Sansiri will associate with local self-driving startup Airovr to implement transporting T77 residents to close by train stations by the end of the year.

 

Sansiri will also work with drone startup Fling to transport products from the community's malls to residences starting around March 2020. The services will be provided on a trial basis for six to nine months. Sansiri will come to a decision later whether to provide them full-time.

 

Established in 1984, Sansiri is renowned basically for high-end developments and also has partnerships with top Japanese developers. It plans to invest 600 million baht ($19.5 million) in real estate-related startups through a venture capital arm by the end of this year.

 

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“This allows the Amazon Echo ecosystem to expand into most battery powered devices, which it couldn’t previously do,” says Syntiant CEO Kurt Busch. “You really couldn’t do always on listening with small battery powered devices, and now you can.” Sanjay Voleti, senior manager of device enablement with Alexa Voice Service was fascinated with Syntiant’s solution. “We’re excited to see developers begin using this technology in their devices and deliver new Alexa experiences for customers,” he said in a press release.

 

The chip attaches straight to a digital microphone or other sensor and initiates an “interrupt” line connecting to the larger—usually sleeping—system. Once that system’s yawned and expanded, it can then interrogate the NDP100 to determine what wake word or command it heard. The chip also keeps a three-second audio buffer if perhaps the system needs to catch up on what was said during its wakeup routine.

 

Like most AI ASICs, the chip only performs the inferencing step of deep learning. The training happens in the cloud using the common TensorFlow software library. Just one among the chip’s biggest advantages for developers, according to Busch, is that it doesn’t need any compiling or optimization step between the trained network and what goes on the chip. “It’s fair to say that the guts of our chip look like the Tensor Flow graph,” says Busch. Busch says Syntiant is now operating on a larger, more capable version of the chip to expand into more markets. It is also thriving a version that uses analog computation and embedded flash memory to do AI computations with less power.

 

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The launching is likely to ramp up competition in the maturing global smartphone market as Chinese rival Huawei Technologies plans to release its own foldable phone the same month, while Apple is expected to introduce its latest iPhone in the fall. In addition to rectifying the faulty display, Samsung said it also improved its user experience as well, optimizing more apps and services for the new phone. The company emphasized the ability to multitask on the Galaxy Fold, which has a 7.3-inch display when unfolded. The display measures 4.6 inches folded, meaning it can be held in one hand.

 

'Now, with Galaxy Fold, you can review charts while talking on a video call, and search information, all at once,' said Samsung in a statement. 'Galaxy Fold completely reimagines the smartphone, changing the way you interact, communicate and experience everyday life.'

 

Just as Samsung, Huawei primarily delayed the launch of its own foldable phone, the Mate X. The Chinese company said it has carried out further testing of the device with carriers and developers and will begin selling it in September. The time of the two releases is not coincidental, according to analysts.

 

'It's interesting that Samsung and Huawei together again target September to officially make their foldable phones available,' said Joey Yen, an analyst at research company IDC. '[But] that's part of their hope, to have another round of marketing campaigns [at the same time that] this year's new iPhone, the iconic smartphone, although not a foldable one, will be introduced.'

 

Samsung was the world's largest smartphone maker by shipments in the first quarter with a 21% market share, as stated by Counterpoint Research, followed by Huawei with 17%. Apple came the third with 12%. Some analysts say Japan's export curb on South Korea could alter production of Galaxy Fold, as Japan's Sumitomo Chemical supplies a key display-making material to Samsung. The Japanese government imposed the restrictions earlier in the month, which require domestic suppliers to obtain approval from the authorities to export hydrofluoric acid, photo resists and polyimides to South Korea.

 

Hydrofluoric acid, also known as etching gas, and photo resists are essential components in producing chips, while polyimides are used for manufacturing display panels. 'An end-product that could be affected is the Samsung Galaxy Fold smartphone. The display of the Samsung Galaxy Fold is produced utilizing fluorinated polyimide film from Sumitomo Chemical, which is a Japanese electronic materials firm,' said Tadashi Uno, display research director at IHS Markit. But Uno said that Samsung has a plan to replace Sumitomo. 'South Korea-based Kolon Industries could act as an alternative supplier for the Samsung foldable smartphone display.'

