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Larry Page's autonomous air taxi 'Cora' flies in New Zealand
Reports surfaced in 2016 that Google co-founder (and now Alphabet CEO) Larry Page had two "flying car" projects in the works, and while we saw the Flyer recreational vehicle unveiled last year, today it's time to meet Cora. An "air taxi" developed by Page's Kitty Hawk company, the electric aircraft is intended for use as part of a transportation service instead of sale to individual users. It's built to use self-flying software, and uses 12 lift fans for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) like a helicopter, so there's no need for a runway.
Udacity's 'flying car' engineering course starts next month
Flying cars have always been a goalpost of the future, but last year companies like Toyota, Airbus, DeLorean and Volvo's parent company invested in or announced plans to get their own units flying soon. If you wanted to get in on the ground floor of tomorrow's transportation, you might try joining the first class of 'flying car engineers' in a new nanodegree program at Udacity fronted by Sebastian Thrun, the former leader of Google's self-driving car program.
Kitty Hawk's Flyer isn't the flying car you were promised
That flying car startup Google's Larry Page is backing? It's finally showing its hand... and the company's initial product is both more and less than what you might expect. Kitty Hawk's first publicly demonstrated vehicle, the Flyer, isn't so much the flying car of sci-fi fame as a recreational vehicle. The one-seat, propeller-driven vehicle is meant for a short flight across lake when you're at the cottage, not commuting to work -- that Jetsons-like future isn't here yet. You won't have to wait long to get it, though. Kitty Hawk expects to start selling the Flyer by the end of 2017. This will be a practical reality within months, in other words. You can already put down $100 to sign up for a $2,000 discount on the finished machine.
AI is nearly as good as humans at identifying skin cancer
If you're worried about the possibility of skin cancer, you might not have to depend solely on the keen eye of a dermatologist to spot signs of trouble. Stanford researchers (including tech luminary Sebastian Thrun) have discovered that a deep learning algorithm is about as effective as humans at identifying skin cancer. By training an existing Google image recognition algorithm using over 130,000 photos of skin lesions representing 2,000 diseases, the team made an AI system that could detect both different cancers and benign lesions with uncanny accuracy. In early tests, its performance was "at least" 91 percent as good as a hypothetically flawless system.
Project Glass makes a TV appearance on Charlie Rose, flashes its rear for the cameras
Google fellow, founder of Project X and self-driving car pioneer Sebastian Thrun became the latest to publicly rock a Project Glass prototype (after company co-founder Sergey Brin) on a recent episode of Charlie Rose, and managed to show off a whole new side of the project in the process. While the 19-minute interview was mostly unremarkable product-wise with a focus on higher education and his Udacity project, we did get to see him take a picture of the host (about a minute in) by tapping it, then posting it on Google+ by nodding twice. Also, as Electronista points out, in a brief reverse shot (17:20) of Thrun we see for the first time what appears to be a small battery pack / transmitter portion lodged behind his ear. Of course, we're still not any closer to rocking the latest in bionic man-chic ourselves, but at least we can start getting fitted for one now.
Stanford schooling unwashed masses with free online Intro to Artificial Intelligence (video)
If you fancy yourself a Stanford (wo)man, but lack the requisite dollars to actually attend, now's your chance to collect those collegiate bragging rights. Starting October 10th, you can join Professor Sebastian Thrun and Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig, in a free, online version of the school's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course. The class covers, "knowledge representation, inference, machine learning, planning and game playing, information retrieval, and computer vision and robotics," and ambitiously aims to be the largest online AI course ever taught. If you're feeling the ole red and white, you can register at the source link below, but if you're looking for the official Stanford stamp of approval, we're afraid you're barking up the wrong tree -- non-students will receive a certificate of completion from the instructors only. Still interested? Check out the video introduction after the break and hit the source for more details.
Google and TU Braunschweig independently develop self-driving cars (video)
There's a Toyota Prius in California, and a VW Passat halfway around the globe -- each equipped with bucket-shaped contraptions that let the cars drive themselves. Following their research on autonomous autos in the DARPA Urban Challenge, a team at Germany's TU Braunschweig let the above GPS, laser and sensor-guided Volkswagen wander down the streets of Brunswick unassisted late last week, and today Google revealed that it's secretly tested seven similar vehicles by the folks who won that same competition. CMU and Stanford engineers have designed a programmable package that can drive at the speed limit on regular streets and merge into highway traffic, stop at red lights and stop signs and automatically react to hazards -- much like the German vehicle -- except Google says its seven autos have already gone 1,000 unassisted miles. That's still a drop in the bucket, of course, compared to the efforts it will take to bring the technology home -- Google estimates self-driving vehicles are at least eight years down the road. Watch the TU Braunschweig vehicle in action after the break. Update: Though Google's cars have driven 1,000 miles fully autonomously, that's a small fraction of the time they've spent steering for themselves. We've learned the vehicles have gone 140,000 miles with occasional human interventions, which were often a matter of procedure rather than a compelling need for their human drivers to take control. [Thanks, el3ktro]
