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$50M contest aims to jump-start urban transit

An artist’s conception visualizes how “connected vehicles” could communicate. (Credit: USDOT)
An artist’s conception visualizes how “connected vehicles” could communicate. (Credit: USDOT)

The U.S. Department of Transportation and billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen’sVulcan Inc. are offering $50 million to midsize cities, including Seattle, in a “Smart City” competition to promote next-generation transportation systems.

“Our national vision for transportation is still very much constrained by 20th-century thinking about technology,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters today during a teleconference to announce the contest. “We are imagining connected and autonomous vehicles that practically eliminate crashes. And we are imagining this technology interacting with wired infrastructure to eliminate traffic jams as well.”

Foxx said the federal government would be unveiling new guidelines for autonomous vehicles sometime in the next few weeks, and requirements for vehicle-to-vehicle communications in the next year. But he also said DOT wants cities to come up with their own visions for transportation systems that are safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.

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Export-Import Bank revived after political battle

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Boeing commercial jets are lined up at the company’s Seattle Delivery Center. (Boeing photo)

Nearly six months after the Export-Import Bank was shut down due to congressional wrangling, the federal agency has been revived – which is good news for the Boeing Co.

The bank plays a key role in making loans and guaranteeing loans to foreign buyers of U.S. goods. Since 2007, it’s provided support for $135 billion in exports from Washington state, according to U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., one of the backers of the bank’s reauthorization.

Many of those exports were in the form of Boeing airplane sales, to such an extent that some have called the agency “the Bank of Boeing.” Supporters say the agency plays a crucial role in keeping Boeing and other exporters competitive in global markets, while critics say it provides foreigners with market-distorting subsidies funded by American taxpayers.

This year, GOP conservatives blocked reauthorization of the bank, and its authority to make new loans lapsed on June 30. In August, Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney hinted that the company might move key parts of its operation to other countries if the bank didn’t regain its lending authority.

To revive the bank, supporters resorted to a little-used maneuver known as a discharge petition, which allowed reauthorization to be voted on by the full House even though it was against the wishes of the House Financial Services Committee’s leadership. The measure was attached to a $305 billion highway and transit construction bill that won House and Senate approval on Thursday.

President Barack Obama signed the measure into law on Friday.

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Scientists set up systems for DNA data storage

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A 3-D animation shows how DNA can be used in computational devices. (Credit: Microsoft Research)

Data storage is getting better and better, but the final frontier for the long-term preservation of digital bits may well be DNA molecules – and the University of Washington and Microsoft Research are trying to make it so.

The work on DNA data storage architecture is one of the angles in Friday’s New York Times story on the subject. In a paper prepared for an international conference on software architecture, researchers propose an error-tolerant encoding scheme for reading out the data in a DNA-based storage system.

Such a system would take advantage of DNA’s amazing information storage capability – the kind of capability that’s able to hold all the genetic code for any organism in a single cell. The Times notes that all of the world’s digital information could be stored in about 2.4 gallons (9 liters) of solution, which would fit inside a typical water cooler bottle.

The benefits of such a system not only include being able to put a lot of data in a small space, but also being able to preserve the data for millennia under the right conditions.

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R2-D2 jet brings ‘Star Wars’ vibe to Seattle

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All Nippon Airways’ R2-D2 jet arrives at Sea-Tac. (Credit: ANA via Twitter)

All Nippon Airways’ R2-D2 Dreamliner jet touched down today at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for the first time, two and a half months after the 787 rolled out of Boeing’s Everett factory.

The airliner – decorated in a blue, black, gray and white scheme modeled after the adorable Star Wars robot – is taking on several Seattle-Tokyo flights this month. The timing is perfect for ANA to capitalize on the hype over “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” And Seattle fans of the movie series, or just plain cool-looking jets, ate it up.

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Amazon drone’s future is up in the air

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Amazon shows off a prototype drone that’s just made a test delivery of a shoebox in someone’s backyard. (Credit: Amazon via YouTube)

The hybrid drone design that Amazon unveiled over the weekend may be only one of several under consideration for delivering packages in 30 minutes or less, but it’s a doozy: The beefed-up Prime Air flier pushes the envelope on technical as well as regulatory grounds.

On the technical side, the prototype shown in Amazon’s video uses an array of rotors (eight, according to The Guardian) to take off vertically, then switches on an additional rotor to buzz through the air horizontally at up to 60 mph. The Guardian says it may be the first vertical-horizontal hybrid air vehicle to weigh in at less than 55 pounds, which is the upper limit for commercial delivery drones.

