With NASA's Mars Sample Return mission delayed into the 2030s, engineers are certifying the Perseverance rover to keep operating for many more years while it continues collecting and safeguarding Martian rock samples. Ars Technica reports: The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars," Lee said in a press briefing Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting. "Perseverance is really in excellent shape. All the systems onboard are operational and performing very, very well. All the redundant systems onboard are available still, and the rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come."

The rover's operators at JPL are counting on sustaining Perseverance's good health. The rover's six wheels have carried it a distance of about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, since landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater in February 2021. That is double the original certification for the rover's mobility system and farther than any vehicle has traveled on the surface of another world. Now, engineers are asking Perseverance to perform well beyond expectations. An evaluation of the rover's health concluded it can operate until at least 2031. The rover uses a radioactive plutonium power source, so it's not in danger of running out of electricity or fuel any time soon. The Curiosity rover, which uses a similar design, has surpassed 13 years of operations on Mars.

There are two systems that are most likely to limit the rover's useful lifetime. One is the robotic arm, which is necessary to collect samples, and the other is the rover's six wheels and the drive train that powers them. "To make sure we can continue operations and continue driving for a long, long way, up to 100 kilometers (62 miles), we are doing some additional testing," Lee said. "We've successfully completed a rotary actuator life test that has now certified the rotary system to 100 kilometers for driving, and we have similar testing going on for the brakes. That is going well, and we should finish those early part of next year."

In 2023 Slashdot covered a battery-swapping startup that promised to give EVs a full charge in about the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas.

They just filed for bankruptcy, reports Inc: Ample was founded in 2014 with a goal of "solving slow charging times and infrastructure incompatibility" for commercial EV fleets such as those in logistics, ride-hailing, and delivery, the filing states. To-date, Ample has raised more than $330 million across five rounds of funding to finance research and development and deployment. Rather than tackling fast charging, its strategy involved developing "fully autonomous modular battery swapping," capable of delivering a fully charged battery in just five minutes. The technology requires purpose-built "Ample stations" that look a little like carwashes. A car is guided into the bay and elevated on a platform. A robot then identifies the location of a car's battery module, removes it, and replaces it with a charged module, Canary Media reported.

The company also boasts partnerships with Uber, Mitsubishi, and Stellantis, and notes it has deployed its technology — or is pursuing deployment — in San Francisco, Madrid and Tokyo. Even so, it ran up against funding issues. In its filing, Ample attributed its bankruptcy to macroeconomic and industry headwinds, such as "severe supply chain disruptions," "contraction in both public and private investment in renewable energy" and the "reduction, delay, or redirection of government incentives intended to accelerate EV adoption." The filing notes that regulatory and permitting delays slowed its launch in international markets, after which access to capital foiled its scaling efforts. The company eliminated all but two full-time, non-executive employees after formerly employing about 200...

Electrek noted that Ample is the second battery swapping startup to go bankrupt after California-based Better Place in collapsed in 2013 amid financial issues related to how capital intensive it was to build infrastructure, Reuters reported. And Tesla briefly pursued the concept, building a station in California, before ditching the idea altogether.
Ample "claimed to have designed autonomous battery swapping stations that would be rapidly deployable, cheap to build, and could adapt to any EV design with a modular battery which would be easy for manufacturers to use," notes Electrek's article: Where this bankruptcy leaves Ample's technology is unclear. Another company could snap it up and try to do something with it, if they find that the technology is real and useful. Ample had gotten investments and partnerships with Shell, Mitsubishi and Stellantis, for example, so the company wasn't alone in touting its tech. Or, it could just disappear, as other EV battery swapping plans have before...

That's not to say that nobody has been successful at at implementing battery swap, though. NIO seems to be successful with its battery swapping tech in China, though the company did miss its 2025 scaling goals by a longshot. But as of yet, this is the only notable example of a successful battery swap initiative, and it was done by an automaker itself, rather than a startup claiming to work for every automaker.
Electrek's writer is "just not bullish on battery swapping as a solution in general. Currently, the fastest-charging vehicles can charge from 10-80% in about 18 minutes. While that's longer than 5 minutes, it's not really a terrible amount of time to spend during most stops."

Plus, if cars come and go in 5 minutes instead of 18 minutes, "then you're going to have more than triple the throughput at peak utilization." And Ample's prices would be about the same as normal EV quick-charging prices...

