Light Start – Rolls’ Vision 100, SpaceX comes close, Xbox keyboard, and Olli the Bus
Brett Venter
Rolls Royce’s 103EX concept is a catamaran-car from the future
We’ve seen BMW’s vision for a car 100 years from now, and now it’s Rolls Royce’s turn. So you’ve got 100 years to start saving for this weird, luxurious concept vehicle which looks – at first glance – like it’ll never run. But that’s just because the wheels look square. ‘Look’ being the operative word. THe 103EX concept is massive, measuring almost six metres, and will be autonomous. Rolls’ vehicle is also going to host an AI called Eleanor. No word if Nicholas Cage was involved there. The 103EX is electric, will learn favoured routes and your other tastes (down to where you like to go and eat), and the interior looks like something you’d find in an upmarket hotel room that costs a year’s salary per night rather than the inside of a car. You can’t buy one now, but the futuristic features should become available over time. Time to open that investment account, yes?
SpaceX comes close to another successful landing but doesn’t stick it
SpaceX have put several rockets onto the ground so far. Their latest attempt, sadly, was not one of those. According to Elon Musk, it looks as though the Falcon rocket ran out of liquid oxygen just before it was able to safely settle onto the deck of the floating barge. If you watch the video (at the link below) closely, you can see that the engine cuts out just before it is able to make proper contact. There’s a slow of black smoke and, just before the video cuts short, you can also see the booster topple over. We’re looking for a more extensive video at the moment. There was probably a large boom shortly afterwards.
Mouse and keyboard support is heading for the Xbox One – then you can call it a PC
For years is was consoles versus PC (PC never actually lost that war – just sayin’) and the #PCMasterRace is about to take the crown for good, thanks to Microsoft. Mouse and keyboard support is coming to the Xbox One, in the next few months. Since the console already runs Windows 10 (of a sort), adding in a really accurate interface will turn the console into a PC. A PC for people who can’t handle a screwdriver (or any other drivers – ha!), but still a PC. Xbox head Phil Spencer said “I keep talking about it in the press and my platform team keeps shaking their head, because they … Truthfully in our dev kit modes now keyboard works, mouse support is a little bit further away. I say it because I know it’s not years away, it’s more like months away, but we don’t have an exact date yet.” The PC has won, folks. Or will, shortly. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Olli is IBM and Watson’s latest incarnation and it looks… pretty cool
Olli the Bus might sound like an instruction, if you’re Tony Hawk himself (and we’d totally watch the Birdman do that, too), but Olli, in this case, is a bus. A new bus, that has been 3D-printed and will be ferrying people around Washington DC. The bus, created by Local Motors, can seat 12 and is autonomous. Sort of. Watson, IBM’s Watson will answer questions and will help to direct the self-driving system to various locations around the city. The test is confined to Washington for now, but Miami and Las Vegas will be getting Olli test units later on this year, before venturing into other countries. Should Olli become a fixture, users will be able to summon it using an app. And if there are not enough buses? Well, it’ll apparently take about 10 hours to 3D print a new one.
