Torc Robotics picks Austin for tech hub to commercialize L4 autonomous trucks by 2030

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January 11, 2022

Self-driving truck manufacturing company Torc Robotics has chosen Austin, the United States, to build its new tech hub for boosting the research and development process of the company’s self-driving technology.

According to the company, it plans to open the new 21,000 f2facility in Austin by early 2022. Commercializing level 4 autonomous trucks by the end of 2030 is Torc’s primary motive behind building the new engineering hub.

In 2019, Daimler Truck acquired a majority share of Torc, making it an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck. Additionally, the company is also hiring at an extensive rate to add new talented engineers to its core team for fueling the R&D of self-driving technology.

Vice President of engineering at Torc Robotics, Mike Avitabile, said, “We are aggressively hiring key talent in engineering and product development to support our strategic growth. With Austin’s relatively low cost of living as compared to other major cities in the U.S. and high quality of life, it was the logical choice for our new facility.”

He further added that he is very impressed with Austin’s talent pool, and the city is also known for being innovative and entrepreneurial. The new facility will primarily focus on software development, but the company also plans to expand its capabilities by developing autonomous test trucks soon.

United States-based end-to-end self-driving software developing firm Torc Robotics was founded by Michael Fleming in 2005. The company specializes in developing high-end solutions for drive-by-wire conversion, autonomous navigation, power management, operator control, emergency stop, and many other tasks involved in autonomous driving.

CEO and founder of Torc Robotics, Michael Fleming, said, “Trucking is the backbone of the U.S. economy, and we predict hauling freight will be the first successful commercial application of self-driving on-road vehicles.” He also mentioned that they are willing to join forces with leading truck manufacturers in the country to commercialize self-driving trucks.

SK to boost Capabilities in Wireless Networks and Chipmaking

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Dipayan Mitra

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January 11, 2022

Technology company, SK, announces that it plans to increase investments to boost its wireless networks and chip manufacturing capabilities. According to the company, this development is a step forward towards SK’s plans of becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence, metaverse, chipmaking, and many more.

The company will roll out over $83 million in initial investment through joint funding. SK recently participated in the CES event held in Las Vegas, where it released this new plan. The CES event invites numerous technology companies from across the world to let them showcase their products and ideas to a vast global audience.

As a part of SK’s new vision, the company aims to launch SAPEON in the United States for commercializing AI chipsets that are required for running machine learning solutions. In the future, SK will increase the service provided by SAPEON in various sectors, including data centers and autonomous driving.

The announcement was made by Park Jung-ho, vice chairman of SK Square, Ryu Young-sang, chief executive of SK Telecom, and Lee Seok-hee, chief executive of SK Hynix, at the CES event.

Ryu Young-sang said, “By proactively responding to changes taking place in the areas of AI, metaverse and 5G, we will prepare ourselves for the next decade.” The Vice-Chairman of SK Square and SK Hynix, Park Jung-ho, also met with the CEO of Qualcomm to talk regarding business collaborations.

SK is a South Korea-based global conglomerate that operates in multiple industries semib=conductor manufacturing, telecom, information technology, and many more. According to officials, SK Telecom will invest nearly $45 million to own 65% of the share of SAPEON, followed by SK Hynix and SK Square.

“This year, the SK ICT Alliance will join forces to achieve new innovations and make a big leap forward in the global market,” said Park.

IBM Watson Advertising brings AI-powered Weather Analytics to AWS Data Exchange

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Dipayan Mitra

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January 11, 2022

IBM Watson Advertising AI Weather Analytics AWS

Technology giant IBM’s data and artificial intelligence branch, Watson Advertising, announces that it will provide AI-powered weather analytics on AWS Data Exchange, an Amazon Web Services platform.

The AWS Data Exchange platform lets users choose and subscribe to hundreds of third-party data in the cloud. IBM Watson Advertising’s weather analytics tool analyzes the relationship between weather and consumer behavior that would help companies worldwide make better data-driven decisions regarding their businesses.

Companies can use IBM’s weather analytics to understand customers’ purchasing behavior in relation to weather conditions in various sectors, including consumer packaged goods, pharmaceutical, and much more accurately.

