By Heather Somerville | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO The fledgling drone industry is in the throes of change as weak consumer demand and falling prices drive startups to shift their focus to specialized business applications. 3D Robotics – an early drone startup that raised more than$125 million from investors – has seen its consumer business all but crash. This week, it unveiled a new commercial strategy, announcing […]
Wearable camera maker GoPro Inc said on Tuesday it would recall about 2,500 of its recently introduced Karma drones because they lost power during use. GoPro’s shares were down 4.7 percent at $10.35 in extended trading. The recall comes less than a week after GoPro downgraded holiday forecasts to $600 million to $650 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, below analysts average estimate of $666.14 million […]
FRANKFURT Europe’s biggest software maker SAP has earmarked 2 billion euros ($2.2 bln) for investments in products that help companies to connect everything from washing machines to cars to the Internet. The German company said it would invest that amount by the end of 2020, targeting what it estimates to be a 250 billion-euro market in the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), in which regular objects are […]
By ERIC SCHMITT, MICHAEL R. GORDON and SOMINI SENGUPTA September 20, 2016 Russia was probably responsible for the deadly bombing of a United Nations humanitarian aid convoy in Syria, American officials said Tuesday, further shredding what remained of a severely weakened agreement between the United States and Russia aimed at halting the war. Aghast at the attack on Monday night, United Nations officials on Tuesday suspended all aid convoys in Syria, describing the […]
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG September 20, 2016 WASHINGTON — If there is a single link between the wars fought by the United States in the Middle East and Afghanistan, it is the long list of errant airstrikes carried out by American warplanes. Weddings, funerals, hospitals and friendly forces have been mistakenly attacked, with each strike prompting fresh outrage. While most of those killed have been civilians — in Afghanistan alone, […]
Are you ready for a smartphone battery that lasts twice as long as your current one? According to researchers, that battery is coming. MIT News reported this week that a new kind of lithium battery is on the way to being commercialized. Called lithium metal batteries, they can reportedly pack the same energy as standard lithium-ion cells in half the size — or put twice as much […]
UAE. A new study released today by global strategy and management consulting firm A.T. Kearney concludes that autonomous driving will trigger the 21st century’s first major wave of growth. Key findings from the report, ‘How Automakers Can Survive the Self-Driving Era’, are based on interviews with more than 150 automotive decision-makers around the world. A.T. Kearney consultants sought to identify the products, services and partner strategies with […]
By ROD NORDLAND and ERIC SCHMITT August 13, 2016 CAIRO — American military drones monitored Islamic State militants loading up hundreds of cars, buses and trucks with fighters and civilians and fleeing the city of Manbij, Syria, on Friday, as Syrian rebels advanced and the extremists lost yet another stronghold. On Wednesday, the Libyan city of Surt, held by the Islamic State for more than a year, also fell to pro-government […]
Today, Facebook officially took the wraps off what co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the “biggest and most advanced hardware lab” in the company’s history. Designed for Facebook engineers and designers working on everything from improved data center equipment to virtual-reality cameras, the Area 404 lab covers 22,000 square feet, “the size of half a football field,” at the company’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif., Zuckerberg said. […]
BREMEN, Germany — Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German […]
Efforts to upgrade U.S. communications infrastructure to 5G technology got a big boost from the federal government today. The Obama Administration just announced the launch of a $400 million Advanced Wireless Research Initiative, led by the National Science Foundation (NSF), designed to accelerate the deployment of next-generation wireless technology. The program will invest in efforts by researchers experimenting with and testing novel technologies, applications and services capable […]
During its Shape Tech Expo in San Francisco this weekend, AT&T plans to demonstrate how it is using drones to inspect its cell towers from the air. The company is also looking at other future applications that could include using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide improved LTE coverage during crowded events or disasters. AT&T has been testing various uses for drones over the past year, and […]
A researcher at Arizona State University has discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain. A controller wears a skull cap outfitted with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The device records electrical brain activity. If the controller moves a hand or thinks of something, certain areas light up. “I can see that activity from outside,” said Panagiotis Artemiadis (pictured above), director of the […]
Negotiators had been talking for hours with the hunkered-down killer of five police officers in downtown Dallas when the man suddenly resumed firing with an assault rifle. Fearing additional casualties, the officers deployed a small, remote-controlled robot to carry an explosive device near shooter Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, which they then detonated, killing him. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place […]
Trilobites By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Archaeologists have been combing the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan for at least two centuries. Now, with drones and satellite imagery, they have discovered new features, including a monumental platform of nearly 30,000 square feet, or roughly half a football field. Interactive Feature | More Reporting on Archaeology Pottery shards nearby date from the second century B.C. through the sixth century […]
KABUL, Afghanistan — An American journalist for NPR was killed on Sunday afternoon along with his Afghan translator in a Taliban ambush in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan military confirmed. NPR also confirmed their deaths on Sunday. The victims were identified as David Gilkey, a photographer and videographer who was part of a four-person NPR team embedded with Afghan Special Forces in Helmand Province, and his translator, Zabihullah […]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan officially confirmed the death of the former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour for the first time on Thursday, five days after the American drone strike that killed him on Pakistani soil, raising diplomatic tensions. The official announcement came from Sartaj Aziz, the chief foreign affairs adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, at a news conference in Islamabad. “All indicators confirm that the […]
By HELENE COOPER May 21, 2016 WASHINGTON — An American drone strike targeted the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, United States officials said on Saturday, in the most significant American incursion inside Pakistan since Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, in 2011. In a statement issued on Saturday, Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said the […]
Call them the RoboBats. In a recent article in Science, Harvard roboticists demonstrate that their flying microrobots, nicknamed the RoboBees, can now perch during flight to save energy — like bats, birds or butterflies. “Many applications for small drones require them to stay in the air for extended periods,” said Moritz Graule, first author of the paper who conducted this research as a student at the Harvard […]
Live streaming video app Periscope is making a couple of changes to its video broadcast app. Periscope announced today that beginning in a few weeks all videos will be saved by default, rather than expire after 24 hours. The new functionality could have significant ramifications for companies that have struggled to find ways to use the app for promotional purposes. In addition to saving videos by default, […]
The Lexus NX is a vehicle of firsts for the luxury brand from Toyota. It was the first compact crossover from Lexus, the first with a turbocharged engine, and the first example of a more extreme design language. This new, aggressive exterior styling is now showing up on other Lexus models, like the new RX 350 F Sport we tested earlier this month. While some won’t like […]
Sales of robots worldwide hit a record high in 2014 with numbers topping 229,000, a report said, highlighting that smart machines could be performing 45 per cent of manufacturing tasks in a decade. Last year also marked the third consecutive year of increase with 29 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth, added the new research report titled “Thematic Investing: Robot Revolution: Global Robot & Al Primer” from Bank […]
A 3D plastic cut-out of the Facebook logo is seen in this illustration in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 13, 2015. Reuters/Dado Ruvic Facebook Inc (FB.O) smashed investors’ expectations with a 52-percent jump in quarterly revenue as it sold more ads targeted at a fast-growing number of mobile users, sending its shares sharply higher after hours. The world’s biggest online social network bucked the trend of underwhelming […]
A remote-controlled Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Quadricopter is seen during a flight demonstration at the Google I/O Conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco, California June 28, 2012. Reuters/Stephen Lam/Files SAN FRANCISCO Google’s secretive drone delivery project could include a component designed to store packages securely. A patent filed Tuesday in the United States by the company, a unit of Alphabet Inc, describes a “delivery receptacle” designed to […]
