Taxi

More than a year ago, Pham Duy Dung, 31, decided to move from his native province of Ninh Binh in the north to warmer climes in the south for the sake of his mother. "My mother is already old and becomes very weak whenever the weather turns cold in the north. It's warmer here, I decided to move. During the day, I work as a security guard for VND4 million ($172.4) a month. At night I collect empty bottles to try and earn some more money."  Dung lives in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Thanh District along with his mother, Tran Thi Diem. Her legs tremble and she has weak eyesight. One day, she got lost when she was at home alone.  "Luckily, some motorbike taxi driver found her and was kind enough to bring her home. Since I cannot leave her on her own at night, I decided to bring her along at work," Hung said.   Hung spreads out a collection of toys he has picked up from the streets to entertain his mother. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran. When she’s feeling well, … [Read more...] about Nocturnal ragpicker carts old mother along for the ride

Laser scanning technology, Lidar, is getting cheaper and could be how machines see in the future. It's never good when a giant of the technology business describes your product as "a fool's errand". But that's how Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk branded the laser scanning system Lidar, which is being touted as the best way for autonomous cars to sense their environment. In April he said Lidar was "expensive" and "unnecessary". He believes that cameras combined with artificial intelligence will be enough to allow cars to roam the streets without a human driver. Lidar emits laser beams and measures how long they take to bounce back from objects, and this provides so-called point-clouds to draw 3D maps of the surroundings. These can be analysed by computers to recognise objects as small as a football or as big as a football field and can measure distances very accurately.  Despite Mr Musk, some argue these $10,000 (£7,750) pieces of kit are going to be essential. "For a car … [Read more...] about Artificial eyes: How robots will see in the future