At the intersection of 3D printing, autonomous vehicles and IBM’s famously advanced Watson computing platform sits Olli, an electric vehicle that can carry up to a dozen people.

This smart bus design features 30 advanced sensors to help it navigate around and communicate with other vehicles on the road. It is the first vehicle to use cloud-based computing from Watson to analyze high volumes of transportation data on the go.

It is also meant to humanize the experience of driverless vehicles, allowing passengers to interact conversationally with the machine on their ways to various destinations, “discussing topics about how the vehicle works, where they are going and why the car is making specific driving decisions.”

“These interactions are designed to create more pleasant, comfortable, intuitive and interactive experiences for riders as they journey in autonomous vehicles.”

With no need for a driver, passengers are able to sit anywhere and look out the windows, entering and exiting through a bus-like door much as they would on other forms of public transportation. The Olli could also help bridge the gap between large public systems and smaller forms of point-to-point transit.

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Besides making computers and other gadgets, IBM is known for producing training videos and short educational films. In 1965, before the dawn of the personal computer era, they produced the gem below: “Man & Computer.” It is a 22-minute-long dive into the functions of a computer, augmented by some groovy animations and top-notch acting.

The content of the video is actually very interesting, as it underlines just how far computing has come in 45 years. Curiously, the video focuses on reassuring the viewer that computers will never replace humans – only enhance our abilities. It seems that even before computers took over the world, people were frightened that they would one day lose their jobs to the machines.

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(image via: psyberartist)

If you find yourself waiting for ages at long traffic lights, your car’s fuel efficiency might be suffering. Car manufacturers say that if your car is left idling for more than one minute, you’re using more fuel than you would simply turning the engine off and then restarting it when you’re ready to continue driving. IBM recently filed a patent for a traffic light system that would save fuel by stopping the engines of vehicles waiting at traffic lights.

(image via: ConanTheLibrarian)

The patent says that it for “a method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal,” meaning that if a traffic signal has a certain amount of time before changing to green, it will send out a signal to waiting cars that will shut off their engines. Doing so will cut down on vehicle emissions while saving motorists fuel. The patent also suggests that the method could be useful at railroad crossings where cars often sit idling for several minutes.

(image via: wwarby)

Besides the obvious Big Brother concerns, car enthusiasts are in an uproar about the mechanical demands that constant restarting would have on car engines. Based on the extensive infrastructure changes that would have to take place – not to mention the changes to the way cars are manufactured – this doesn’t seem like a change that will happen anytime soon. The fact that IBM is patenting the system means only that they’re claiming the idea, not that they have any definite plans to make the system into a reality. So never fear, motorists whose cars need some coaxing before starting: Big Brother isn’t likely to jump into the passenger seat at the next red light.

The post Green Light: Gas-Saving Method Turns off Waiting Engines first appeared on Gajitz.

IBM is showing off their new nanopatterning technique with the smallest 3D map of the world that has ever been created. The itty-bitty Earth is so tiny that 1000 of them could fit on a single grain of salt. The map measures just 22 by 11 micrometers; the underlying material used to create the map was an IBM-created polymer called polyphthalaldehyde. An extremely tiny silicon tip was used to etch the polymer with a point that’s roughly 100,000 sharper than the point of a pencil. The machine that IBM used to create this miracle of nanotechnology completed the feat in under 2.5 minutes.

While a sub-microscopic world map might not seem like a great breakthrough for science, the above video points out that this technique could actually have a huge impact on all areas of nanotechnology. According to IBM, applications could include rapid nanoelectrics prototyping and shape-matching components of self-assembling nano objects. Besides being able to produce better resolutions than other methods, the machine IBM used to create this new world is small enough to fit on a tabletop and costs about one-fifth to one-tenth of current techniques.

The post I Can See My House From Here! Smallest 3D World Map Ever first appeared on Gajitz.