Delivery Drones Could Be on Your Doorstep in a Decade, Google Says...........

Google's new drone delivery project could rival Amazon's.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Delivery drones could be arriving to your doorstep in a decade, one Google executive says.
The Google concept, called Project Wing, would enable people to get products delivered "in short order," even in the most populated areas, Dave Vos, the project's leader, said here today (July 29) at a NASA-sponsored conference on drones. Project Wing was first described publicly in August 2014, when test flights of early prototypes were conducted in Australia, The Atlantic reported.
In order to take to the skies, drones need to not only communicate with people on the ground, but also with other high-fliers that are delivering small packages, taking aerial surveys or doing other work, Vos said. [Photos from Above: 8 Cool Camera-Carrying Drones.Key to this vision of a drone-filled future is the use of existing cellular phone infrastructure.
"We don't need to develop new protocols,” Vos said at the conference.
In his vision, drones would be outfitted with an automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receiver that would enable the unmanned fliers to communicate with each other, as well as with ground-based systems. Existing ADS-B systems in aircraft allow them to locate their position using satellites, and then rebroadcast that location to a ground-based station. This type of multi-way communication could enable the drones to avoid obstacles in midflight and fly safely to their destination, Vos said.
A drone equivalent of air traffic control systems will also be needed, Vos said. Google envisions cellular carriers and other private companies collaborating with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to craft a drone air traffic safety system. The FAA has no clear rules on the use of small, low-flying drones by hobbyists, and only in late February granted approval for commercial drone test flights. According to the FAA's regulations, these commercial drones must always remain in the line of sight of the pilot during tests, according to the FAA rules. Currently, NASA is partnering with several tech companies to design a safe air traffic control system for drones.
Project Wing also has a competitor in the retail giant Amazon, which isdeveloping its own drone-based delivery system. At the same conference yesterday, Amazon unveiled a plan to control air traffic for commercial drones. Their idea involves restricting airspace between 200 and 400 feet (61 and 122 meters) high for small, high-speed, unmanned aircraft
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Why Pendulum Clocks Mysteriously Sync Up

Pendulum clocks swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other.l

The 350-year-old mystery of why pendulum clocks hanging from the same wall synchronize over time may finally be solved, scientists say.
In 1665, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, was lying in bed with a minor illness and watching two of his clocks hanging on a wall, said Henrique Oliveira, a mathematician at the University of Lisbon and co-author of a new study detailing the findings. Huygens noticed something odd: No matter how the pendulums on these clocks began, within about a half-hour, they ended up swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other.
The cause of this effect — what Huygens called an "odd kind of sympathy" — remained a mystery for centuries. But recently, scientists analyzing two pendulum clocks hanging from the same beam found that the clocks could influence each other through small forces exerted on the supporting beam. However, "nobody tested properly the idea of clocks hanging on the same wall," Oliveira told Live Science.

Ban Killer Robots Before They Take Over, Stephen Hawking & Elon Musk Say

A global arms race to make artificial-intelligence-based autonomous weapons is almost sure to occur unless nations can ban the development of such weapons, several scientists warn.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, physicist Stephen Hawking and other tech luminaries have signed an open letter warning against the dangers of starting a global arms race of artificial intelligence (AI) technology unless the United Nations supports a ban on weapons that humans "have no meaningful control over."
The letter, which was issued by the Future of Life organization, is being presented today (July 27) at the International Joint Conference On Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures.

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