An ambitious project to make contact lenses that could track glucose levels for people with diabetes has been shelved, with Alphabet's Verily admitting the technology just wasn't up to scratch yet. The health-centric lenses were one of the company's first public projects to break cover back in 2014, and a headline example of how it would work with the pharmaceutical industry.
Alphabet is the holding company for search giant Google, and under the Alphabet umbrella, a company called Schaft has been developing bipedal robots for years now. Way back in 2013, Schaft won a DARPA Robotics Challenge Trial with its bipedal robots. Things went off the trials a bit for the company when its director, Andy Rubin, left and went on to found Essential.
Waymo's driverless car service could begin taking paying customers as soon as December, sources claim, with the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle project finally taking on Uber and Lyft. The Google spin-off had promised earlier this year that it would launch a commercial ride-hailing service somewhere in the US.
Waymo's autonomous cars may not be as advanced as widely believed, with insiders along with human drivers sharing the roads with the Alphabet company's Arizona trial warning a reality-check is required. The self-driving car project was spun out of a Google division, and began real-world testing in Phoenix, AZ in 2016.
Google employees are quitting the company in protest of Project Maven, the artificial intelligence collaboration with the US Department of Defense. Promising to speed up the analysis of drone footage by assessing images for photos or objects, Maven has prompted serious controversy within the search giant among those who disagree with AI being potentially involved in warfare.
Alphabet company Verily is working on a health device that collects blood using exploding micro-needles, according to sources. The device reportedly features magnets and tiny needles, attaching to the patient's body to collect blood in a less invasive way than existing blood collection tech. Sources claim the company has been working on this device for several years.
Waymo has released a video from the driverless car involved in a collision in Arizona today, suggesting there was little either the vehicle or the safety driver could have done to avoid the crash. The incident took place in Chandler, Arizona, one of the cities in which Alphabet-owned Waymo is running trials of its autonomous vehicle technology.
A Waymo self-driving minivan was involved in a crash in Arizona this afternoon, though initial reports suggest the autonomous prototype was not to blame for the collision. Waymo is one of a number of companies running driverless car trials in the state, after efforts by Arizona's governor to encourage high-tech investment with easier regulations.
Alphabet's self-driving division Waymo has applied to test driverless autonomous cars on California roads, the company has confirmed. The application was submitted earlier this week with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Assuming sources expanding on the matter are correct, Waymo plans to start its testing in Mountain View and expand into the Bay Area later on.
Alphabet's "moonshot factory" X is tackling the world's food problems. X head Astro Teller recently revealed details about the effort at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital event, where he explained that machine learning is being explored as a potential boon to farming, essentially bringing an AI twist to agriculture. The project is still in its early stages, though.
Waymo just re-introduced the Jaguar I-Pace SUV, what they call the world's first premium electric self-driving car. Waymo and Jaguar Land Rover are in the mix together on this, bringing this vehicle to the self-driving world of cars - for testing - later this year. With this partnership, in the first 2-years of production, the company will be able to create 20k more vehicles for their self-driving fleet.
Waymo has shared video of the first experiences of early riders in its self-driving cars, and anybody hoping for horror or white-knuckle excitement will probably find the whole thing fairly anticlimactic. The Alphabet-owned company, spun out of Google's driverless car research, began trials in Arizona last year, but it's only recently that the state has allowed Waymo to do away with the safety driver altogether.