The UK city of Rochdale is using machine learning to measure local wellbeing. Traditionally, if a local authority wanted to gauge public opinion it would commission an opinion poll, an expensive way of capturing a snapshot of sentiment on any one day. The Rochdale feelgood factor does away with interviews and harnesses the power of social media...
Nissan’s Propilot technology is at the heart of its self-driving efforts, but for its latest demonstration it is working on a much smaller scale: a roving robot that uses the autonomous driving technology to draw up different soccer pitches to exact dimensions, whether that be for five-a-side pickup games or larger fields for professionals to...
While Amazon, an American company, has put out numerous promotional videos on its drone-delivery plans, it will not start commercial operations until at least 2020. Meanwhile, JD.com has spent the past year building a real drone-delivery network covering 100 villages in rural China with 40 drones. Zhangwei currently receives a couple of drops...
Today, almost anything can be delivered door to door. Recent innovative delivery solutions have included autonomous delivery robots and diesel fuel delivered directly to your car. However, delivery usually requires a static location or address, so the company making the drop-off knows exactly where to go. Now, a last-mile delivery company in...
We have recently seen facial recognition technology applied to diverse uses. These include controlling smart homes and speeding up airport boarding. Now, a high school in Hangzhou City, China is using facial recognition technology to monitor student attentiveness. Hangzhou Number 11 High School is using cameras placed at the front of the...
Lush as been championing naked products for quite a while. Product inventor and co-founder Mo Constantine said: “I began unintentionally making naked products and I’ve gone down that route ever since. My first invention was the shampoo bar in the late eighties. Since then we’ve taken the concept much further.” From solid shampoo bars to bath...
Globally Local, the world’s first 24-hour vegan drive-thru, is looking to open additional locations across Ontario. The Ontario vegan restaurant recently added a “Franchise” page to its website, featuring frequently-asked questions as well as a hint that consumers can expect to see new locations by the fall. According to the page, Globally...
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that, during a year-long test in 2016, researchers from Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee collected images and video of thousands of vehicles at two border crossings in Texas and Arizona. Because of the tests’ success, Customs and Border Protection will rolling it out on...
If you sit down to work at Unilever’s U.S. headquarters and you’re too cold or hot–or you’re working on a laptop and the lights above you are too bright–you can pull out an app on your phone and tweak the room’s settings. Throughout the building, 15,000 sensors also measure temperature, light, carbon dioxide, humidity, and who’s present in a...
Chipotle has started adding drive-thrus to restaurants — but it is a little bit different from how other fast-food chains operate: Instead of ordering at the window, customers need to order ahead via the Chipotle app or an online form. "When I went there was no line for the drive-thru," one five-star review from February reads. "I think word...