An autonomous sense-and-avoid navigation system keeps the drone from running into other objects on the way to its destination, at an altitude of up to 400 feet. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed off a sense-and-avoid system last month, but that one was designed to handle obstacles at a mere 30 mph – half the speed that’s built into Amazon’s specs.

The drone is also apparently designed to home in on a landing pad, perhaps equipped with an RFID tag or transmitter. The idea is that customers would lay out the pad in their backyard or some other open space in preparation for package delivery. (Can you buy a pad like that on Amazon yet? What if it’s raining, or if you’re an apartment dweller?)

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FAA shares drone registration recommendations

A task force says recreational drones larger than 9 ounces should be registered. (Credit: FAA)
A task force says recreational drones larger than 9 ounces should be registered. (Credit: FAA)

The Federal Aviation Administration has released a task force’s recommendations for setting up a registration system for recreational drones – and the full report includes fresh details about how the system would work.

The main recommendations filtered out two weeks ago, soon after the task force wrapped up its meeting in Washington, D.C.: The registration procedure should apply to unmanned airborne systems that weigh 9 ounces or more, it should be free and easy to register online, and one registration number could be used on multiple drones operated by the same person.

Here are more of the details from the report:

Drone operators would be required to enter their name and street address into a Web-based or app-based registry, but other contact details – such as email and phone number – would be optional. The system would be powered by an API that multiple websites can feed into. That means manufacturers could set up their own registration sites.

New drone owners wouldn’t be required to register at the point of sale. That’s because it wouldn’t be illegal to own an unregistered drone. It’d only be illegal tooperate a registered drone outdoors. (Indoor drone flying would be unregulated.)

In return for signing up, operators would get a certificate of registration that they’d have to carry with them (in printed or electronic form) whenever they’re flying their drone.

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Get set to register drones for the holidays

Drone
Recreational drones are expected to face new registration requirements. (Photo via Chase Jarvis)

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration says the interim rules for registering recreational drones are likely to be issued next month, just in time for the holiday season.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta’s update on the registration process, provided in a blog post, comes just as a task force is wrapping up its recommendations for setting up the registration system. Huerta says the task force will deliver its report to the FAA on Saturday.

The main recommendations have already come to light, thanks to leaks from the task force.

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Ford CEO sees self-driving cars in four years

Autonomous Ford Focus
An autonomous Ford Focus is put through its paces at a Michigan test facility. (Credit: Ford)

Have you ridden a self-driving Ford lately? They’re not on the market yet, but Ford President and CEO Mark Fields has been quoted as saying fully autonomous cars could be available for use on U.S. streets in four years’ time – and Ford is already experimenting with them in Michigan.

According to a Re/code report, Fields told reporters in San Francisco that Ford should be able to offer vehicles on that time frame that can operate autonomously on roads where high-definition maps are available.

Regulatory and legal issues are likely to be the main sticking points. “Technology tends to lead all that,” Fields said.

Ford has been testing robo-vehicles for more than a decade, and last week the automaker announced that it’s putting an autonomous Ford Fusion through its paces in a simulated real-world urban environment at the University of Michigan’s 32-acre Mcity research facility. It’s one more sign that Ford won’t take a back seat to Google and Apple in the fast-developing driverless landscape.

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Drone signup will be simple, and wide-ranging

Image: Drone
The Blade 200 QX drone weighs in at about 200 grams, which would be just light enough to be flown without registration, based on reported recommendations. (Credit: Andreas Schneiter via YouTube)

Recreational drones as small as 9 ounces will have to be registered, but users should be able to go through the process online, with no fees, and the same registration number can be used for multiple drones: Those are among the reported recommendations emerging from last week’s meeting of a task force charged with proposing a registration system by Nov. 20.

The task force, which includes representatives from Amazon, Walmart, Alphabet(Google’s parent company) and other industry types as well as hobbyists, met in Washington under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration. It hasn’t yet issued any formal findings, but reports from The Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal provide a consistent account of what was decided.

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James Bond’s SPECTRE tech: 7 gadgets for 007

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James Bond (played by Daniel Craig) checks out an Aston Martin DB10 sports car as geekmaster Q (Ben Whishaw) looks on. (Credit: MGM Pictures / Columbia Pictures / Eon Productions)

What’s a James Bond movie without gadgets? “SPECTRE,” the latest film in the decades-long series, delivers way-out innovations that aren’t yet ready for real life, tributes to classic gee-whiz-ware and a couple of high-tech twists that are ripped from the headlines.

Here are seven technological tropes to watch for when Bond goes after the shadowy crime organization known as SPECTRE.

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