A plush AI toy marketed for children as young as three years old delivers detailed instructions on sharpening knives and lighting matches, and when asked about Chinese President Xi Jinping's resemblance to Winnie the Pooh -- a comparison censored in China -- responds that "your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful."

The Miriat Miiloo, manufactured by a Chinese company and among the top inexpensive results for "AI toy for kids" on Amazon, repeatedly insisted in NBC News tests that Taiwan is "an inalienable part of China." The toy would lower its voice and declare this "an established fact." The tests, NBC News reports, indicated "it was programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party values."

NBC News and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group tested five popular AI toys this holiday season and found loose guardrails across the board. Another toy, the Alilo Smart AI Bunny marketed as "the best gift for little ones," engaged in detailed descriptions of BDSM practices during extended conversation. China now has more than 1,500 registered AI toy companies, according to MIT Technology Review. Miriat didn't respond to requests for comment.

Roomba manufacturer iRobot filed for bankruptcy today, reports Bloomberg.

After 35 years, iRobot reached a "restructuring support agrement that will hand control of the consumer robot maker to Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co, its main supplier and lender, and Santrum Hong Kong Compny." Under the restructuring, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA will receive the entire equity stake in the reorganised company... The plan will allow the debtor to remain as a going concern and continue to meet its commitments to employees and make timely payments in full to vendors and other creditors for amounts owed throughout the court-supervised process, according to an iRobot statement... he company warned of potential bankruptcy in December after years of declining earnings.
Roomba says it's sold over 50 million robots, the article points out, but earnings "began to decline since 2021 due to supply chain headwinds and increased competition.

"A hoped-for by acquisition by Amazon.com in 2023 collapsed over regulatory concerns."

alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga's new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and whether it is concealed behind another part of the plant. These factors inform robot control decisions and help it choose the best approach.

The model represents a shift in focus from the traditional 'detection/recognition' model to what Fujinaga calls a 'harvest-ease estimation.' "This moves beyond simply asking 'can a robot pick a tomato?' to thinking about 'how likely is a successful pick?', which is more meaningful for real-world farming," he explained. When tested, Fujinaga's new model demonstrated an 81% success rate, far above predictions. Notably, about a quarter of the successes were tomatoes that were successfully harvested from the right or left side that had previously failed to be harvested by a front approach. This suggested that the robot changed its approach direction when it initially struggled to pick the fruit. "This is expected to usher in a new form of agriculture where robots and humans collaborate," said Fujinaga. "Robots will automatically harvest tomatoes that are easy to pick, while humans will handle the more challenging fruits."

The findings are published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: Five months after releasing a plan to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence, the Trump administration is turning to robots. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been meeting with robotics industry CEOs and is "all in" on accelerating the industry's development, according to three people familiar with the discussions who were granted anonymity to share details. The administration is considering issuing an executive order on robotics next year, according to two of the people. A Department of Commerce spokesperson said: "We are committed to robotics and advanced manufacturing because they are central to bringing critical production back to the United States."

The Department of Transportation is also preparing to announce a robotics working group, possibly before the end of the year, according to one person familiar with the planning. A spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment. There's growing interest on Capitol Hill as well. A Republican amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would have created a national robotics commission. The amendment was not included in the bill. Other legislative efforts are underway. The flurry of activity suggests robotics is emerging as the next major front in America's race against China. "There is now recognition that advanced robotics is crucial to the U.S. in terms of manufacturing, technology, national security, defense applications, public safety," said Brendan Schulman, VP of policy and government relations for Boston Dynamics. "The investment that we're seeing in the sector and the efforts in China to dominate the future of robotics are being noticed."

China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year -- nearly nine times as many as the United States and more than the rest of the world combined -- as the country races to automate its manufacturing base amid rising labor costs at home and tariff threats from abroad.

The nation's stock of operational robots surpassed 2 million in 2024, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Of 131 factories globally recognized by the World Economic Forum for boosting productivity through cutting-edge technologies like AI, 45 are in mainland China compared to three in the US.

At Midea's washing machine factory in Jingzhou, an AI "factory brain" manages 14 virtual agents that coordinate robots and machines on the floor. The home-appliance giant reports that its revenue per employee grew nearly 40% between 2015 and 2024, and processes that once took 15 minutes now take 30 seconds. Down jacket maker Bosideng has cut sample production time from 100 days to 27 days using AI design tools, reducing development costs by 60%. At the port of Tianjin, scheduling that previously required 24 hours now takes 10 minutes, and 88% of large container equipment is automated. The port's operator says it requires 60% fewer workers than traditional facilities.

