This car vending machine in Guangzhou, China, lets you test-drive Ford vehicles you?re looking to buy. You select the model you?re interested in, put down a deposit electronically, schedule a pickup time, and snap a selfie so the vending machine can recognize you when you pick up the car for a test drive. The test drives are up to 3 days and free, as long as you have a very respectable credit score of 700 or above. www.theverge.com/2018/3/26/17163478/ford-alibaba-cat-car-vending-machine-china

Concrete is a brittle material. Placed under stress, it cannot bend very far before it fractures. Some pavements and roads that are being poured now will crack within a few years and require expensive repairs. It is now possible to make concrete bendable without fracturing. Bendable concrete makes infrastructure safer, extends its life and reduces maintenance costs. It?s called engineered cementitious composite (ECC). http://www.inkl.com/newsletters/morning-edition/news/bendable-concrete-with-a-design-inspired-by-seashells-can-make-us-infrastructure-safer-and-more-durable?

Having a driver?s license on your phone is part of the digital transformation where everything is available electronically and on your phone. It?s a digital, secured rendering of your driver?s license that is dynamically connected back to the system of record. It will mean less tension in approaches to your vehicle because identities will be known. Iowa is the first U.S. state that will offer digital driver?s licenses following pilot testing. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/qa-digital-drivers-licenses-go-digital

Since the middle ages the fire assay has been the gold standard in gold analysis. However a new system has been developed by the CSIRO using powerful x-rays to bombard rock samples and activate atoms of gold ? and other metals ? giving off unique atomic signatures which are detected by a highly sensitive detector. It dramatically reduces the turnaround time on assays from days to minutes, providing critical data to miners on gold grades in near real-time to support operational decisions.. While this new system is currently calibrated to evaluate gold, it can also be applied to a range of other minerals, including silver and copper. https://blog.csiro.au/first-photon-assay-installation/

In the past, Boston Dynamics has released videos showing its robots climbing stairs, opening doors and back flipping. The company is now sharing a video of its latest invention - a humanoid robot, Atlas, jogging in a grassy residential area. Atlas even stops to hop over a log before casually going on his way. https://youtu.be/qpmOk2YkJ7A

Imagine a huge warehouse with groceries going in one end and shopping orders coming out the other. Humans do the unpacking and packing, while in the middle, robots sort and rearrange this vast inventory 24 hours a day. This is the latest highly automated warehouse of Ocado, a British online-only supermarket that also sells its technology to other global grocers. This algorithmically designed warehouse maximizes available space while digitizing some of the more arduous, complex and dull aspects of warehouse work. And by licensing and selling its automation technology to other companies, Ocado monetises the research and development needed to consistently disrupt itself. ?https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17331250/automated-warehouses-jobs-ocado-andover-amazon?