On (most) Fridays I post here a roundup of interesting things I’ve read and/or posted on social media since my last roundup, generally stories about emerging technologies, experiential activations, interactive art, advances in scientific research, and other things I find interesting.
Featured Image: Jacquet/Panova, University of St Andrews
Researchers at MIT CSAIL have developed an autonomous car that can drive on unpaved or unmarked roads:
Image: MIT CSAIL / BBC News
Intel, FedEx and GE have been approved by the DOT to test drones in a handful of US cities, but delivery drone pioneer Amazon wasn’t invited:
Image: PhonlamaiPhoto
With new features announced at its I/O conference, Google now wants to bring AR to you (even on an iPhone):
Image: Google
At its Build conference last week, Microsoft announced the return of the Kinect spatial camera peripheral with a new version optimized for Azure cloud services:
Image: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)
Researchers in Scotland have developed flexible optoelectronic devices in order to make contact lenses that can shoot laser beams:
Image: Nature
A look at the Japanese space robots that could build ‘Moon Valley’:
Image: ISPACE, INC.
With the coming promise of driverless cars, flying taxis and the Hyperloop, is it nonetheless possible that the vehicle of the future is a bicycle?
Image: ZOHAR LAZAR
Can AI drive a racecar faster than a human driver? Formula 1 is tying to find out with its DevBot:
Image: Formula E / Top Gear
Does the future of manufacturing lie in making stuff in space? Off-Earth manufacturing is just getting started:
Image: Alex McPherson, University of California, Irvine
Cornell researchers made a robot that can express its “emotions” through touch, sending out little spikes to indicate fear or even getting goosebumps to express delight or excitement:
Image: Cornell / Techcrunch
Interpol is experimenting with software algorithms that can identify criminals in audio intercepts by matching voice recordings to speech samples stored in a massive database:
Image: alengo
Fidelity Labs created a virtual reality chatbot to answer client queries using a suite of tools from Amazon Web Services:
Image: Fidelity Labs
To see stories like this as I find them, follow me on Twitter: @josiah17