DRONES

Amazon Gets More Airworthy

Prime Air has completed a key step in its pre-flight checklist. 

On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration granted Amazon “air carrier” certification. In non-aviation administrator parlance: Amazon can begin commercial drone deliveries on a trial basis, as it works toward more formal certification in the U.S. 

More about Prime Air (est. 2013) 

Amazon wants to create an autonomous drone service that will deliver packages up to five pounds in 30 minutes or less. Company technologists are developing its aerial workhorse in-house. 

Introduced last summer, the latest Prime Air drone is electric, autonomous, and capable of vertical and horizontal flight. It can travel up to 15 miles in half an hour, which makes it slightly faster than Usain Bolt and significantly more long-distance. 

It’s not Day One for air carriers

Last April: The FAA gave air carrier certification to Wing, Alphabet’s drone subsidiary. Wing began deliveries in Christiansburg, VA, last year. More recently, Wing has signed on FedEx and Walgreens as pilot delivery partners in Virginia. 

Last October: The FAA awarded a Part 135 certification to UPS Fast Forward, letting the parcel giant’s drone subsidiary operate a drone airline. The parcel giant could theoretically fly an unlimited number of drones. For now, it’s operating limited drone delivery services in North Carolina and Florida. 

The common denominator?

Getting a drone delivery service off the ground is very difficult for a mess of regulatory and technical reasons. 

Like any pilot, drone operators must adhere to a number of flight guidelines. Amazon has 28 explicit conditions for FAA approval: It can’t fly drones more than 400 feet above ground. It must operate in rural areas with low population densities. The list goes on. 

• But Amazon, Wing, and UPS have been cleared for flights beyond the visual line of sight. That’s necessary if you want a drone to deliver farther than what a sidewalk bot could handle. 

Bottom line: All three companies have momentum after clearing a major regulatory hurdle. But mind the hype factor. Drone-delivered Chipotle almost certainly isn’t coming to a doorstep near you soon. 

AR

A Wild Telecom Has Appeared

Niantic already swept the world once with Pokémon Go. After acquiring a spatial mapping startup in May, the company said it would build “new kinds of planet-scale AR experiences.” 

The planetary teasers are back. On Tuesday, Niantic announced partnerships with a global array of telecoms to develop 5G-ready AR apps. 

For now, Niantic’s “Planet-Scale AR Alliance” includes Deutsche Telekom (), EE (), Globe (), Orange (), SK Telecom (), SoftBank (), TELUS (), and Verizon (). Niantic is hoping that more 5G carriers and device manufacturers will jump on board.

While there’s not much more info by way of substance, this announcement suggests more feature-rich AR experiences are on the way. Niantic has an AR Catan game dropping soon; it’s speccing a 5G AR headset with Qualcomm; and, recently, it’s been working on occlusion/computer vision tech for mobile phones. Is a digital twin of Earth coming next?

Bottom line: Niantic could distribute its AR content on more high-performance devices, while carriers would get new reasons to persuade users to upgrade.

SPONSORED BY MISO

The OGs of Burgers and Robots Unite

This might sound like something from our dream journal, but it’s not.

White Castle (aka the makers of some of America’s cutest burgers) just inked a deal with Flippy (the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant) to pilot and undertake a beta for their North American restaurants. 

And if that hasn’t gotten your appetite going, consider this: You can invest in Flippy and all its game-changing potential right now.

Here’s why you should get involved with this robotic sous chef: 

• Flippy is projected to help businesses increase profit margins by roughly 300%
• Flippy’s had over 10 Billion impressions in the news and online with $0 marketing spend

Learn more about this juicy investment opportunity today.

SPORTS

U.S. Open and IBM Play Doubles

When it comes to tech + sports, the U.S. Open has already won a few majors. Since 2017, each match’s highlight reel has been determined by IBM-created ML algorithms that analyze crowd reactions. 

Enter COVID-19: The virtual U.S. Open has no crowd reactions to analyze. What it does have: high expectations for at-home viewership. 

Taking a swing on NLP 

How do you keep the attention of homebound viewers used to sipping Honey Deuces in stadium seats? The USTA partnered with IBM Research to develop two new natural language processing tools, launched last week: 

• Match Insights: When a player appears on screen, viewers see algorithmically selected facts, which highlight the “largest percentile differences” between two players. That data is then translated into ~human words~. 
• Open Questions: This feature analyzes millions of online sources to gather pros and cons—and rate argument quality—for tennis’ longstanding debates. Viewers can weigh in, and their opinions will become data points that are algorithmically summarized on the site at 5 p.m. 

Big picture: Watson isn’t the only IBM headliner at play—there’s also the evidence-based reasoning involved in Project Debater and DeepQA (Jeopardy!). By pouring money into this tech, IBM’s betting on the future of a still-emerging industry: machine writing.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Nvidia unveiled a monster new graphics card yesterday. The $699 RTX 3080 is up to two times faster and 1.9x more power efficient than its predecessors, according to the company. Also, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a lot of spatulas. 

Quote: “Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack...Off the left side, maybe 300 yards or so, about our altitude.”—Pilot to LA International Airport Air Traffic Control on Sunday night. The FBI is investigating the guy-in-a-jetpack incident.

Read: Variety breaks down how Roku has positioned itself as a gatekeeper in the streaming wars.

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold 2. 
• India banned another 118 Chinese apps, including PUBG, Baidu, and Alipay. 
• TikTalks have stalled due to China’s new AI export rules, the WSJ reports. 
• Apple has asked suppliers to build 75-80 million 5G iPhones this fall, Bloomberg reports. Gearing up for a huge 5G sales haul?
• Microsoft announced new counter-deepfake tools.
• Cartel sicarios appear to have fitted explosives to off-the-shelf drones, which were found (undetonated) and recovered, The Drive reports.

TRIVIA

Last week we dropped the AI guide. Even though you’re supposed to let something go if you love it, we’re not quite ready to let the AI guide go. Today’s trivia touches on the history of AI as we know it. 

Take the quiz here.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For Kitty Hawk Pt. 2: Japanese company SkyDrive has tested its flying car prototype with a human onboard. Watch the demo, which has an overload of inspirational music. 

For glitches in the simulation: Microsoft Flight Simulator is being hailed as a remarkable way to see the world while we’re all grounded, but the game is missing some famous landmarks—and, using Google Maps, Reddit users have taken it upon themselves to fill in the gaps.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Neuralink shares second research update
• LinkedIn open sources algorithmic auditing toolkit
• Amazon announces the Halo wearable band