Article By Muhammad Faizan
BSME, PIEAS, Islamabad, Pakistan
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:
We all know UAVs can deliver death on the battlefield, but might they also soon be delivering presents to your door?
Online retail giant Amazon says it knows its customers so well that it can start shipping even before orders are placed. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos appeared on CBS television late last year, revealing to viewers of 60 Minutes that his company is testing UAVs, called Octocopters, which could deliver packages in as little as half an hour after an online purchase.
"We can do half-hour delivery... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3kg), which covers 86% of the items that we deliver."
"I know this looks like science fiction, but it's not. It will work, and it will happen, and it's gonna be a lot of fun," Bezos said of the company's so-called Prime Air project while predicting the UAVs will take to the skies within four or five years.
The stunt provoked much chatter about the ground-breaking potential of unmanned aerial vehicles. Amazon's "Octocopter" isn't the only non-military UAV out there. The civil applications for UAVs are numerous, from spreading pesticide on fields, to delivering medical supplies in remote areas, to monitoring hundreds of miles of oil pipelines for leaks.
But UAVs still suffer from a major image problem. They’re widely perceived to be weapons of war and invaders of privacy. They need to start blending into civilian life by looking and acting a whole lot friendlier.
Autonomous Cars:
Automakers, collaborating with research institutes, are adding features into their newest models that could earn them billions and reduce road accidents, congestion, and fuel consumption but only if they can convince you to give up control of your car.
In the fall of 2010, Google developed a fleet of “self-piloting” Toyota Prius Hybrids which had logged thousands of miles, driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. Each vehicle is powered by unproven artificial intelligence software and outfitted with a sophisticated yet awkward-looking GPS array, detailed mapping software, and optical radar and laser sensors. The car could stay on track, know where it was going, and “see” what was happening around it.
“One moment, the idea of a self-driving automobile was pure fantasy, something out of a science fiction film,” said Andrew Chatham, senior staff engineer and off-board software lead for Google’s self-driving car program. “The next, it was a reality, and people immediately wanted to know more about it and when they could buy one.”
Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun and his Google colleagues are convinced that smarter vehicles could help make transportation safer and more efficient: Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form speedy convoys on freeways. They would react faster than humans to avoid accidents, potentially saving thousands of lives.
Google engineer Chris Urmson described another scenario they envision: Vehicles would become a shared resource, a service that people would use when needed. You'd just tap on your smartphone, and an autonomous car would show up where you are, ready to drive you anywhere. You'd just sit and relax or do work.
Thrun and Urmson acknowledged that there are many challenges ahead, including improving the reliability of the cars and addressing daunting legal and liability issues. But they are optimistic. All the problems of transportation that people see as a huge waste, "we see that as an opportunity," Thrun said.
Many automakers like Audi, BMW, GM, Nissan, Toyota, and Volvo have also announced plans to unveil an autonomous car by 2020.
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