more renewable energy and emitting less pollution, meaning the greenhouse gas intensity of electricity will be lower.

Self-driving cars have additional efficiencies that have been covered in other research, such as the ability to drive closely behind other autonomous cars to reduce wind resistance ("platooning"), optimally routing trips, and smoother acceleration and braking. "These are all incremental, but they do add up," Greenblatt said. "However, we didn't even include these effects in our baseline results, and we still get huge savings without them."

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Jaguar Land Rover R&D Boss Defies Robopocalypse: "People are not Cargo"

Jaguar Land Rover will never make a driverless car, r&d boss Wolfgang Epple said.

“We don't consider customers cargo. We don't want to build a robot that delivers the cargo from A to B,” he told journalists at an event held at JLR's r&d center here in central England.

Epple said JLR is working on autonomous driving features for future models, including a remote control function to allow the driver to operate the car outside the vehicle using a smartphone.

Epple favors autonomous features that assist drivers without taking full control from them, such as the ability to steer the car into a tight parking space from outside the vehicle. JLR used the June 16 event to show a Range Rover that could automatically execute a multi-point turn in the road and be maneuvered around obstacles on very rough terrain remotely using a smartphone. Both features could be available by 2020, the automaker said.

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Difference Between Self Driving Cars, Driver Assistance Systems and how Self Driving Cars see the Roads

Google Takes 3rd Gen Self Driving Car to Roads

In a post today on its Google+ page, the Google Self-Driving Car Project announced that its latest cars were being tested on public roads starting today. The odd-shaped little cars are the third generation of self-driving car technology that Google has been testing since 2012.

Drivers around Mountain View might see the little cars rolling around suburban streets and the Google campus, joining the existing fleet of modified Lexus RX450h and Toyota Prius models. Each car will have a "safety driver," although Google's ultimate vision is to do away with standard controls such as the steering wheel and accelerator.

The cars are part of an ongoing project to develop self-driving cars that could potentially be safer than human drivers. Automotive equipment supplier Delphi Labs, also in Mountain View, has been testing its own self-driving car technology on public roads, making the area a hotbed for this type of technology. Automakers, such as Nissan and Ford, have predicted that autonomous cars will become available to the public by 2020.

Google notes that its new self-driving cars, which use electric propulsion, have a top speed of 25 mph. The Google+ post asks "to hear what our neighbors think," seeming to elicit comment from drivers who encounter the cars.

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The Robopocalypse has Come to Alberta's Tar Sands

The Calgary Herald reports on the and the "threat of big layoffs" as Canada’s Oilsands Pave the Way for Driverless Trucks.

The 400-tonne heavy haulers that rumble along the roads of northern Alberta’s oilsands sites are referred to in Fort McMurray as “the biggest trucks in the world,” employing thousands of operators to drive the massive rigs through the mine pits.

Increasingly, however, the giant trucks are capable of getting around without a driver. Indeed, self-driving trucks are already in use at many operations in the province, although they are still operated by drivers while the companies test whether the systems can work in northern Alberta’s variable climate.

That is about to change.

Suncor Energy Inc., Canada’s largest oil company, confirmed this week it has entered into a five-year agreement with Komatsu Ltd., the Japanese manufacturer of earthmoving and construction machines, to purchase new heavy haulers for its mining operations north of Fort McMurray. All the new trucks will be “autonomous-ready,” meaning they are capable of operating without a driver, Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal said.

For Suncor’s roughly 1,000 heavy-haul truck operators, however, the prospect of driverless trucks has raised more immediate fears of significant job losses.

“It’s very concerning to us as to what the future may hold,” said Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707A, which represents 3,300 Suncor employees. Smith said Suncor has signed agreements to purchase 175 driverless trucks.

“It’s not fantasy,” Suncor’s chief financial officer Alister Cowan told investors at an RBC Capital Markets conference in New York last week. He said the company is working to replace its fleet of heavy haulers with automated trucks “by the end of the decade.”

“That will take 800 people off our site,” Cowan said of the trucks. “At an average (salary) of $200,000 per person, you can see the savings we’re going to get from an operations perspective.”

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The 4 of 50 Self Driving Cars California Had Accidents, No Robopocalyptic Cars at Fault

Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars now rolling around California have gotten into accidents since September, when the state began issuing permits for companies to test them on public roads.

Two accidents happened while the cars were in control; in the other two, the person who still must be behind the wheel was driving, a person familiar with the accident reports told The Associated Press.

Three involved Lexus SUVs that Google Inc. outfitted with sensors and computing power in its aggressive effort to develop "autonomous driving," a goal the tech giant shares with traditional automakers. The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had the other accident with one of its two test vehicles.