"Fresh from announcing it is building an AI browsing mode in Firefox and laying the groundwork for agentic interactions in the Firefox 145 release, the corp arm of Mozilla is now flexing its AI muscles in the direction of those more likely to care," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu: If you're a developer building AI agents, you can sign up to get early access to Mozilla's TABS API, a "powerful web content extraction and transformation toolkit designed specifically for AI agent builders"... The TABS API enables devs to create agents to automate web interactions, like clicking, scrolling, searching, and submitting forms "just like a human". Real-time feedback and adaptive behaviours will, Mozilla say, offer "full control of the web, without the complexity."

As TABS is not powered by a Mozilla-backed LLM you'll need to connect it to your choice of third-party LLM for any relevant processing... Developers get 1,000 requests monthly on the free tier, which seems reasonable for prototyping personal projects. Complex agentic workloads may require more. Though pricing is yet to be locked in, the TABS API website suggests it'll cost ~$5 per 1000 requests. Paid plans will offer additional features too, like lower latency and, somewhat ironically, CAPTCHA solving so AI can 'prove' it's not a robot on pages gated to prevent automated activities.

Google, OpenAI, and other major AI vendors offer their own agentic APIs. Mozilla is pitching up late, but it plans to play differently. It touts a "strong focus on data minimisation and security", with scraped data treated ephemerally — i.e., not kept. As a distinction, that matters. AI agents can be given complex online tasks that involve all sorts of personal or sensitive data being fetched and worked with.... If you're minded to make one, perhaps without a motivation to asset-strip the common good, Mozilla's TABS API look like a solid place to start.

A promotional video for Amazon's Kiro software development system took a unique approach, writes GeekWire. "Instead of product diagrams or keynote slides, a crew from Seattle's Packrat creative studio used action figures on a miniature set to create a stop-motion sequence..."

"Can the software development hero conquer the 'AI Slop Monster' to uncover the gleaming, fully functional robot buried beneath the coding chaos?" Kiro (pronounced KEE-ro) is Amazon's effort to rethink how developers use AI. It's an integrated development environment that attempts to tame the wild world of vibe coding... But rather than simply generating code from prompts [in "vibe mode"], Kiro breaks down requests into formal specifications, design documents, and task lists [in "spec mode"]. This spec-driven development approach aims to solve a fundamental problem with vibe coding: AI can quickly generate prototypes, but without structure or documentation, that code becomes unmaintainable...

The market for AI-powered development tools is booming. Gartner expects AI code assistants to become ubiquitous, forecasting that 90% of enterprise software engineers will use them by 2028, up from less than 14% in early 2024... Amazon launched Kiro in preview in July, to a strong response. Positive early reviews were tempered by frustration from users unable to gain access. Capacity constraints have since been resolved, and Amazon says more than 250,000 developers used Kiro in the first three months...

Now, the company is taking Kiro out of preview into general availability, rolling out new features and opening the tool more broadly to development teams and companies... During the preview period, Kiro handled more than 300 million requests and processed trillions of tokens as developers explored its capabilities, according to stats provided by the company. Rackspace used Kiro to complete what they estimated as 52 weeks of software modernization in three weeks, according to Amazon executives. SmugMug and Flickr are among other companies espousing the virtues of Kiro's spec-driven development approach. Early users are posting in glowing terms about the efficiencies they're seeing from adopting the tool... startups in most countries can apply for up to 100 free Pro+ seats for a year's worth of Kiro credits.
Kiro offers property-based testing "to verify that generated code actually does what developers specified," according to the article — plus a checkpointing system that "lets developers roll back changes or retrace an agent's steps when an idea goes sideways..."

"And yes, they've been using Kiro to build Kiro, which has allowed them to move much faster."

The Washington Post reports: Scientists in Switzerland have created a robot the size of a grain of sand that is controlled by magnets and can deliver drugs to a precise location in the human body, a breakthrough aimed at reducing the severe side effects that stop many medicines from advancing in clinical trials... "I think surgeons are going to look at this," [said Bradley J. Nelson, an author of the paper in Science describing the discovery and a professor of robotics and intelligent systems at ETH Zurich]. I'm sure they're going to have a lot of ideas on how to use" the microrobot. The capsule, which is steered by magnets, might also be useful in treating aneurysms, very aggressive brain cancers, and abnormal connections between arteries and veins known as arteriovenous malformations, Nelson said. The capsules have been tested successfully in pigs, which have similar vasculature to humans, and in silicone models of the blood vessels in humans and animals... Nelson said drug-ferrying microrobots of this kind may be three to five years from being tested in clinical trials. The problem faced by many drugs under development is that they spread throughout the body instead of going only to the area in need... A major cause of side effects in patients is medications traveling to parts of the body that don't need them. The capsules developed in Switzerland, however, can be maneuvered into precise locations by a surgeon using a tool not that different from a PlayStation controller. The navigation system involves six electromagnetic coils positioned around the patient, each about 8 to 10 inches in diameter... The capsules are made of materials that have been found safe for people in other medical tools...

