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Weekly Tech Recap - № 217 - Playdate, Ford+Digit, TuSimple+USPS, GitHub Sponsors, Google Glass

May 24, 2019.

Playdate

Playdate

Playdate. © Panic.

Panic is a funny little company. Its creators established themselves thanks to their smart utilities for macOS developers, like the Transmit FTP client and the Coda text editor. Next, they conquered iOS with Prompt, an SSH client. Then, they launched into the realm of gaming – hey, why not? – with Firewatch, which set the gaming world on fire. Today, they have unveiled a nice little surprise: a cute little gaming console (74x76x9 mm) called Playdate, with a 2.7-inch, 400x240px, black-and-white LCD display (no backlighting) and… a crank! And no, it’s not a battery charger, but an actual controller. For example, in Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure, created by Keita Takahashi (designer of Katamari Damacy), you turn the crank this way and that to travel forwards and backwards in time. Playdate requires no cartridges – games load via Wi-Fi and come in “seasons”, i.e. one game per week for 12 weeks. Some are short, some long, some experimental, and some traditional. The first season is included with the purchase of the console (USD150). Playdate’s design is the result of a collaboration with Swedish designers Teenage Enginering, the creators of the OP-1 sythesizer. Panic has developed its own operating system, Playdate OS, and game creators can use their Lua and C developers kit, which includes a Mac emulator and a debugger. Playdate should be available in early 2020.

Playdate

Playdate

Playdate

Mashable, “Playdate is one very adorable handheld gaming system.”

 

Ford marches up to your door

Agility Robotics Digit-1.

Digit-1. © Ford Motor Company.

Autonomous delivery vehicles are nothing new: last August, we wrote about the Nuro delivery service in Arizona. But there was always a missing link – the final stretch from car to doorstep. Now, the Ford motor company has teamed up with Agility Robotics, creators of Cassie, to complement its autonomous delivery vehicles with a humanoid, two-legged, two-armed robot, called Digit-1, to deposit your packages right on your doorstep. The robot can handle uneven terrain and stairs to deliver packages of up to 20kg. The success of the system rests on the perfect, functional symbiosis between vehicle and robot. For example, the robot can tap the data generated by the vehicle’s cameras and LiDAR, draw on its computational power, and recharge on its batteries, making it lighter and more energy-efficient. Ford hopes to launch its autonomous vehicle service in 2021.

Ford Motor Company, “Meet Digit: a smart little robot that could change the way self-driving cars make deliveries.”

IEEE Spectrum, “Ford self-driving vans will use legged robots to make deliveries.”

 

Self-driving rigs for USPS

Navistar modified truck.

Navistar modified truck. © TuSimple.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is about to test self-driving mail shipment. Over a two-week period, California start-up TuSimple, a self-driving trucking company, will be hauling mail between USPS’s distribution centres in Dallas, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona. The 1,700km run will be covered by TuSimple’s autonomus rigs in about 22 hours, at an average speed of 80km/h. As usual for this kind of test, a person will be on board for safety purposes. TuSimple uses modified Navistar trucks that, like Tesla’s vehicles, navigate based on cameras rather than LiDAR, though each truck does have two LiDAR sensors on board. Cameras can see up to 1km ahead, while LiDARs are limited to 300m.

USPS spends some 4 billion dollars per year on ground transportation services through trucking contractors, and this cost is climbing due to a general shortage of truck drivers. In 2018, the trucking industry estimated that 50,000 additional truck drivers would be needed to fill the trucking gap in the United States. Self-driving rigs could help save hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating the need for drivers, and by obviating motor vehicle operator hours of work regulations. Last year, USPS posted a 3.9 billion dollar deficit.

The Verge, “US Postal Service will use autonomous big rigs to ship mail in new test.”

 

GitHub launches Sponsors

Mona Lisa Octocat.

Mona Lisa Octocat. © GitHub.

GitHub has launched Sponsors, a beta version of a system to financially support your favorite developers. Sponsors allows anyone with a GitHub account to fund any Sponsors-registered open-source developer through a recurrent monthly payment. During the first year of a developer’s participation in the program, GitHub will match all contributions made to the developer, up to USD5,000. And for the program’s first 12 months, GitHub will not charge processing fees. The service is similar to Patreon, except that Sponsors is fully integrated in GitHub workflows. When a contributor answers your question, triages your issue or merges your code, you can head to their profile—or simply hover over their username—to sponsor their work.

The GitHub Blog, “Announcing GitHub Sponsors: a new way to contribute to open source.”

TechCrunch, “GitHub launches Sponsors, lets you pay your favorite open-source contributors.”

 

Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2

Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2

Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. © Google.

Google’s AR glasses are back, in a enterprise-focused version. The latest Google Glass comes with a larger battery (820mAh, up from 570mAh), a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 processor (a VR/AR-specific SoC) instead of the previous generation’s Intel Atom, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and an 8MP camera. As per the original Google Glass, the display is 640x360 pixels. The OS is Android 8.0 Oreo and the price is USD1,000. A “safety goggle” version for industrial applications is available. As an enterprise product, the glasses are not available to consumers. Still want them? Call Google, and get ready to buy them in industrial quantities and to develop custom software to suit your purposes.

Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2

Ars Technica, “Google Glass still exists: Meet Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2.”