Chief Executive Officer of the Weather Company, and General Manager of IBM Watson Advertising, Sheri Bachstein, said, “This expanded relationship with AWS gives more businesses access to the weather data that can drive consumer behavior and purchasing. We know that weather can impact nearly everything in daily life — how we feel, what we do, even what we buy.”

She further added that they are committed to providing their technology to other organizations to help them in growing their businesses using data and technology. Companies can access precise local data regarding weather, including 15-day weather forecast history and several weather conditions that can help them in effectively planning their campaigns, supply chain, and forecasting decisions.

Users can now seamlessly access IBM Watson Advertising’s weather analytics software using AWS console or APIs and deploy it in many AWS analytics and services. This development marks IBM’s aim of offering cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to address the needs of the hybrid-cloud era. The company also plans to invest over $1 billion to help its partners in providing best-in-class solutions over the next three years.

Cloud Security Alliance releases Guidelines of the use of AI in Healthcare

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Dipayan Mitra

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January 10, 2022

Cloud Security Alliance Guidelines AI Healthcare

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a non-profit organization that promotes best practices for providing security, releases its new guidelines to regulate the use of artificial intelligence solutions in the healthcare industry.

The guidelines have been drafted by the Health Information Management Working Group and mentioned various ways to deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to revolutionize the healthcare industry while considering its regulation and impact.

The report will provide expert guidance to companies on how to best incorporate AI technologies into the healthcare system in the near future. CSA has mentioned numerous use cases of AI implementation to help others understand the best practices for AI and ML deployment in various tasks involved in healthcare, including research, diagnosis, treatment, and many more.

Co-chair of Health Information Management Working Group, and the paper’s lead author, Dr. James Angle, said, “This is the time when healthcare leaders should be accelerating their use of AI, which when used with cloud computing has the potential for drastically improving patient outcomes. But, as with any new technology entering the healthcare arena, there are several challenges, among them a lack of data exchange, regulatory compliance requirements, and patient and provider adoption.”

He further added that the paper summarizes multiple areas that can benefit from artificial intelligence and how they can be effectively deployed. The United States-based non-profit organization Cloud Security Alliance was founded by Jim Reavis and Nils Puhlmann in 2008.

It promotes the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing and offers education on the benefits of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

Smart Finance to launch ICO for new Crypto Platform based on AI and ML

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Dipayan Mitra

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January 10, 2022

Leading financial services providing company Smart Finance announced the launch of its new initial coin offering (ICO) for its new cryptocurrency platform based on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

Trading crypto is a risky form of investment, but on the positive, it can also offer better rewards when compared to other investment options. The SMF Token of Smart Finances is a reliable way of entering and investing in the crypto domain.

The newly announced artificial intelligence-powered decentralized finance (DeFi) platform developed by Smart Finance is a decentralized yield optimizer that allows users to earn compound interest from their cryptocurrency investments. Currently, the company is finalizing the technical designs of the platform before the market release of the AI-powered platform.

Smart Finance Official said, “This may make things considerably simpler for new cryptocurrency traders who haven’t yet had time to learn how the crypto world works. In order to determine the mood of the crypto market, an investor requires analysis of a large amount of data.”

He further added that the main advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning is that they enable the platform to analyze large amounts of data accurately and quickly. The newly announced DeFi platform can analyze various kinds of data, including blogs, articles, forums, comments, and many more, to generate instantaneous and actionable results.

The platform leverages several neural networks to offer forecasts and monitoring of the crypto market, including exchange rates with an accuracy of 90, making DeFi a highly dependable and robust platform for crypto trading. Additionally, DeFi will also offer an anti-scam feature that analyzes information related to cryptos to generate a score regarding investment risks.

“Artificial Intelligence is the ultimate game changer in the crypto sector. AI provides a smart and powerful automated trading robot that can estimate crypto market values and automatically trade for you,” said the founder of Smart Finance.

Intel Claims the new i9 12th Gen processor is faster than Apple M1 Max

By

Osheen Jain

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January 10, 2022

Intel Claims the new i9 12th Gen processor is faster than Apple M1 Max

Intel unveiled the 12th Gen mobile processor, Core i9 that focuses on laptops and small computers and claims that it’s faster than M1 Max. The company also claims that the new Core i9 processor is the fastest mobile processor on the market, explicitly comparing it with Apple M1 Max.

