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: GIACOMO MANGIA

Toyota has sent Energy Observer, the world’s first hydrogen-powered ship, on a six-year voyage:

Image: Energy Observer/TechRadar

The rise of ‘pseudo-AI’ – how tech firms quietly use humans to do the work they pass off as artificial intelligence, reminiscent of the deceptive 18th century Mechanical Turk:

Image: iStockphoto

Researchers at Nvidia, Aalto and MIT have developed an AI process that cleans up noisy, grainy photos without any additional reference images:

Image: NVIDIA/YouTube

Mercedes will launch self-driving taxis in California next year:

Image: DAIMLER AG

A look into the world of Comma.ai’s George Hotz and his hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of self-driving cars:

Image: Michael Zelenko / The Verge

A look at some of the newest examples of location-based virtual reality from The Void, Zero Latency and even a water park in Germany:

Image: Ballast VR

1990s online streaming giant RealNetworks has now launched a facial recognition tool called SAFR that’s it’s giving away to schools for free:

Image: SAFR

Bring to Light is a new virtual reality horror game that monitors your heart rate and gets scarier if it isn’t fast enough:

Image: Red Meat Games/YouTube

Rolls-Royce is developing tiny ‘cockroach’ robots to crawl in and fix airplane engines:

Image: David Reid | CNBC

Fifteen years after the Concorde last flew, both giants like Boeing and startups like Boom Technology are racing to make supersonic air travel viable:

Image: BOOM TECHNOLOGY

Robotics researchers in Budapest have developed a highly realistic flocking model that allows a group of 30 drones to exhibit a kind of collective intelligence:

Image: ZSOLT BÉZSENYI

Robot bartenders are poised to become more widespread as companies make smaller, cheaper models – you can try one out now at the Tipsy Robot in Las Vegas:

Image: MAKR SHAKR

To see stories like this as I find them, follow me on Twitter: @josiah17