Even earlier, IEEE Spectrum had an article about KIVA as early as 2007, and a more in-depth one following in 2008. Amazon bought KIVA last year (even Slashdot noticed) for obvious reasons -- workers get a new item to pack into a box about every 6 seconds. The whole AGV system is highly efficient, significantly speeding up the warehouse processes.

I'm quite surprised Slashdot didn't pick it up back then -- but then again, I suppose I could've posted it when I first read about it :)

People are frightened by what they can't control, can't predict, and don't understand.

I love how most people commenting on this article write only about they, them et cetera, conveniently leaving out themselves.

At least, be honest and write we and us instead...

It's not you wasting food. It's the restaurant wasting food by giving people unreasonably large portions. Blame them.

Right, because all possible health issues you could get into are clearly just your own damn fault.

WTF.

If it works, don't replace it.

My favorite example: The equipment in the Solar Telescope office at Mount Wilson observatory. You can look at it yourself during the guided tours they offer on weekends. Great fun.
Unfortunately I'm not sure about the specific models used, maybe someone else can enlighten us here?

These guys do just that. Don't know if they've sent anyone to Japan yet, but that might happen.

Thanks for the link, this was indeed well-written and, even if the guy might not be the world's expert #1, this text goes a lot further than any media outlet would care to go.

What I'm still not quite clear about: Some amounts of Caesium-137 and Iodine-131 are said to have been released. Here his report is a bit weak: While Iodine isotope poisoning can be averted by giving Iodine tables (this is currently being done), and half-life is about eight days, Caesium-137 has a much longer half-life (about 30 years). So, when he says that it was "carried out to the sea and will never be seen again", this is not an entirely convincing explanation. Does anyone know more about the dangers of Caesium and Iodine isotopes, and the amounts released in this incident (so far)?

There isn't enough solar to meet the demand, and we need to let some sunlight hit the earth's surface for those plants to use to photosynthesize.

Checkout the Desertec initiative. One of their slogans: "Within 6 hours deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes within a year." Now, I haven't gone and checked their numbers, but even if they're off by an order of magnitude or two, this remains a promising option. Maybe in the light of the northern african revolutions and general economic problems, this initiative will be in a good position to gain momentum, provide cleaner energy, and even help the local economies. Even if there are a lot of "but"s to this idea, it is definitely something worth exploring, and given the current events will receive a boost.

I think they mean EP2003899 (European Patent), whose title is "A Method For Extracting Direct Mode Motion Vectors".

That same "Grand Interpreter" is also required to make your hard drive work (laws of physics and whatnot). So I would say it can be safely omitted from the equation for the purpose of this poll.

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WTF?

Wow, no you can't. For one thing, you don't have to deal with other cars when you're making an exhibition run up Pikes.

That depends on what you mean by "taking over". If someone falls asleep or has a heart attack while driving, "taking over" can just mean bringing the vehicle to a controlled stop in a safe location and turning on the hazards. In that particular situation, there also won't be much room for suing anyone if something goes wrong -- because had the vehicle not done anything, the situation would've ended gravely anyway.

Also, while you may not have to deal with oncoming traffic running up Pikes, you have to have a damn robust and fast perception system that is able to react to its environment quickly and safely ("oh, pothole on the right, better avoid that"), and you need to have a software capable auf autonomously controlling a vehicle in the most extreme situations (such as going round a curve on a dirt road at 60 miles with a hundred-foot drop on one side. I dare say that if you manage that, you'll be doing pretty well in "normal" traffic as well. Combine this with the expertise gained from the DARPA competitions, and that "long way" is already getting shorter.

Your $70 GPS addon is way too inaccurate for the kind of autonomous navigation they're trying to achieve. I mean, your standard SiRFstar III claims 2.5 meters of accuracy 50% of the time (a sigma of 3.7 m). That means you can't even be sure whether you're actually on the road, never mind what lane you're in. And that's only in a clear-sky situation. Once you're in a downtown "Urban Canyon" where you hardly pick up any GPS satellites anymore or get wrong readings due to multipath propagation, good luck. Your standard GPS SatNav simply always assumes you're on the road. That won't do for an autonomous vehicle.

You'll need something closer to this high-speed INS+GPS, the better models of which can be accurate in the decimeter range (assuming careful calibration). The ones I know about are all in the US$50,000 and above price range.