The Brit tabloid isn’t the only suitor of course, word is that Microsoft, Time, AOL owner Verizon and yes, even Google, are also in the mix. We’ll know more about who’s going to put the shine back on Yahoo – or who will bury it for good – on April 18th.
Still think self-driving cars are a distant dream? Ford disagrees. Evidence? How about this Ford Fusion hybrid going for a night drive – with the headlights lights turned off.
No, the test didn’t take place on public roads. The car drove around a Ford test track in the dead of night and since it was really dark, the onboard cameras that help guide the car during daytime tests were no help at all. Instead, the car used it’s LIDAR laser guidance system – which pulses almost 3 million times per second – and some very detailed mapping software. Researchers along for the ride wore night vision gear to avoid mucking up the test.
How’d it do? Just great, according to Ford, which will expand their driverless test fleet from 10 to 30 cars this year. There’s also a rumor that Ford may team with Google and pool their research and resources to produce a commercial driverless car sooner than later, but so far, neither company has confirmed anything about that.
And if you thought self-driving cars we cutting edge, how about a self-driving ship? The U.S. Navy is testing just such a boat right now, and lucky for us, part of the testing is being done here in DT’s home town of Portland, Oregon. It’s called the Sea Hunter and it looks just like a sci-fi autonomous ship should – all pointy and really, really fast.
DT’s resident military expert, Rick Stella, got to go aboard and talk with the folks who built the Sea Hunter. The isn’t a drone ship, it’s autonomous. It’s sent to a certain area and performs its mission on its own – which is to look for submarines and mines – and reports in when it finds something. It can stay at sea for months at a time.
The 130-foot long trimaran was designed by military skunkworks DARPA, so you know there’s some top-secret stuff on the inside that, sadly, we couldn’t take pictures of.
