Uber’s experimental cars are driving around Pittsburgh

It looks like Uber’s robotics lab is now up and running — the Pittsburgh Business Times has just spotted one of its test cars marked “Uber Advanced Technologies Center” driving around the city. If you recall, the ridesharing company teamed up with Carnegie Mellon scientists in 2014 reportedly to develop self-driving taxis, among other technologies, in the new lab. Uber believes that operating driverless vehicles will allow it to offer cheaper, more competitive rates. Its CEO, Travis Kalanick, once even said that “the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle,” when you remove drivers from the picture.

While the test car the publication spotted could very well be a prototype of the company’s self-driving car, an Uber spokesperson was quick to squash that notion. She told the PIttsburgh Business Times that it’s merely part of “early research effort regarding mapping, safety and autonomy systems.” Hey, at least that hints that Uber has begun developing autonomous car tech, so keep your eyes peeled if you live in the city.

[Image credit: shutterstock]

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AT&T implementing 30% down payments with Next program on May 28th

We know AT&T is planning on completely doing away with traditional two-year contracts, but that leaves a good bit of confusion over what happens to customers who wouldn’t be approved for device financing but would normally be approved for the contract option. It looks like the carrier will be taking a page from T-Mobile’s playbook and will offer a down payment option with their Next 12 payment plan to take care of customers that don’t have the credit for normal Next finance plans.

The Next 12 with Down Payment will require a customer to put 30% of the device’s retail cost down, then split the remaining balance over 28 months. After 12 months, roughly 60% of the device will be paid off, and the customer will be eligible for an upgrade just like on the other Next 12, Next 18, or Next 24 plans.

This down payment functions almost like a deposit that AT&T sometimes requires for customers, although it seems like it should come out around the same price as a two-year contract. AT&T currently asks $684.99 for a Galaxy S6, and 30% of that comes out to around $205, not including any sales tax in your state. The remaining balance should roughly come out to 17 bucks on your bill each month, which hits right around what a two-year contract would do to your bill.

The new Next option should go live on May 28th, just in time for AT&T to ax two-year contracts. The carrier is also planning on upping the limit of devices on Next on an account to 15 lines.

Any AT&T customers sad about losing two-year contract options, or are you happy that they’re embracing what T-Mobile started?

source: Phone Arena

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Brain implants control robot arm well enough to grab a beer

A paralyzed man named Erik Sorto has finally been able to drink beer on his own after 13 years, and it’s all thanks to a robotic arm controlled solely by his mind. If you’ve been following our robotics coverage, you’ll know it isn’t the first mind-controlled robo limb — a DARPA-funded project once allowed a woman to feed herself chocolate, while the one developed by the Braingate2 consortium helped another woman drink coffee on her own. This particular technology, however, works quite differently from the others. Its creators, a team of researchers from various institutes led by Caltech, implanted the neural chips needed to control the arm into a part of the brain called “posterior parietal cortex” or PPC.

Other mind-controlled robot limbs usually target the brain region that controls muscles, but the PPC is in charge of our “intent to move” instead. This apparently allows Caltech’s creation to move more fluidly and naturally, unlike the movements of similar technologies, which are (according to the team) “delayed and jerky.” In order to control the arm, Sorto has to think of what he intends to do, instead of imagining the details of a particular action. He has to think that he “wants to shake another person’s hand,” for instance, whereas other systems might require him to imagine each step: lift forearm, extend, grasp other person’s hand, lift up, down, up, down.

Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that, and Sorto sometimes has to imagine bigger actions to perform simple tasks: To be able to bring the beer to his mouth, he has to visualize himself whirling his arms like a windmill. He also has to practice repeatedly (6,700 times just to be able to play rock, paper and scissors) to get movements down pat. The tech undeniably has huge potential to help patients gain back some of their independence, though — we hope the team manages to refine it further for the sake of those who need it.

Filed under: Robots

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Source: Caltech, The Wall Street Journal

The Big Picture: Say hello to NASA’s ‘nastiest’ star

NASA’s “Nasty 1″ isn’t like other stars. Bigger than our Sun but barely older than humanity itself, this unusual celestial body sits just about 3,000 light years away from Earth. And while it’s certainly similar to other Wolf-Rayet stars, which are identifiable by their lack of an outer hydrogen-rich sheath and exposed superheated helium core, those have never been observed in the Milky Way with an accretion disc like Nasty’s. (See that thing above? That’s an accretion disc.)

Astronomers believe that this disc is the result of an exceedingly rare occurrence wherein two Wolf-Rayets form within the same solar system and one star’s hydrogen fuel is siphoned off by its smaller companion. “We were excited to see this disk-like structure because it may be evidence for a Wolf-Rayet star forming from a binary interaction,” study leader Jon Mauerhan of UC Berkeley said in a statement. “There are very few examples in the galaxy of this process in action because this phase is short-lived, perhaps lasting only a hundred thousand years, while the timescale over which a resulting disk is visible could be only ten thousand years or less.”

Filed under: Science

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Source: NASA

Google’s Hangouts Chrome app gets update with new interface

Google has updated their Hangouts app in Chrome with several new UI tweaks, bringing it more in line with how things look on Android. The material design influence is very apparent, and they’ve implemented a tabbed view for checking your recent conversations, active conversations, and the Hangouts dialer.

The OS X version of the app has seen the most drastic change, but Windows and Linux users can disable transparent mode in Hangouts’ settings to see the full effect of all of the tweaks.

Anybody noticing the update in their Hangouts desktop app yet?

source: Mayur Kamat

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