New AI Searches Google Street View For Street Signs That Need Repairs

https://gizmodo.com/new-ai-searches-google-street-view-for-street-signs-tha-1835648891

Take a moment to think about all the street signs that blur past as you’re driving. Stop signs, speed limits, and traffic warnings all add up to a massive amount of infrastructure for a city that’s challenging and costly to maintain. But piggybacking on Google’s hard work, scientists have found a clever way to streamline the process of tracking signage in need of repair.

Cataloguing the condition of a city’s infrastructure is usually a time consuming manual process carried about by workers, which can occasionally be quite dangerous when it involves roads and traffic. But if you can remember as far back as 2007, that’s when Google first introduced Street View for Google Maps. It’s a feature that required the company to strap cameras to hundreds of cars and people, and send them off to explore and photograph nearly every last highway, byway, road, and corner of the world. (Even offworld.) It was a massive undertaking, but the results were made freely available to anyone with a device and an internet connection—including a specially trained AI now.

Geospatial scientists (a person who studies how people utilize physical) at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, created an AI-powered piece of software that’s capable of recognizing and identifying specific street signage using Google Street View’s sprawling image database. The system can spot signage with almost 96 percent accuracy, and identify what type of sign it is with 98 percent accuracy. Using just the 2D images and metadata from Google Maps and Street View, it can also accurately catalog the exact geo-location of each sign, so it’s easy to track down should repairs be needed.

Is it a completely reliable solution? No. Google’s search engine is constantly recrawling the internet to ensure it’s always up to date, but the cost to have a Google Street View camera car re-photograph every road in the world on a daily, even weekly basis, would be astronomically prohibitive. As a result, the street view imagery on Google Maps isn’t always up to date. But the system could work in conjunction with other solutions, such as upgrading garbage trucks, which travel the same streets every week, with cameras to capture supplemental imagery which the AI could also scan to keep an infrastructure database up to date.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

June 19, 2019 at 09:06AM

YouTube uses AR to let you try on makeup during tutorials

https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/18/google-youtube-ar-beauty-try-on-makeup/

There’s no question YouTube’s beauty bloggers have some of the largest followings, and the platform has become an important place for even the biggest makeup brands to debut their products. Now, Google’s AR Beauty Try-On feature will let YouTube users virtually try on makeup while watching tutorials and reviews.

The tool creates a split screen, and plays YouTube content on the top half. It uses front-facing cameras to capture users and AR filters to apply virtual makeup samples in the lower screen. With the help of machine learning, the tool works on a full range of skin tones, and Google has already demoed the tool with several beauty brands. In those trials, it found that 30 percent of viewers activated the AR experience in the YouTube iOS app and spent an average of 80 seconds trying on virtual lipstick.

While the tool is still in alpha, you can find it through FameBit, Google’s in-house branded content platform. It’ll be up to brands to implement AR Beauty Try-On, but at least one, MAC Cosmetics, has already signed on. With so many beauty bloggers vying for attention on YouTube, it’s likely more brands and influencers will follow suit.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Google

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

June 18, 2019 at 09:48PM

Wildfires rage near Siberia’s “mouth of hell” — a giant depression that’s getting bigger due to global warming

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/?p=19531

Wildfires blazing in Siberia, as seen by one of the Sentinel 2 satellites on June 11th. (Source: Copernicus Sentinel image data processed by Pierre Markuse)
I started writing this post last week after seeing the stunning satellite image above showing a blazing Siberian wildfire.
When I returned to finish the post today, I learned from a story in the Siberian Times that wildfires in this part of Russia’s Sakha Republic are now threatening a spectacular landscape feature known among locals

via Discover Main Feed http://bit.ly/1dqgCKa

June 18, 2019 at 11:20PM

California Utility PG&E To Pay $1 Billion To Local Governments For Wildfire Damage

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/18/733897949/utility-giant-pg-e-to-pay-1-billion-to-california-governments-for-wildfire-damag?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news

Flames consume a home in Paradise, Calif.  PG&E will pay the town and other jurisdictions $1 billion for wildfire damages caused by its equipment.

Attorneys for a group of counties and cities announced the proposed settlement Tuesday to help cover taxpayer losses from wildfires dating back to 2015.

(Image credit: Noah Berger/AP)

via NPR Topics: News https://n.pr/2m0CM10

June 19, 2019 at 02:13AM

All the electric flying machines come home to roost at the Paris Airshow

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/19/paris-air-show-electric-aircraft/

LE BOURGET, France — An all-electric commuter plane and a small Airbus-backed hybrid are among aircraft programs being touted at the Paris Airshow, as the industry tries to convince a skeptical public it can deliver on a pledge to halve carbon emissions by 2050.