Google and Delphi said their cars were not at fault in any accidents, which the companies said were minor.

Since September, any accident must be reported to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency said there have been four, but would not comment about fault or anything else, citing California law that collision reports are confidential.

The person familiar with the accident reports said the cars were in self-driving mode in two of the four accidents, all of which involved speeds of less than 10 mph. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the reports publicly.

Five other companies have testing permits. In response to questions from the AP, all said they had no accidents. In all, 48 cars are licensed to test on public roads.

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Robopocalypse Now: Self Driving Semi Trucks are Here, Well, in Nevada

Look closely. That truck driver has both hands on his iPad.

Freightliner has been given a license to test out its autonomously driving tractor-trailer truck in the state of Nevada. The big-rig manufacturer already has such a truck in operation and will now begin test driving it on public highways there.

There will always be a licensed truck driver in the driver's seat but the Frieightliner Inspiration is designed and equipped to drive itself on limited access interstates. There are currently two of the trucks. A human driver will take full control when the truck is in city and suburban driving situations. Nevada is one of a few states that has legislation specifically allowing for the licensing of self-driving vehicles.

The Freightliner truck will stay in its lane and avoid hitting cars ahead with no driver input. Radar sensors and cameras will watch lane lines and surrounding traffic. Freightliner is owned by Daimler AG (DDAIY), which also makes Mercedes-Benz luxury cars. Mercedes has also been testing self-driving cars.

Trucks like this could reduce driver fatigue, according to Freightliner executives, and allow drivers to be more productive. While the truck is going down the highway, the driver could safely attend to paperwork or plan the next trip, for instance.

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Morgan Stanley's Perceived Disruption of the Auto Industry With Self Driving Cars

The automotive industry is entering a period of deep disruption that will make it unrecognizable, according to a new analysis from Morgan Stanley.

“The auto industry is a century-old ecosystem being ogled by outside players hungry for a slice of a $10-trillion mobility market," warns Adam Jonas, the lead auto analyst at Morgan Stanley Research. "Many want in. It’s just beginning. And it won’t stop.”

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Hyundai Motor’s Equus Will be First Self Driving Car...on the Highway...For Sale Next Year

Owners of Hyundai Motor’s upcoming Equus will be able to take their hands off the steering wheel and feet off the brakes as they’re traveling down the highway, and let their car do the driving. The South Korea-based automaker plans to integrate a host of self-driving features into its premium sedan later this year, transforming it into a semiautonomous vehicle.

Highway driving assistance features will allow the new Equus to stay in lane, slow down and speed up as necessary to avoid collisions. The price of the new Equus hasn’t been determined but should be similar to Hyundai’s current models, ranging from US $61,500 to $68,750, officials said.

The main markets for the new Equus will be South Korea and the U.S., company officials said at a briefing ahead of the Seoul Motor Show, which opened Friday.

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Google and Uber Racing to Taxi Cab Robopocalypse?

Uber faces an ever-growing cast of adversaries that includes dubious regulators, litigious drivers, hostile members of the press, and some well-funded rivals. But the most significant threat to the app-based transportation company may be much closer to home: one of its biggest investors, Google.

Google Ventures, the search giant's venture capital arm, invested $258 million in Uber in August 2013. It was Google Ventures' largest investment deal ever, and the company put more money into Uber's next funding round less than a year later. Back then, it was easy for observers to imagine Google teaming closely with Uber, or even one day acquiring it. David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development, joined the Uber board of directors in 2013 and has served on it ever since.

Now there are signs that the companies are more likely to be ferocious competitors than allies. Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project. Drummond has informed Uber's board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board, and Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees. This person, who requested not to be named because the talks are private, said the Uber board is now weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign his position as an Uber board member.

Uber is also teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University for a research facility in Pittsburgh, Pa., to develop its own autonomous vehicle technology, the company announced on Monday.

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Cyber Attacks Demo'ed on Autonomous Vehicles/Self Driving Cars

As vehicles increasingly rely on automation, software and technology enhancements to run basic functionality, those systems serve as a potential safety risk when under cyber attack. Mission Secure uses a proprietary methodology developed by the University of Virginia with the Department of Defense for identifying the most consequential and easy to carry out cyber attacks on any system that a defense capability must address.

Proprietary software and hardware tools and best practices have been developed to support the methodology and to facilitate test and evaluation of the defense capability provided by MSi’s Secure Sentinel solution.

