this-week

Two million stars on the move

The changing face of our Galaxy is revealed in a new video from ESA’s Gaia mission. The motion of two million stars is traced 5 million years into the future using data from the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution, one of the products of the first Gaia data release. This provides a preview of the stellar motions that will be revealed in Gaia’s future data releases, which will enable scientists to investigate the formation history of our Galaxy.

http://sci.esa.int/gaia/59004-two-million-stars-on-the-move/

Baidu announces new open platform to help speed up the development of self-driving cars

Chinese tech giant Baidu has announced a new autonomous vehicle platform that could help car manufacturers produce self-driving vehicles faster. Called Project Apollo, Baidu says the platform encompasses both hardware and software, providing partners with the tech and open-source code needed to help their own vehicles perceive obstacles, plan their routes, and otherwise move around our world.
Baidu says it will first open up Project Apollo for cars operating in restricted environments in July, before offering it to vehicles driving in simple urban road conditions later this year. That’s ahead of a gradual rollout of self-driving features that should see cars operating fully autonomously on highways and regular roads by 2020.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/18/15352462/baidu-project-apollo-self-driving-cars-autonomous