Israeli startup Eviation has wheeled out Alice, a battery-powered nine-seater due for its maiden flight later this year, while Airbus and suppliers Safran and Daher are showing a scale model of their planned EcoPulse, a similarly sized short-hopper that packs a fuel tank as well as batteries.

The electric debuts come as European finance ministers are expected later this week to discuss ending aviation fuel tax exemptions in order to curb greenhouse emissions.

The spread of social media posts “flight-shaming” air travel has also jangled executives’ nerves and added pressure to electrify, following the auto industry’s lead.

Alice was designed as an electric plane from the ground up. ‘It’s basically a huge battery with some plane painted on it.’

Unlike cars, however, electric planes must heft their power packs aloft — a reality that limits them to small aircraft on the shortest routes, as even their proponents concede.

“The impact of battery weight is an order of magnitude more severe for us,” said Stephane Cueille, Safran’s head of research, technology and innovation.

The EcoPulse’s engine drives a central propeller and a generator to recharge its batteries and power additional electric props spread along the wingspan, delivering 20-40% fuel savings on trips up to several hundred kilometers.

Whereas the French plane is still on the drawing board, Alice’s smooth contours can be seen on the tarmac at Le Bourget, north of Paris. Eviation is aiming for a first test-flight later this year and U.S. certification by 2022.

On a single charge, Alice can fly 650 miles (1,046 kilometers) at 10,000 feet with a cruising speed of 276 miles per hour. Cape Air, a Massachusetts-based regional carrier, has taken an option to add a double-digit number of the $4 million planes to its fleet, Eviation disclosed at the show.

Flying battery

The aircraft, with a flattened profile and propellers at its wingtips, was designed as an electric plane from the ground up, said Omer Bar-Yohay, Eviation’s founder and CEO.

“It’s basically a huge battery with some plane painted on it,” he told reporters.

Among signs of growing interest from traditional players, engine maker Rolls-Royce said on Tuesday it had bought the electric aerospace division of Germany’s Siemens — which is also one of the suppliers of motors to Alice.

Engineers see a bigger future for hybrids, which can combine lighter, downsized jet engines with an electric boost during take-off and climb, for a 30% fuel saving. The additional thrusters or e-propellers also help stability, allowing a more streamlined airframe to reduce drag and consumption further.

Reconciling airlines’ growth ambitions with their promised 50% carbon emissions cut will be no easy task. ‘We don’t know how that’s going to happen yet.’ But aerospace leaders are adamant that the answer cannot be fewer flights.

“Then you’re starting to get to the kind of economics and sustainability that’s closer to a bus than it is to aviation historically,” United Technologies Chief Technology Officer Paul Eremenko said during a panel discussion.

UBS predicts demand for $178 billion in green aviation technologies by 2040 as they become more mainstream.

“The consumer is probably going to demand an acceleration in this space,” said Celine Fornaro, the Swiss bank’s head of industrials research. “It’s starting to be more present in everyone’s conscience.”

Airbus is also looking at hybrid-electric technology for future passenger aircraft generations, but few would bet on its readiness to power the 200-seaters expected to replace the workhorse A320 jet family in the 2030s.

Carbon emissions from commercial aviation account for about 2.5% of the global total but are set to expand in step with emerging middle classes, especially in Asia.

To counter their impact, the industry is introducing the CORSIA program, which requires airlines to fund cuts to atmospheric carbon dioxide elsewhere, offsetting their emissions growth while awaiting hybrid planes and alternative fuels.

‘Decades away’

Reconciling airlines’ growth ambitions with their promised 50% carbon emissions cut from 2005 levels will be no easy task.

“We don’t know how that’s going to happen yet,” said Greg Hyslop, Boeing’s technology chief.

But aerospace leaders are adamant that the answer cannot be fewer flights.

“We’ve got to make aviation grow and be sustainable,” Rolls-Royce CTO Paul Stein said during the same panel. “Those who propose traveling less are heading for a darker place.”

Brussels-based lobby group Airlines for Europe said “taxing aviation is not a solution”, in a statement ahead of the EU ministerial meetings starting on Thursday in the Netherlands.

But campaigners like Greenpeace transport specialist Sarah Fayolle say taxation and other regulation is warranted by the urgent need to slash emissions.

“We’re facing a climate emergency that cannot wait for uncertain technological solutions that are decades away,” she said.

via Autoblog http://bit.ly/1afPJWx

June 19, 2019 at 07:58AM