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Ford first to test self-driving cars in Michigan's fake city
The University of Michigan recently built the 32-acre "Mcity" proving ground so that automakers could test autonomous vehicles with zero risk to the public. Since the faux city is in US car country (and far from Silicon Valley rivals like Google), it's only fitting that it was broken in by a small Dearborn outfit: Ford. The automaker tackled Mcity in its latest Fusion Hybrid self-driving car, freshly equipped with four LiDAR sensors for real-time 3D mapping. While Ford has tested its vehicles extensively on public roads, "every mile driven [at Mcity] represents 10, 100 or 1,000 miles of on-road driving in terms of our ability to pack in the occurrences of difficult events," said U of M professor Ryan Eustice.
Testronic Labs tests 1,000th Blu-ray Disc for quality assurance
It's a pretty big day for Testronic Labs, as this day marks the tenth year that it has been testing optical media quality and bucking The Man and his brother (dubbed The Economy) to stay afloat. More important than that (to us, anyway) is this little tidbit: today also saw the 1,000th Blu-ray Disc tested for quality assurance in its facilities. For those unaware, this outfit works with movie studios to ensure the interactive content you receive is as bug free as humanly possible, and we'll admit, we've heard a lot less crying from Blu-ray Disc buyers of late compared to early on. Kudos, Testronic Labs -- we'll raise our glasses to a thousand more.
Testronic Labs' interactive Blu-ray / HD DVD test facility is only half useful
Oh sure, we've seen testing devices for both HD DVD and Blu-ray before, with the latter even boasting a dedicated quality assurance lab, but we've a feeling only half of Testronic Labs newest facility will actually see any real usage. The firm has constructed an interactive Blu-ray and HD DVD test bed in Burbank, California in an attempt to provide "third-party, quality-control of high definition software and integrated web capability." Unfortunately for it, we don't foresee too many more any new highly advanced HD DVDs in the pipeline, so it looks as if most of the scrutiny will surround HDMV, BD-J and BD-Live. Ah well, the joint probably needed space for a cafeteria, anyway.[Thanks, Steve]
