Autonomous

It seems China's about to win the race to commercial, autonomous, electric VTOL air taxi operations, with daylight a distant second. eHang says its EH216 could be fully certified within months, several years ahead of competitors from the USA and EU.

While manually hoeing weeds out of crops can be very time- and labor-intensive, spraying those crops with herbicides is definitely not eco-friendly. A German consortium is developing a third choice, in the form of the AMU-Bot weed-killing robot.

Hyundai has presented a "Concept Seven" electric SUV it says is an "innovative living space on wheels" for a post-driving future. As such, it's all about a modular interior that Hyundai says will be many things to many people.

Although the deep ocean floor may seem isolated from life on the rest of the planet, it actually plays a vital role in the carbon cycle. Scientists are now gaining a better understanding of that role, thanks to a tracked robotic underwater rover.

MIT's Roboats have undergone a number of redesigns in the years since they were introduced in 2016, and the creators have now landed on their final version, a full-scale, self-navigating watercraft they say is ready to be put to work.

Although fiber optic internet cable has many advantages over metal cable, it frequently has to be distributed underground – this limits its usability. Facebook, however, has developed a robot that could wrap the cable around existing power lines.

Increasingly, robots are being used to autonomously clean floors and other surfaces in places like airports and hospitals. You have to wonder, though … how do they know when a floor is sufficiently clean? A new module could soon tell them.

It goes without saying that the neutralizing of underwater mines is a risky task – definitely one that you'd avoid sending a scuba diver to do, if at all possible. That's why Pittsburgh-based RE2 Robotics is designing a robotic system to do the job.

The Royal Navy has released an outline of its vision of how its Future Autonomous Fleet will operate over the next half century, including green aircraft carriers, underwater command centers, and robotic warships.

Autonomous vehicles operate in a complex environment, and recognizing traffic signs is an important part of that. A new microstructured material reflects light in rainbow rings, which can make traffic signs easier for computer vision systems to read.

While the inspection of railway tracks is an important task, such inspections have to be performed when no trains are nearby. The new rail-riding Staaker BG-300 Railway Drone offers an alternative, as it just flies off the tracks as trains approach.

Alphabet-owned Waymo is looking to gain a strong foothold in the nascent autonomous freight industry, today announcing plans to build a dedicated hub for its self-driving trucks in the state of Texas.