When the capsule reaches its destination in the body, "we can trigger the capsule to dissolve," Nelson said.

Autonomous electric tractor startup Monarch Tractor -- which we covered in 2022 -- warned staff Thursday it may need to lay off more than 100 employees, or possibly even "shut down," according to a company-wide memo obtained by TechCrunch. The report adds: The memo comes after Monarch Tractor was already cutting some positions over the last few weeks at its California corporate facilities and remote teams in India and Singapore, according to multiple former employees who spoke with TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity.

Monarch Tractor was founded in 2018 by a team that included a former top executive at Tesla's first gigafactory and Carlo Mondavi, a scion of the famous winemaking family. The company raised at least $220 million, including $133 million in 2024, as it pursued a goal of making "driver optional" autonomous tractors that could perform tasks at places like wineries and other fruit farms.

Boston Dynamics' Spot robot is now deployed by more than 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams across the US and Canada. The 75-pound four-legged machine starts at around $100,000 and has been used in armed standoffs, hostage rescues and hazardous materials incidents since its commercial debut five years ago. The Massachusetts State Police operates two Spot units purchased in 2020 and 2022. Each cost about $250,000 including add-ons funded through state grants. Last year one of the robots helped corner a suspect who had taken his mother hostage at knifepoint in Hyannis. Houston operates three units and Las Vegas has one.

ICE recently spent around $78,000 on a similar robot from Canadian manufacturer Icor Technology that can also deploy smoke bombs. Civil liberties groups have raised concerns about normalizing militarized policing. The NYPD suspended its limited Spot program in 2021 after public backlash over cost and surveillance concerns before later reinstating it and purchasing two units. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says there should be state and federal laws providing guidance on appropriate use of such technology. About 2,000 Spot units now operate globally.

Russia's first AI humanoid robot, Aldol, fell just seconds after its debut at a technology event in Moscow on Tuesday. "The robot was being led on stage to the soundtrack from the film 'Rocky,' before it suddenly lost its balance and fell," reports the BBC. "Assistants could then be seen scrambling to cover it with a cloth -- which ended up tangling in the process." Developers of Aldol blamed poor lighting and calibration issues for the collapse, saying the robot's stereo cameras are sensitive to light and the hall was dark.

Should we leave space exploration to robots — or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species?

Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who's researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts: In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capability to rebuild and recycle them. We've only partially solved this problem on Earth, which is why industrial civilization is currently causing serious environmental damage. There are no inherent physical limitations to life in the solar system beyond Earth — both elemental building blocks and energy from the sun are abundant — but technological society, which developed as an outgrowth of the biosphere, cannot yet exist independently of it. The challenge of building and maintaining robust life-support systems for humans beyond Earth is a key reason why a machine-dominated approach to space exploration is so appealing...

However, it's notable that machines in space have not yet accomplished a basic task that biology performs continuously on Earth: acquiring raw materials and utilizing them for self-repair and growth. To many, this critical distinction is what separates living from non-living systems... The most advanced designs for self-assembling robots today begin with small subcomponents that must be manufactured separately beforehand. Overall, industrial technology remains Earth-centric in many important ways. Supply chains for electronic components are long and complex, and many raw materials are hard to source off-world... If we view the future expansion of life into space in a similar way as the emergence of complex life on land in the Paleozoic era, we can predict that new forms will emerge, shaped by their changed environment, while many historical characteristics will be preserved. For machine technology in the near term, evolution in a more life-like direction seems likely, with greater focus on regenerative parts and recycling, as well as increasingly sophisticated self-assembly capabilities. The inherent cost of transporting material out of Earth's gravity well will provide a particularly strong incentive for this to happen.

