Chip maker Nvidia is teaming up with automakers Bentley, Aston Martin, Tesla and Rolls Royce to work on technology for the autonomous cars of tomorrow. Nvidia has been supplying hardware and software development kits to help train on board computers. It sounds crazy, “train your car,” but that’s exactly what they are working on doing. Through this software and a series of small cameras on the outside of your car, your car will eventually be able to recognize real-world obstacles. A pedestrian in the road, a parked car on the side of the road, it will even be able to tell the difference between a police car, and a police car with its lights and siren on. With this knowledge your car will eventually be able to react to its environment all on its own. It’ll know when to stop, or take evasive action, or in the scenario with the police, it’ll know when to keep driving, or when to pull over.
Uber takes to the sky for the 68th Cannes Film Festival. That’s right; Uber has teamed up with French aviation company Helipass to bring “UberCopter” to the attendants of the Cannes Film Festival. For only about $250 a person, UberCopter will take you from Nice to Croissette and back again. If you’re lucky enough to be an attendant of the prestigious festival, you can arrive in style (as if you wouldn’t be already) by just calling for an Uber.
Japan has been working on greener, faster means of mass transit. They already have the bullet train, which can take passengers from city to city at speeds upwards of 320 km/h. That is impressive, but Japan has outdone itself with their testing of the maglev train. This is a train that is propelled entirely by electromagnets. How fast could magnets possibly be, you ask? The maglev train just broke the world record, coming in at just over 600 km/h! That means this train can run on nothing but magnets and move you a little over one mile in under eleven seconds! Not only is that green transportation, it’s efficient transportation.
We talk a lot about dealing with traffic and being stuck waiting to go nowhere quick, but one place we take for granted is the lack of lines at the gas pump. That’s not the case in Oregon, though. Oregonians have become accustomed to long lines at their gas stations because they do not allow you to pump your own gas. All gas stations are full service. The people of Oregon have had enough though, and have just passed a bill allowing you to pump your own gas. This alleviates the lines as people no longer have to wait for the attendant to finish the car ahead of you before they can begin pumping your car. This is great and all, but if you ask me, getting more of those cars off the road would also help take the stress away of filling up your tank, but I guess that’s none of my business.
We have electric cars, we have solar power, we even have solar cars, but a twenty-one year old Romanian inventor just constructed a fully operational car out of LEGO bricks that runs completely on compressed air. The vehicle is made of over 500 thousand LEGO bricks and 256 air-powered pistons propel the car to speeds as fast as twenty miles per hour. The entire build took eighteen months to complete. Raul Oaida, the inventor who created this LEGO car says that its only downfall is how uncomfortable it is to sit on seats made of LEGO.