The pilot project will use MSI’s methodology and tools to develop and simulate realistic cyber attack scenarios against onboard control systems using a robust autonomous ground vehicle platform from PRI originally fielded for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge (“Tommy Jr.”), ideal for rapid prototyping and testing of this nature.

The goal of the pilot is to demonstrate how to identify vehicle safety threats malicious cyber attackers could use to easily compromise the vehicle’s key control systems and how these attacks could be detected and protected using MSi’s Secure Sentinel. Attack and protection scenarios are designed around several safety requirements of vehicles used on the road today.

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Nissan Teaming up With NASA (?!?!!!!) to Work on Self Driving Cars

Japanese automaker Nissan and NASA are teaming up to advance the technology behind cars that drive themselves.

Yokohama-based Nissan Motor Co. and NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, announced Thursday a five-year research-and-development partnership for autonomous vehicle systems so they can eventually be applied to commercially sold cars.

Nissan is excited about the potential of self-driving cars, which executives say could lead to improved safety, a pillar for future autos along with low emission technology.

NASA researchers will be working with Nissan's research unit in Silicon Valley, they said in a joint statement.

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Ford Also Developing Self Driving Car

Ford today showcased the semi-autonomous vehicles it has on the road already and gave attendees a glimpse into fully autonomous vehicles now in development.

The carmaker also announced a series of experiments with drivers around the globe to test its vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, autonomous cars and the use of big data collected from vehicles.

Semi-autonomous vehicle features available today from Ford include lane-keeping assist, adaptive cruise control, pre-collision assist with pedestrian detection and active park assist. Coming soon: traffic jam assist.

The company said a fully autonomous Ford Fusion Hybrid research vehicle is undergoing road testing now. The vehicle relies on the same semi-autonomous technology used in Ford vehicles today, while adding four LiDAR (light, radar) sensors to generate a real-time 3D map of the surrounding environment.

"We're already manufacturing and selling semi-autonomous vehicles that use software and sensors to steer into both parallel and perpendicular parking spaces, adjust speed based on traffic flow or apply the brakes in an emergency," Ford CEO Mark Fields said in a statement. "There will be a Ford autonomous vehicle in the future, and we take putting one on the road very seriously."

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Self Driving Cars Make Advances: Audi Drives From San Francisco to Las Vegas & Mercedes Unveils its Concept

The real deal is Audi's work, so we'll start there.

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Mercedes has a sexy car concept though.

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Google Debuts Next Revision Self Driving Car

In May, Google released a teaser image showing a mock-up of the autonomous vehicle it planned to build. Today, the company followed up with an image showing the finished product, which looks just as silly as the original mockup.

Google’s previous autonomous car was a modified Toyota Prius, which used a combination of cameras, sensors, and software to drive itself around California. The modified Prius was very successful, reportedly driving more than 700,000 miles with minimal issues.

Google says the first edition of its self-made self-driving car will feature “temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn.” When Google introduced its prototype back in May, the company claimed its self-driving cars “won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pad, or brake pedal…because they don’t need them.” Apparently, it still has yet to reach that point.

Even at a glance, the new self-driving car doesn’t look like anything that Google might introduce to the market. With room for two passengers and little else, it currently looks like a less-convenient Smart car. While the bare-bones prototype should make it useful for testing, what a Google-brand car might look like at a dealership remains to be seen.

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What's Holding up the Self Driving Vehicles? Three Things...

Google has been test-driving self-driving cars since 2011. The updated Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA ) Model S electric car comes with rudimentary autopilot features by default, and CEO Elon Musk hopes to have fully automated vehicles by the year 2023.

Musk's careful forecast raises the question: If Google can drive a car without human intervention today, then why should we have to wait another nine years before these vehicles hit the mainstream?

The answer is part technical and part economical -- but above all else, the legal framework just isn't ready for driverless cars yet.

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Robopocalypse in Singapore! Autonomous Vehicles Tested! EGADS!

Robopocalypse! Tesla Adding Self Driving Capabilities to Model S

Tesla is also adding semi-automomous driving features to its cars that will allow owners to leave some of the driving to the car's on-board computers. The features will come standard, and the automaker has been building them into cars on the assembly line for the past two weeks.

These systems use sensors and cameras to help keep the car in its lane on highways while maintaining a safe following distance behind cars ahead.

The car will be able to automatically change lanes while avoiding other vehicles when the driver uses the turn signal. It will also change the car's speed automatically to adjust to different speed limits as determined by cameras that read speed limit signs.

While using these "autopilot" features, drivers will not be required to keep their hands on the steering wheel.

The car will be able to park itself and, when on private property, an owner will be able to summon the car. The car will also be able to connect with the owner's calendar so that it can be ready when needed.

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