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Watch Einride’s autonomous truck take on the ‘Top Gear’ track
Einride recently revealed its revamped autonomous delivery truck, which is more aerodynamic than the previous version. To give a glimpse of the Pod in action, the Einride team put the AV through its paces on the Top Gear track in Surrey, England. The video perhaps doesn’t have the glossy production that Top Gear fans are used to, but it provides a solid look at the Pod in motion. It also shows that on straights, the Pod can travel at over 80 km/h — that’s the typical speed limit for heavy goods vehicles in the European Union.
Hanu Labs' Stone vaporizer hits like a ton of bricks
It's not hard for us to guess what the oil vape in your pocket looks like. If it's a 510, chances are it looks pretty much like every other 510 in existence. Even the new generation of vapes with specialized pods all tend to look reasonably the same. But the Stone from Hanu Labs doesn't look like any that's come before it.
We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon
Preloaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever-increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems.
Even if Hyperloop fails, public transport will win
One hundred and fifty teams from around the world entered the third SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. Of those, 25 made it to the company's weeklong event in Hawthorne, California. And like the prior years' events under the Southern California sun, after days of testing and dry runs, only a select few were chosen to do a proper vacuum-sealed run down the 1.25 kilometer track.
Hyperloop Pod Competition winner hits over 200MPH
Adjacent to SpaceX headquarters, 25 teams gathered for another Hyperloop Pod Competition. This time the winner would be judged by how quickly they could go down the 1.25 kilometer (about .77 miles) track. On the final day of competition, three teams advanced to the finals and had the chance to push their pod to the limit.
Driverless pods begin ferrying the public around Greenwich
It's been almost a year since the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) opened sign-ups for a driverless pod trial in Greenwich. The original plan was to start before Christmas, but given today's date that obviously didn't happen. Still, better late than never, eh? Over the next three weeks, roughly 100 people will clamber aboard "Harry," a self-driving shuttle named after clockmaker John Harrison. It will take them around a two-mile course in London's North Greenwich, near The O2, to demonstrate how the technology could be used for "last mile" trips in urban areas.
Hyperloop company begins building its first passenger pod
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has announced that construction will soon begin on its first passenger capsule. The pod is being built in partnership with Spanish engineering firm Carbures and is expected to be unveiled in early 2018. HTT says that the craft will be tested and tweaked at its Toulouse HQ, ready to run in the first "commercial" Hyperloop system that the company expects will be announced in the near future.
Driverless pods to hit the streets of Greenwich
As you stroll past the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and that place where Thor fought in The Dark World, you'll soon see driverless pods gliding next to you. That's the plan, anyway. The GATEway project, which has already been experimenting with a self-driving shuttle around the O2, will soon be taking some unusual vehicles onto south London's streets. They'll be repurposed Ultra Pods -- electric four-wheelers that already operate at Heathrow Airport. Until now they've been locked to tracks, but project organiser TRL wants to upgrade them so they can navigate Greenwich independently. Furthermore, the new trial will be used to record exactly how the public reacts to self-driving vehicles.
Sensor-equipped plant pods take the guesswork out of indoor gardening
Have you been thinking about trying your hand at gardening, but lack the green thumb to keep those plants alive? There's a new Kickstarter project that may be able to lend a hand. Plug & Plant is a wall-mounted system of pods that not only neatly organizes the indoor plants, but each one is equipped with Bluetooth room, humidity and light sensors. That tech gathers data from the environment and offers tips for optimum plant growth. A Smart Water Tank also uses the collected info to vary the watering regimen as needed for up to 30 days. Details are beamed to a companion app that displays the stats for each senor independently as well as analyzes the data and providing suggestions for care.
Ultimate VR simulator throws you around in mid-air
Virtual reality headsets can trick our eyes and ears into believing we're someplace else. Fooling the rest of the body is a little trickier though. Companies have tried spinning chairs and omnidirectional treadmills, but nothing comes close to the "Cable Robot Simulator" developed at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. The player wears a wireless VR headset inside a carbon fibre cage, which is then suspended in mid-air and thrown around the room using eight steel cables. The exposed pod is able to tilt, bank and move with an acceleration of up to 1.5g in response to the VR experience. Researchers have shown off some basic flight and racing simulations, but we're already imagining how it could be used in our favorite video games. A dogfight in Star Wars: Battlefront? Tearing around corners in F-Zero GX? The possibilities are endless. It's still very much a prototype, and hardly suitable for home use, but we're desperate to have a go ourselves.
UK's first driverless 'pod' readies itself for public trials
Britain wants to be at the forefront of driverless car technology, so it's funding a handful of research projects that will look at different vehicle designs and how people react to them. One of those initiatives, led by Transport Systems Catapult and the RDM Group, is inching closer towards public trials today with the unveiling of a new "Lutz Pathfinder" pod. We first saw the vehicle back in February, covered with Union Jack decals, but that was actually just a prototype. The new two-seater pod unveiled this morning is far closer to completion -- it just needs to visit Oxford University's Mobile Robotics Group, where it'll be fitted with an autonomous control system. Researchers will then do a number of calibration tests on a private test track, before it's finally sent out for public testing in Milton Keynes.
SpaceX hosts competition for the best Hyperloop pod design
While a few private companies are hard at work developing a commercial version of Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept, SpaceX is hosting a pod design competition. Intended for students and independent engineering teams, the challenge is to construct a human-scale pod concept that could be used for the high-speed transportation system. Competing teams will not only build a full-sized version of a people mover, but they'll put the pods through their paces on a one-mile test track at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California next summer. Before the test vehicles are built, the company will host a design weekend at Texas A&M University in January where design teams will have a chance to meet with SpaceX officials before moving forward.
