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: Kait Shea / Event Marketer
Startup Rigetti Computing has launched a new cloud service that links quantum computers with classical ones, allowing algorithms to run a lot faster:
Image: SIMON LANDREIN
BMW has made a self-driving motorcycle (Notably, 14 years ago students from UC Berkeley and Texas A&M did the same in a DARPA challenge.):
Image: BMW/YouTube
A town in the Netherlands has opened a bike path made from a product called PlasticRoad that consists of 70 percent recycled plastic:
Image: PlasticRoad
Researchers in the Netherlands took inspiration from fruit flies to achieve more maneuverable flight with their robotic fly called DelFly:
Image: TU DELFT
How retailers are using tech like innovative dressing rooms and apps to choose clothes in advance to draw shoppers back to bricks-and-mortar stores:
Image: F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (PHONE); NIKE
Wireless startup WiTricity imagines a future where driverless taxis charge themselves and help balance the electric grid:
Image: WITRICITY
China’s ‘social credit’ system, already in pilot and expected to fully roll out by 2020, offers a glimpse into the haves & have-nots (and other dystopian possibilities) brought on by pervasive surveillance and AI:
Video and photography: Brant Cumming / Graphics: Andres Gomez Isaza
Hot on the heels of Nuro, startup Udelv has inked the ‘world’s largest deal’ for driverless grocery delivery in Oklahoma City:
Image: Udelv/YouTube
European railway manufacturer Alstom introduced the ‘world premiere’ of hydrogen power passenger trains in Lower Saxony:
Image: Alstom
GPJ Experience Marketing, Spinifex Group, and IBM Sports got tennis fans pumped up for the US Open using Watson’s AI highlights:
Image: Kait Shea / Event Marketer
For the London Design Festival, Google has created a public sculpture called ‘Please Feed the Lions’ in Trafalgar Square that engages passersby and uses AI to generate a crowdsourced poem:
Image: Google
NY startup Bowery Farming uses proprietary AI algorithms to tell its workers exactly what the plants require:
Image: David Williams/Bloomberg
To see stories like this as I find them, follow me on Twitter: @josiah17