A sustainable space program requires reliable, fully autonomous robotic systems both for maintaining the existing space infrastructures and for building new ones beyond low Earth orbits. Autonomy is particularly essential to near-future space robotic systems as they must operate in harsh and partially understood environments.
Digitisation refers to everything from delivering farming advice via text messaging to interactive voice response. It also includes smart phone applications that link farmers to multimedia advisory content, farm inputs, and buyers. And it covers the use of drones and satellite systems to inform farmer activities, such as crops and times to plant; and types and amounts of inputs to use.
The explosive popularity of YOLO has led to warnings of the same problem that led to Yik Yak’s shutdown, namely that its anonymity could lead to cyberbullying and hate speech. But in an age of online surveillance and self-censorship, proponents view anonymity as an essential component of privacy and free-speech. And our own research on anonymous online interactions among teenagers in the UK and Ireland has revealed a wider range of interactions that extend beyond the toxic to the benign and even beneficial.
I think it’s a good thing that President Cyril Ramaphosa is dreaming of a high-tech future. We need someone to dream big about the way our country will operate, not in some distant sci-fi future, but in the next few years. We need to start embracing the technologies that can make us a better place to live, find work for our youngsters in the new growth industries, and make us more attractive to investors.
Amazon Game Studios has announced it’s developing a new The Lord of the Rings game. It’s a free-to-play MMO set in Middle-earth as portrayed in The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy.
Africa’s burgeoning reputation as a source of programming talent got a major boost last month when Microsoft launched its Africa Development Centre (ADC) that will invest $100-milliion over the next five years.
The first South African Audi Customer Private Lounge (CPL) has opened at Audi Centre Centurion which enables you to experience a new car with VR tech.
If you’ve ever participated in a virtual reality (VR) experience, you might have found yourself navigating the virtual world as…
The HoloLens is a powerful example of this, as multiple demonstrations of its capabilities showed. The original model was launched four years ago and was used by NASA for its Mars Rover mission. Because of the eight-minute delay in communications from earth to the red planet, controllers needed to map, plan and execute the path the rover would take, former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told me last year.
Social media has allowed conspiracy theories, disinformation and antivaxxers to spread because it brings more eyeballs, and therefore more advertising.…