Meet the Lutz pod, the UK's first driverless 'car'
We're all pretty familiar with Google's self-driving car, right? The smiley-faced automobile has been stealing headlines since its first reveal, but now the UK government wants a turn in the spotlight. A couple of months ago, we heard about a series of driverless car trials it was funding to push Britain's R&D image. That's now been backed up with an official review which concluded that automated vehicles are safe enough to be tested on public roads, provided a safety driver is present and they comply with normal traffic laws.
EVE Evolved: Clone upgrades and skill loss are gone!
While the player activity stats might suggest otherwise, the past few years have been a real rennaisance for EVE Online. Developers have gone back and iterated on dozens of old game features that were starting to show their age, and some of them have been pretty huge. The war declaration and criminality overhauls in 2012 were fundamental changes to core gameplay that had been stagnant for almost a decade, and the recent industry and warp acceleration changes were equally fundamental shifts. These were all features we had previously been told were essentially off-limits for iteration because they relied on undocumented legacy code from 2003, and none of the programmers wanted to poke that sleeping beast. Now it seems that no idea is off-limits, and developers aren't afraid to challenge fundamental parts of EVE's original design that may not make sense today. This week's Phoebe update revisited capital ship force projection for the first time since the ships were added in 2004, for example, and it removed the 24-hour skill queue limit that CCP insisted on adding in Apocrypha. In Thursday's episode of The EVE Online Show, developers announced the next big legacy feature to be put on the chopping block in the game of progress: As part of December's Rhea release, clone upgrades and skill point loss on death will be completely removed from the game. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at the problems caused by the cloning system, why it needs to be removed, and what could possibly replace it.
IN-TENTA DROP eco-hotel: a green way to live post-apocalyptically
Futuristic eco-hotels are nothing new, but there's something unique about the one shown above: it's well on its way to being created. Crafted by the Barcelona-based IN-TENTA creative design group, the removable hotel room is scheduled to be manufactured by Urban Square. Reportedly, it'll be dropped into "natural locations," with the shell keeping everything above ground in order to make a minimal dent in the Earth itself. As these things usually go, there doesn't seem to be much talk on how the plumbing will be handled, but really, who cares about details when you're living like this?
Japanese company takes pod concept mobile, keeps ants from your Grey Poupon (video)
The great outdoors not civilized enough? From the country with a dearth of space but no shortage of singular ideas comes the Zero Pod, letting you renounce the flimsy tent and enjoy nature in solid-framed style. Made up of "about 40 components," the structure can be placed on flat ground, steep hills, or even turned into a kit houseboat, judging by manufacturer DCW's video after the break. Claiming it can be assembled easily "by two women" in half a day, with knock-down taking a bit longer, the company added that the pods could also be put together as modules for use as hotel annexes. We'll have to see about the price, but if the pod lets us be in nature while keeping it off us, we're not going to quibble about a few yen.
EVE Online adding implants to killmails
When a ship is destroyed in EVE Online, half of its fitted modules are destroyed and half are dropped as loot. When EVE was young, the list of modules destroyed and dropped in a kill was sent in an in-game mail to both the victim and the player who got the killing blow. Today the killmail is stored in a players' character sheet rather than clogging up his inbox, providing a record of all the ships he's killed and those he's lost in combat. When you destroy a player's escape capsule, however, all you're left with is a blank killmail and a tasty corpse floating in space. In a new devblog, CCP Masterplan describes the introduction of one of EVE's most requested features: implants on pod killmails. When an escape pod is destroyed, a list of all the expensive implants installed in the corpse's head will be added to the currently blank killmail, letting players put a much more accurate value on successful kills. This comes as good news to corporations and alliances judging their war performance using killboard valuations.
Rock Band Weekly: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Erasure, P.O.D.
Next week's Rock Band DLC delivers metal from P.O.D. and two of the majors from the '80s UK synth-pop scene. Always remember: Frankie says, "Relax."
Climbing robot can scale walls on a supersonic stream of air, won't leave fingerprints behind
There are plenty of wall climbing robots roaming the Earth, but few can scale heights as gracefully as this little guy can. Developed by researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, this bot can wind its way across any glass, metal or cloth terrain, without even touching its pods to the surface. The secret lies in Bernoulli's Principle, which states that as the speed of a fluid increases, its pressure decreases. This phenomenon also applies to streams of air, which, when moving at high speeds around of a circular gripper, can create a vacuum strong enough to hold things without actually touching them. In this case, air shoots out of the robot's feet at more than 2,000 miles per hour, creating enough pressure to lift the craft, while holding it close to the wall. The technology isn't new, but rarely can it support the weight of an entire device -- let alone the extra cargo that this climber's non-contact adhesive pads can hold. Researchers say the supersonic grippers will be available in "some months" and will probably cost "a few hundred dollars." As for the bot itself, Canterbury's engineers envision it being used for industrial inspections -- though the more we think about it, the more we realize just how dirty our windows are. Video after the break.
Apple abandons effort to secure "POD" trademark
Apple has apparently decided to abandon its trademark application for the term "POD." Apple filed for the trademark in Canada on July 2004. After a series of changes required by the Canadian government and extensions that span seven years, Apple has decided to abandon the patent. The abandonment procedure began on December 2010 and was finalized on April 13, 2011. The term "iPOD" is still covered by an Apple trademark, but the word "POD" is now up for grabs. Look for the next ePOD eReader or aPOD mp3 player to hit the market in the coming months.