 

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Behind the somewhat underwhelming, drama-free demonstration lays a bigger ambition: Japan’s government wants the country becoming a leader in flying cars after losing out on advancements in technology such as electric cars and ride-hailing services. The country’s technological roadmap calls for shipping goods by flying cars by around 2023 and letting people ride in flying cars in cities by the 2030s. “Japan is a densely populated country and that means flying cars could greatly alleviate the burden on road traffic,” said Kouji Okada, a leader of the project at NEC. “We are positioning ourselves as an enabler for air mobility, providing location data and building communications infrastructure for flying cars.”

 

For the past few years, Japan has seen the emergence of a small, passionate flying-car community that believes Japan has the engineering expertise and right environment to surrogate a major international flying car industry. Venture capitalists in the country set up a specialized fund, known as the Drone Fund, specializing in investing in autonomous aircraft in general and flying-car businesses in particular.

 

Despite the fact that Monday’s demo is among the first by a major Japanese corporation, NEC is not planning to mass-produce the flying car, according to Okada. Alternatively project partner Cartivator will start mass producing the transportation machine in 2026, according to the startup’s co-founder, Tomohiro Fukuzawa. NEC engineers and Cartivator, which it sponsors, spent about a year developing the model. It’s about 3.9 meters long, 3.7 meters wide and 1.3 meters tall, and weighs about 150 kilograms. It’s being tried in a large 10-meter-by-20-meter cage that’s 2 meters tall, to make sure it doesn’t fly out of control and injure someone, or cause damage.

 

Japan isn’t the only country desire to usher in a flying-car utopia; Dubai, Singapore, and New Zealand have expressed identical intentions. Google co-founder Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk Corp. is also working on a flying car, as is Uber Technologies Inc. Ultimately, NEC’s flying car will be set free: Cartivator has been granted a permit for outdoor flights by Japanese government.

 

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Huawei's competitiveness grew 9.6 percentage points to 37% in IDC data out Tuesday. U.S. restrictions enforced in May ultimately bar the company from acquiring American components, yet deliveries appear to have been unlikey affected by these measures.

 

The U.S. pressure has fueled purchases of Huawei devices here as Chinese companies encourage employees to buy them, for example. Huawei bucked the national trend of declining smartphone sales. Overall shipments in China reduced 6.1% on the year to 97.9 million last quarter. Full-year shipments sank for a second straight year in 2018 in a concentrated market. Customers are also growing thriftier amid soft corporate earnings.

 

Internationally, second-quarter smartphone deliveries shrank 2.3% to 333.2 million units, according to IDC. Even as smartphone markets of developed economies become saturated, Huawei's shipments flashy 8.3% to 58.7 million, thanks largely to sales in China.

 

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Boring Co. was launched by Musk in 2016 soon after he complained about the traffic congestion in Los Angeles, where the charismatic CEO resides. Musk's solution: build underground tunnels where passengers will be moved in autonomous vehicles at high speeds.

 

The startup opened its first test tunnel under the California headquarters of SpaceX, the space transportation company Musk developed. And it newly landed its first commercial contract to build and operate an underground loop system that can bring people around the Las Vegas Convention Center.

 

The $48.7 million Las Vegas contract consists of building two tunnels, one for vehicles and one for pedestrians sitting in fully automated Tesla cars modified for tunnel transport. Boring Co. has also suggested building a transit system in Chicago and a tunnel connecting New York City and Washington. Both plans are yet to be authorized by regulators. Boring Co. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

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The shift appears to parallel one by American rival Uber Technologies, which determined on the spin-off of its automated driving segment in April in advance of its own listing. Separating the risky, costly business could make the ride-hailing app more attractive to investors should it go public. 'The new company looks forward to further strategic collaborations with automakers and industry partners to promote the application of self-driving technologies in people's everyday lives,' Zhang said in Didi's announcement.

 

Didi's autonomous driving team, set up in 2016, now has 200-plus engineers working in China and the U.S. Its positions include veterans of Google's autonomous driving cousin Waymo, together with of GM Cruise and Apple and Microsoft, according to Chinese media. Prominent Didi investor SoftBank Group and Toyota Motor, which has announced an investment in the company, have also taken stakes in Uber's self-driving unit and could do so with Didi's new company.

 

Building autonomous driving tech is high priced and does not yield instant returns. Transforming the business to a stand-alone company and seeking investments from partners would help Didi solidify its earnings model and defray risk. Didi, founded in 2012, rose to the top of China's ride-hailing market through mergers with domestic rivals and the purchase of Uber's Chinese business. It has over 30 million subscribed drivers and about 550 million users. It is also using its vast troves of driving data to work with the central government on measures to ease blockage.

 

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