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Kodiak's fourth-generation truck features a modular and discreet sensor suite in just three locations: a slim profile "center pod" on the front roofline of the truck, and pods integrated into both of the side mirrors. This well-integrated and low profile sensor placement vastly simplifies sensor installation and maintenance, and increases safety. The new generation of Kodiak self-driving trucks will improve the robustness of the autonomous system. It was designed with greater fleet uptime, manufacturing, and serviceability in mind--all of which are critical to scale quickly, safely and efficiently.

With the trucking industry continuing to move forward, the main thing on truck drivers' minds is the security of their jobs. Let's take a closer look at self-driving trucks quickly becoming a reality.

The weeding machine is a beast at almost 10,000 pounds. It boasts no fewer than eight independently-aimed 150-watt lasers, typically used for metal cutting, that can fire 20 times per second. They're guided by 12 high-resolution cameras connected to AI systems that can recognize good crops from bad weeds. The Laserweeder drives itself with computer vision, finding the furrows in the fields, positioning itself with GPS, and searching for obstacles with LIDAR. It drives 5 miles/hour and can clear 15-20 acres in a day.

Redefining robots. Scientists say they've witnessed a never-before-seen type of replication in organic robots created in the lab using frog cells. Among other things, the findings could have implications for regenerative medicine.

But by late 2019, Aurora's emphasis had shifted. It said self-driving trucks, not cars, would be quicker to hit public roads en masse. Its executives, who had steadfastly refused to provide a timeline for their self-driving-car software, now say trucks equipped with its "Aurora Driver" will hit the roads in 2023 or 2024, with ride-hail vehicles following a year or two later.

"Collective motions of biological systems such as bird flocks, fish schools, and bacterial swarms are the most vivid examples of the emergent behaviors of active matter (1). While moving independently at low density, self-propelled units in active matter can move collectively at high density, giving rise to coherent flows at length scales much larger than the size of individual units. In bacterial suspensions, these coherent flows exhibit a chaotic pattern of intermittent vortices and jets, reminiscent of turbulent flows at high Reynolds numbers. Hence, the flows induced by bacterial collective swimming are also known as active or bacterial turbulence (2-5)."

Just as there is talk of automated self driving cars, the same is for cargo ships. Only the reality is that autonomy will start with smaller ships, whith shorter hauls.

"History is going to bifurcate along two directions. One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction event," he said. "The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilisation and a multi-planet species, which I hope you would agree is the right way to go." Musk has often spoken about his dream of building cities on Mars. He believes that settlements would need large numbers of people in order to become self-sustaining. He also needs someone else to build he just wants the transportation.

Travellers will use facial scanners to print and attach a bag tag from a self-serve kiosk and place their bag on the conveyer. They will also use facial scan to pass through the domestic checkpoint in dedicated TSA PreCheck lanes (no need to show a government ID or boarding pass) and at the gate another facial scan will produce a boarding pass. Automation of these services will result in fewer jobs as well as enhanced tracking and identification of passengers.

On race day, it is not drivers that will make the difference -- but about 40,000 lines of code programmed by each team. "If people get used to seeing cars like these going 300 kilometers per hour... and they don't crash," said Savaresi, they may eventually think that such cars are safe "at 50 kilometers per hour."

Estimates from the American Trucking Association suggest there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States and the industry, as a whole, employs more than 8.7 million people. According to the Los Angeles Times, 1.7 million American truckers could be replaced by self-driving trucks over the next decade.

You know that universal sign we give truckers, hoping they'll sound their air horns? Well, you're gonna be hearing a lot less honking in the future. And with good reason. The absence of an actual driver in the cab. We may focus on the self-driving car, but autonomous trucking is not an if, it's a when. And the when is coming sooner than you might expect. As we first reported last year, companies have been quietly testing their prototypes on public roads

Self-driving commercial trucks could regularly operate alongside the motoring public on U.S. highways sooner than many may think, particularly as the industry moves beyond prototypes to real-world, on-road testing. However, the shift likely will be gradual and largely dependent on commercial truck OEMs, regulations, and gaining public acceptance.

"Fort Lauderdale is interested in using a tunnel to ease traffic on one of its busiest roads, and Elon Musk wants to build it. This week, Ford Lauderdale's city government accepted a proposal from Musk's urban tunnel-digging outfit, the Boring Company, to carve out an underground passageway that will deliver people from downtown to the beach via self-driving Teslas."