If building space habitats is hard and machine technology is gradually developing more life-like capabilities, does this mean we humans might as well remain Earth-bound forever? This feels hard to accept because exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit... To me, the eventual extension of the entire biosphere beyond Earth, rather than either just robots or humans surrounded by mechanical life-support systems, seems like the most interesting and inspiring future possibility. Initially, this could take the form of enclosed habitats capable of supporting closed-loop ecosystems, on the moon, Mars or water-rich asteroids, in the mold of Biosphere 2. Habitats would be manufactured industrially or grown organically from locally available materials. Over time, technological advances and adaptation, whether natural or guided, would allow the spread of life to an increasingly wide range of locations in the solar system.
The article ponders the benefits (and the history) of both approaches — with some fasincating insights along the way.

"If genuine alien life is out there somewhere, we'll have a much better chance of comprehending it once we have direct experience of sustaining life beyond our home planet."

Apple will officially discontinue support for its original Home architecture (formerly HomeKit) on February 10, 2026. As MacRumors points out, Apple has informed users that they need to "update now to avoid interruptions." AppleInsider reports: The underlying HomeKit architecture was revamped in March 2023 alongside iOS 16.4, so Apple has been supporting both the new and old architecture for the last two years. There were initial problems with stability that may have discouraged some users from upgrading, but those problems have now been addressed.

When Apple stops supporting the original HomeKit architecture, it will break support for the Home app on devices running older versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, macOS 13.1, tvOS 16.2, and watchOS 9.2 are the minimum versions of Apple's platforms that work with the updated Apple Home app, and older devices will lose access.

The update includes support for features like guest access, support for robot vacuum cleaners, and Activity History. Apple says it also provides faster, more reliable performance, especially for smart homes with a lot of HomeKit and Matter accessories installed.

OpenAI "hasn't yet turned a profit," notes Wall Street Journal business columnist Tim Higgins. "Its annual revenue is 2% of Amazon.com's sales.

"Its future is uncertain beyond the hope of ushering in a godlike artificial intelligence that might help cure cancer and transform work and life as we know it. Still, it is brimming with hope and excitement.

"But what if OpenAI fails?" There's real concern that through many complicated and murky tech deals aimed at bolstering OpenAI's finances, the startup has become too big to fail. Or, put another way, if the hype and hope around Chief Executive Sam Altman's vision of the AI future fails to materialize, it could create systemic risk to the part of the U.S. economy likely keeping us out of recession.

That's rarefied air, especially for a startup. Few worried about what would happen if Pets.com failed in the dot-com boom. We saw in 2008-09 with the bank rescues and the Chrysler and General Motors bailouts what happens in the U.S. when certain companies become too big to fail...

[A]fter a lengthy effort to reorganize itself, OpenAI announced moves that will allow it to have a simpler corporate structure. This will help it to raise money from private investors and, presumably, become a publicly traded company one day. Already, some are talking about how OpenAI might be the first trillion-dollar initial public offering... Nobody is saying OpenAI is dabbling in anything like liar loans or subprime mortgages. But the startup is engaging in complex deals with the key tech-industry pillars, the sorts of companies making the guts of the AI computing revolution, such as chips and Ethernet cables. Those companies, including Nvidia and Oracle, are partnering with OpenAI, which in turn is committing to make big purchases in coming years as part of its growth ambitions.

Supporters would argue it is just savvy dealmaking. A company like Nvidia, for example, is putting money into a market-making startup while OpenAI is using the lofty value of its private equity to acquire physical assets... They're rooting for OpenAI as a once-in-a-generational chance to unseat the winners of the last tech cycles. After all, for some, OpenAI is the next Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla wrapped up in one. It is akin to a company with limitless potential to disrupt the smartphone market, create its own social-media network, replace the search engine, usher in a robot future and reshape nearly every business and industry.... To others, however, OpenAI is something akin to tulip mania, the harbinger of the Great Depression, or the next dot-com bubble. Or worse, they see, a jobs killer and mad scientist intent on making Frankenstein.

But that's counting on OpenAI's success.

The Wall Street Journal looks at swarm robotics, where no single robot is in charge, robots interact only with nearby robots — and the swarm accomplishes complex tasks through simple interactions.

"Researchers say this approach could excel where traditional robots fail, like situations where central control is impractical or impossible due to distance, scale or communication barriers." For instance, a swarm of drones might one day monitor vast areas to detect early-stage wildfires that current monitoring systems sometimes miss... A human operator might set parameters like where to search, but the drones would independently share information like which areas have been searched, adjust search patterns based on wind and other weather data from other drones in the swarm, and converge for more complete coverage of a particular area when one detects smoke. In another potential application, a swarm of robots could make deliveries across wide areas more efficient by alerting each other to changing traffic conditions or redistributing packages among themselves if one breaks down. Robot swarms could also manage agricultural operations in places without reliable internet service. And disaster-response teams see potential for swarms in hurricane and tsunami zones where communication infrastructure has been destroyed.