Designed for enthusiast gamers, engineering professionals, and creators, the new 12th Gen Intel Core H-series is up to 40% faster than the previous generation processor and delivers desktop-caliber performance on the go. Intel’s 12th Gen i9 processor will power systems available starting in February 2022.

For comparison, the Intel Core i9 consumes up to 115 watts of power, whereas the M1 Max chip’s power consumption stays around 60 watts, hardly exceeding 90 watts when running at full performance.

The new 12th Gen Intel Core H-series is the world’s best mobile gaming platform, delivering up to 28% faster gaming experience than Intel Core i9-11980HK, the previous mobile gaming leader in the market. Content creators may see up to 43% higher performance in 3D rendering gen-over-gen with 12th Gen Intel Core H-series. Intel has also provided broad memory support for DDR5/LPDDR5 and DDR4/LPDDR4 modules, a first in the industry for H-series mobile processors.

Intel also shared the following graph comparing the power and performance of M1 Max, Ryzen 9, two Intel cores.

Core i9 processor comes with Turbo Boost frequency of up to 5 GHz, 20 threads, and 14 cores (6 P-cores and 8 E-cores), giving it the status of the fastest mobile processor. Apple’s 10-core M1 Max chip has eight performance cores and two efficiency cores. The fast performance also extends to unparalleled gaming experiences and content creation tools.

Oppo launches first 6G Artificial Intelligence Competition on DataFountain

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Dipayan Mitra

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January 10, 2022

One of the largest smartphone manufacturers, Oppo, launches the world’s first 6G artificial intelligence competition on a leading big data and AI competition platform, DataFountain.

Experts believe that deep learning-based wireless communication technology will shape the future of the technology. Oppo’s 6G AI competition can play a vital role in modernizing the future of wireless communications and artificial intelligence, as until now, most of the R&D on 5G wireless communication technology has only been carried out in academia.

Now researchers will get an opportunity to redefine wireless communication technology as we move forward from 5G to 6G. This will also allow researchers to integrate 6G with artificial intelligence to achieve better results.

The official name of the competition is AI-based Channel Modeling and Generating, and the participants have to consider using artificial intelligence-based methods to generate large amounts of data seeded from a small set of real channel data during the competition. Judges will analyze the similarity and diversity of the generated data for the evaluation process.

The competition has already begun on 24th December and will continue till 11th March 2022. Interested candidates can visit the official website of DataFountain to register for the competition. The entire competition will be held virtually apart from the technology sharing process and awarding ceremony.

The competition has a prize pool of ¥380,000 in which the winners will be awarded ¥300,000. The first runner-ups will receive ¥50,000 (2 teams), and the second runner-ups will receive ¥20,000 (3 teams).

Sony announces the PlayStation VR2 headset and VR2 Sense controller at CSE 2022

By

Osheen Jain

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January 10, 2022

Sony announces the PlayStation VR2 headset and VR2 Sense controller

Sony, the Japanese electronics company, launched the 2nd generation of PlayStation VR and PlayStation VR2 sense controller. The company announced the official name of the next-generation VR headset and VR controller during CES 2022. Both the PlayStation VR2 headset and the VR Sense controller are for Sony’s PlayStation 5.

The company also announced the Horizon Call of the Mountain, an exclusive game for PlayStation VR 2 based in the world of Horizon Forbidden West and Horizontal Zero Dawn. The game was developed by Guerrilla and Firespirit studios, the makers of ‘The Playroom’ series for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR.

Sony’s newly launched PlayStation VR2 headset comes with an OLED HDR display with a 110-degree field of view and 4K resolution. The headset can put out frame rates between 90 to 120Hz. Users will also enjoy eye-tracking features, helping them interact more intuitively and in lifelike ways. Cameras are embedded in the PlayStation VR 2 headset that allows for inside-out tracking without external cameras.

PlayStation VR is a massive upgrade from the first PSVR on the PS4, which offered 960×1080 per eye and a 100-degree field of view. However, the original PSVR also had an OLED display and was set to a frame rate of 120Hz.

