Technology News

Reports indicate that the US and China could agree to a partial trade agreement. It is expected to cover currency and agriculture purchases and a delay in the tariff hike scheduled for next week.

Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He are now scheduled to meet at 2: 45 p.m. ET.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission said Friday overseas financial service companies in futures, securities and mutual funds will be able to apply for total control of onshore ventures starting in 2020. This will speed up the opening of China’s financial markets.

Good things are happening at China Trade Talk Meeting. Warmer feelings than in recent past, more like the Old Days. I will be meeting with the Vice Premier today. All would like to see something significant happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2019

Malcolm Handley of ARPA-E had a presentation that made the economic case for nuclear fusion. The economic case also applies to molten salt nuclear fission reactors and other high-temperature nuclear fission projects. Molten salt nuclear reactors were built and operated in working prototypes in the 1960s and 1970s.

Malcolm indicated that early nuclear fusion reactors could have a reasonably sized market if the price of energy produced was about $60-$75 per megawatt-hour. This could be about $10-30 per megawatt-hour more if there was some of the proposed costs for carbon were introduced.

Process heat is high-temperature heat for industrial purposes. This is 20% of energy usage. Renewables like solar and wind are very inefficient at generating high-temperature heat. These are markets for many nuclear fusion designs and some high-temperature nuclear fission designs. Citing restriction mean nuclear fission would only be able to address 20% of this market. However, if there were safer advanced nuclear fission then the same restrictions on where they could be built may not apply.

Historical solar and wind deployments have been slower than nuclear deployments in Sweden, France and the USA.

SOURCES – ARPA-E


Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

Tesla bought Deepscale, an artificial intelligence vision company.

* The modular AI components could speed up development.


* the DeepScale software could make self-driving more energy efficient

In January, 2019, DeepScale introduced Carver21 which is AI building blocks for intelligent cars. Carver21 offers a portfolio of perception software modules that give Tier-1s and OEMs the flexibility they need to create modular, scalable ADAS. (advanced driver-assistance systems).

Carver21 can be used in small SoCs that would be embedded in edge ECUs, which typically require less than 5W power consumption and are still the status quo for the distributed electrical architectures used in today’s ADAS.

DeepScale’s full-stack deep learning methodology enables cohesive integration of AI software with various processors and sensors for customizable automated driving features. Full-stack deep learning means that DeepScale has experts working together on every aspect of deep neural network (DNN) training, development, deployment, and even data collection/curation to produce proprietary state-of-the-art AI solutions.

DeepScale can run three parallel deep neural networks while using only ~2% of Nvidia’s Drive AGX Xavier processing. Xavier has 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of available power.

SOURCES- Tesla, DeepScale


Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

Boston Dynamics will start selling a first-generation universal robot which is like a robot dog. Spot is an agile mobile robot that you can customize for a wide range of applications. The base platform provides rough-terrain mobility, 360 degree obstacle avoidance, and various levels of navigation, remote control and autonomy. You can customize Spot by adding specialized sensors, software and other payloads. Early customers are already testing Spot to monitor construction sites, provide remote inspection at gas, oil and power installations, and in public safety. Spot is in mass production and currently shipping to select early adopters.

* It can carry up to 14 kilograms.


* It has two payload ports.


* It moves at 3 miles per hour and can move for 90 minutes on a single charge. It has 4.5 miles of range


* The battery pack can be swapped out


* It can move over difficult terrain


* there is a robotic arm attachment for opening doors and other tasks

The video shows how it can be useful in an industrial, factory, construction or warehouse setting.

Boston Dynamics Has a Gymnastic and Pakor Capable Human Form Robot

Boston Dynamics Atlas robot is capable of tumbling and jumping. Atlas is not for sale but it demonstrates the agility of their robots.

SOURCES- Boston Dynamics

SpaceX installed battery packs equal to the batteries used in four Tesla Model X cars to power the movement of wings on the SpaceX Starship. Moving the wings will enable the Starship to generate lift during re-entry to lower the peak temperature. This along with lightweight reusable tile heatshields will prevent damage during re-entry.

Elon Musk will present the new SpaceX orbital Starship design on September 28.

Many powerful electric motors & batteries. Force required is enormous, as entire fin moves. More about this on the 28th.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2019

Exactly. For reusable heatshield, minimize peak heating. For ablative/expendable, minimize total heat. Therefore reusable like Starship wants lift during high Mach reentry for lower peak, but higher total heat.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2019

Better just to ride your max temp all the way down & let T^4 be your friend. Lower atmosphere cools you down real fast, so not crazy hot after landing.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2019

Could do it, but we developed low cost reusable tiles that are much lighter than transpiration cooling & quite robust

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2019

SOURCES – Elon Musk Twitter, SpaceX


Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

Elon Musk tweeted that the Super Heavy booster grid fins will be made of welded steel instead of titanium.

Btw, regarding Super Heavy: given that Falcon 9 grid fins are *already* the largest single piece titanium casting ever (humans for scale in pic below) … how on Earth are you going to manufacture the grid fins needed for Super Heavy!? 🤯 pic.twitter.com/iG6jQovyvt

— Viv 🎃💉 (@flcnhvy) October 1, 2019

Welded steel

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2019

Elon Musk in his Starship presentation had said that the Mark 3 version of Starship would be the version that goes to orbit. Recent video of the construction shows that new single seam rings are being made. Those would appear to be the first rings for a Mark 3 Starship.

SOURCES- SpaceX, Elon Musk, LabPadre Youtube


Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com