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Audi RSQ – a fantastic car. Certainly a design icon, but first of all, a movie star. The Audi RSQ was the first car we developed for a motion picture – with great success. This sporty coupé for the 2004 Hollywood science-fiction “I, Robot” was a visionary concept of what a car might look like in 2035. Four designers, ten model engineers, ten weeks, all creative liberties – that’s what it took to create this Audi of the future.

What was really unique and visionary about the Audi RSQ: It was the first Audi demonstrating piloted driving capabilities. Here is one of my favorite moments in the movie – a moment that tells you a lot about piloted driving:

The Audi RSQ is going autonomously in a busy, but fluent traffic situation. Suddenly, the car comes under heavy attack by enemy robots. Actor Will Smith in his role of a police officer decides to take over. Like all heroes, he wants to manage and control critical situations by himself. But his lady co-driver does not trust him and says: “Oh no, don’t do it! It is too dangerous to control the car by yourself!” And she is right, he is damaging the car a few minutes later.

This dialogue is a great lesson in future technology:

What was science-fiction in 2004, became reality only ten years later. Today, we connect driver, car and environment in an intuitive way. Today, our cars are ready for piloted driving and piloted parking. Piloted driving is a great example of how we turn technical vision into emotional premium products that fascinate customers around the globe.

As an innovation driver for the automotive industry, we count on a proven formula of success: Pioneering solutions + precision engineering + partnering with the best. We partner with the leaders in automotive and consumer electronics, in battery systems, in research and education.

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Love this.

If it’s a successful kick start campaign, regardless of whether or not it actually gets built, it could go a long way towards showing the powers that be that this is truly mankind’s desire. and it’s ultimate manifest destiny. (I know the problem some people have with using that phrase, “manifest destiny”, but it fits this issue in a way that’s totally unrelated to the horrors we inflicted on native americans during our relentless push westward.)


It’s not a warp drive, but it could get us to the nearest star in two decades. If it works.

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I am not in fact talking about the delightful Deus Ex game, but rather about the actual revolution in society and technology we are witnessing today. Pretty much every day I look at any news source, be it on cable news networks or facebook feeds or whathaveyou, I always see fear mongering. “Implantable chips will let the government track you!” or “Hackers will soon be able to steal your thoughts!” (Seriously, seen both of these and much more and much crazier.) …But I’m here to tell you two things. First, calm the hell down. Nearly every doomsday scenario painted by fear-mongering assholes is either impossible or so utterly unlikely as to be effectively impossible. And second… that you should psych the hell up because its actually extremely exciting and worth getting excited about. But for good reasons, not bad.

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Expedition 46 Flight Engineer Tim Kopra performs a spacewalk outside the International Space Station in this December 21, 2015 NASA handout photo. Kopra and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly successfully moved the International Space Station's mobile transporter rail car ahead of the December 23, 2015 docking of a Russian cargo supply spacecraft.  REUTERS/NASA/Handout via Reuters THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. IT IS DISTRIBUTED, EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - RTX1ZSVJ

“The goal of the yearlong expedition is to better understand how the human body reacts to microgravity for long durations. Researchers say they hope the data acquired in this mission will help them figure out how to send humans on even longer missions, like one to Mars, which would take two-and-a-half years, roundtrip.”

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Spherical tire takes autonomous cars sideways into the future.

http://www.gizmag.com/goodyear-tires-autonomous-cars/42135/


The Goodyear Eagle-360 is our vision for a tire for the long-term future that looks radically different from tires today…it’s a sphere! The unique shape means ultimate manoeuvrability, safety and connectivity for autonomous vehicles.

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