The headset will also combine 3D audio, amplifying in-world experience. Hideaki Nishino, PlayStation executive in charge of platform experience, said users could feel a character’s pulse during tense moments or perceive objects whizzing their heads with the new sensory headsets.

Sony has also provided headset feedback, a sensory feature that will amplify the sensations of in-game actions. PlayStation VR2 gives a next-gen experience with high-fidelity visuals, enhanced tracking, new sensory characteristics, and a simplified single-cord setup.

Baidu and Jidu aim to mass-produce Level 4 autonomous electric vehicles by 2023

By

Dipayan Mitra

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January 9, 2022

Baidu Jidu Level 4 autonomous electric vehicle 2023

Chinese autonomous car manufacturer Baidu’s subsidiary, which manufactures smart electric vehicles, Jidu Automotive, plans to mass-produce and deploy level 4 autonomous electric vehicles by the end of 2023.

The major announcement was made during Baidu’s Annual Developers’ Conference by the company’s co-founder and CEO, Robin Li, via China’s first metaverse platform named Xirang. The robocars will be initially deployed as taxis and trucks in assigned regions of the country and then expand slowly to provide other related services to customers.

Experts believe that the large-scale deployment of L4 autonomous vehicles of commercial use might roll out by 2030. Jidu Automotive claims that the autonomous car will not require any human intervention to operate and will come with self-learning and self-improving capabilities, making it a highly capable and sophisticated self-driving vehicle.

Experts suggest that there will be a revolution in the intelligent automobile industry in the coming 10 to 40 years, and this new development will keep expanding over time. Researcher at the Automobile Industry Research Center China, Zhang Xiang, said, “Baidu has accelerated its steps in the vehicle-to-everything infrastructure construction across the nation, in a bid to promote the commercialization of autonomous driving technologies.”

He further added that it would take quite some time for fully autonomous vehicles to reach mass-production and commercial deployment stages as the current technology standards are insufficient to build reliable autonomous vehicles.

Recently, Baidu has achieved various remarkable milestones in its robotaxi venture by completing more than 110,000 rides during the third quarter of 2021. With success, Baidu also plans to expand its robot taxi service to over 65 cities by 2025 and to 100 cities by 2030. Last year, Baidu also unveiled its new autonomous robocar-L5 driving autonomy in its annual flagship technology conference Baidu World 2021 event.

Swap Partners with Find.Fashion to offer Unprecedented Visual Searching

By

Dipayan Mitra

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January 9, 2022

Largest online consignment and thrift shop Swap partners with technology firm Find.Fashion to offer unprecedented visual searching features using artificial intelligence and emotion recognition technologies.

Both the companies plan to integrate Find.Fashion’s cutting-edge technology with Swap’s shopping platform to increase the capabilities of Swap and provide a better shopping experience to the customers.

The AI-powered visual search feature will be made available on Swap’s mobile shopping website soon. Find.Fashion’s solution prioritizes emotions behind user actions instead of solely relying on text-based actions of users to offer unmatched quality and relevance of search results to customers.

Chief Commercial Officer and Board Member of Swap, Antonio Gallizio, said, “Adding FIND.Fashion visual search makes it easier to find what they want at that moment, and it makes the shopping experience easier, faster, and more engaging. We know this because buyers that use the search walk away happier with their purchases and find more products on our site that they inevitably buy.”

He further added that the feature would considerably help shoppers who are unsure regarding what they want to buy. The feature will eliminate the need to type what shoppers want to buy and replace it with an intuitive visual search, increasing the chances of finding the best suitable products according to the wants of customers.

Estonia-based world’s first visual search for eCommerce developing firm Find.Fashion was founded by Diana Saarva, Heikki Haldre, and Paul Pällin in 2018. The company helps consumers search for fashion-related products when they are in a dilemma of what to purchase using artificial intelligence technology.

“We’re thrilled Swap.com customers are enjoying FIND.Fashion visual product search with emotion recognition and that we’ve been able to help the company exceed its ecommerce goals in such a short amount of time,” said CEO and Co-founder of Find.Fashion, Heikki Haldr.