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Category: transportation

Chesky predicted that vacationers will stay closer to home in the future, largely limiting their travel to places within driving distance, with national parks becoming even more popular destinations.

“I think you’re going to start to see travel becoming more intimate, more local, to smaller communities,” he said, citing Airbnb data that shows travel within countries is recovering to normal levels. But its international business is still being hit hard. “People are not getting on airplanes, they’re not crossing borders, they’re not meaningfully traveling to cities, they’re not traveling for business.”

Read: Is it safer to stay at a hotel or an Airbnb during your summer vacation? ‘We need to balance sanity and risk’

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There are risks and rewards for any kind of new weapon, and how the Air Force buiilds its next plane is a big question.

By Kris Osborn

Should the Air Force and Navy prioritize the engineering of an entirely new platform with paradigm-changing technologies for a 6th-Generation fighter, or simply keep upgrading the state of the art 5th-Gen aircraft in the near term?

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Undeterred by decades of failure, the U.S. Army is trying again to acquire a new scout helicopter. The new rotorcraft is supposed to restore the dedicated aerial scout mission the Army gave up when in 2017 it retired its roughly 300 Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior copters.

And here’s a surprise. The new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft also will replace half of the ground-combat branch’s 700 Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

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Hydrogen’s impressive energy density offers some compelling advantages that could see it make a huge difference in the electric aviation and eVTOL sectors, as well as in renewable energy, where it’s a lightweight and transportable, if not particularly efficient, way to store clean energy that’s not necessarily generated where or when you need it. It’s also being pushed as a means of exporting green energy, and Japan and Korea in particular are investing heavily in the idea of a hydrogen energy economy powering everything from vehicles to homes and industry.

For this to come about in a globally positive way, it’s imperative that clean, green hydrogen production becomes cheaper, because right now, the easiest and cheapest ways to get yourself a tank full of hydrogen are things like steam reforming, which produces up to 12 times as much carbon dioxide as it does hydrogen by weight.

Green, renewable production methods are thus hot topics for researchers and industry, and a new breakthrough from scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) could make a significant contribution.

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For an indication about bifurcating the levels of self-driving, see my indication here: https://aitrends.com/ai-insider/reframing-ai-levels-for-self-driving-cars-bifurcation-of-autonomy/

Conclusion

The consensus among self-driving car aficionados is that a robot driver is a long way away from being practical. A robot driver is considered generally to be more futuristic than trying to develop a self-driving car instead.

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Pagaya, an AI-driven institutional asset manager that focuses on fixed income and consumer credit markets, today announced it raised $102 million in equity financing. CEO Gal Krubiner said the infusion will enable Pagaya to grow its data science team, accelerate R&D, and continue its pursuit of new asset classes including real estate, auto loans, mortgages, and corporate credit.

Pagaya applies machine intelligence to securitization — the conversion of an asset (usually a loan) into marketable securities (e.g., mortgage-backed securities) that are sold to other investors — and loan collateralization. It eschews the traditional method of securitizing pools of previously assembled asset-backed securities (ABS) for a more bespoke approach, employing algorithms to compile discretionary funds for institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and banks. Pagaya selects and buys individual loans by analyzing emerging alternative asset classes, after which it assesses their risk and draws on “millions” of signals to predict their returns.

Pagaya’s data scientists can build algorithms to track activities, such as auto loans made to residents in cities and even specific neighborhoods, for instance. The company is only limited by the amount of data publicly available; on average, Pagaya looks at decades of information on borrowers and evaluates thousands of variables.

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The nascent autonomous-vehicle industry is being reshaped by consolidation. Amazon, which committed to buying 100,000 Rivian electric vehicles, announced today that it is buying Zoox, the self-driving car tech start-up, for $1 billion. Ford and Volkswagen made multi-billion dollar investments in Argo. General Motors purchased Cruise Automation in 2016, while Hyundai is working with tier-one supplier Aptiv to deploy a robotaxi service in multiple global markets.

The tie-up between Waymo and Volvo (with its three brands all aggressive pursuing electric vehicles) could reshape the competitive landscape, although it’s too early to tell.

Google started its self-driving program more than a decade ago but paused the development of its own vehicle in 2016. A tight partnership between Waymo and Volvo to develop ground-up cars, if that’s what materializes, could put those plans back on track – this time with an established auto manufacturer known for high-quality production and safety.

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