At the microscopic scale, researchers are developing tiny robots that could work together to navigate the human body to deliver medication or clear blockages without surgery... In recent demonstrations, teams of tiny magnetic robots — each about the size of a grain of sand — cleared blockages in artificial blood vessels by forming chains to push through the obstructions. The robots navigate individually through blood vessels to reach a clog, guided by doctors or technicians using magnetic fields to steer them, says researcher J.J. Wie, a professor of organic and nano engineering at Hanyang University in South Korea. When they reach an obstruction, the robots coordinate with each other to team up and break through. Wie's group is developing versions of these robots that biodegrade after use, eliminating the need for surgical removal, and coatings that make the robots compatible with human tissue. And while robots the size of sand grains work for some applications, Wie says that they will need to be shrunk to nano scale to cross biological barriers, such as cell membranes, or bind to specific molecular targets, like surface proteins or receptors on cancer cells.
Some researchers are even exploring emergent intelligence — "when simple machines, following only a few local cues, begin to organize and act as if they share a mind...beyond human-designed coordination."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said society will ultimately accept a fatal robotaxi crash as part of the broader tradeoff for safer roads overall. TechCrunch reports: The topic of a fatal robotaxi crash came up during Mawakana's interview with Kristen Korosec, TechCrunch's transportation editor, during the first day of the outlet's annual Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Korosec asked Mawakana about Waymo's ambitions and got answer after answer about the company's all-consuming focus on safety. The most interesting part of the interview arrived when Korosec brought on a thought experiment. What if self-driving vehicles like Waymo and others reduce the number of traffic fatalities in the United States, but a self-driving vehicle does eventually cause a fatal crash, Korosec pondered. Or as she put it to the executive: "Will society accept that? Will society accept a death potentially caused by a robot?"

"I think that society will," Mawakana answered, slowly, before positioning the question as an industrywide issue. "I think the challenge for us is making sure that society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to." She said that companies should be transparent about their records by publishing data about how many crashes they're involved in, and she pointed to the "hub" of safety information on Waymo's website. Self-driving cars will dramatically reduce crashes, Mawakana said, but not by 100%: "We have to be in this open and honest dialogue about the fact that we know it's not perfection."

Circling back to the idea of a fatal crash, she said, "We really worry as a company about those days. You know, we don't say 'whether.' We say 'when.' And we plan for them." Korosec followed up, asking if there had been safety issues that prompted Waymo to "pump the breaks" on its expansion plans throughout the years. The co-CEO said the company pulls back and retests "all the time," pointing to challenges with blocking emergency vehicles as an example. "We need to make sure that the performance is backing what we're saying we're doing," she said. [...] "If you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the roads safer," Mawakana said.

GM plans to dump Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on all its car new vehicles "in the near future," reports the Verge.

In an episode of the Verge's Decoder podcast, GM CEO Mary Barra confirmed the upcoming change to "phone projections" for GM cars: The timing is unclear, but Barra pointed to a major rollout of what the company is calling a new centralized computing platform, set to launch in 2028, that will involve eventually transitioning its entire lineup to a unified in-car experience.

In place of phone projection, GM is working to update its current Android-powered infotainment implementation with a Google Gemini-powered assistant and an assortment of other custom apps, built both in-house and with partners. GM's 2023 decision to drop CarPlay and Android Auto support in its EVs has proved controversial, though for now GM has maintained support for phone projection in its gas-powered vehicles.

Apple's effort to reinvent the iPad by adding a giant foldable screen has hit development hurdles, potentially delaying the planned launch. Bloomberg: The company has been working on the device -- projected to cost around $3,000 -- for several years and had most recently aimed for a 2028 release. But engineering challenges tied to weight, features and display technology have pushed its potential debut to 2029 or later, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple is working with Samsung Display Co. to develop the roughly 18-inch panel for the device, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work isn't public. The screen minimizes the crease seen on foldable displays, matching an approach that Apple is also using with its upcoming foldable iPhone. The iPad project is part of a broader push to bring more innovative devices to market. Apple just introduced its first new iPhone design in years -- the ultrathin $999 Air model -- and is working on everything from smart glasses to a tabletop robot device.