by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, SMEs, Social Media, Technology
The high-precision HD map created by Genesys.
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : Although self-driving cars remain a distant reality for the Indian roads, a Mumbai-headquartered firm has become the first desi company to develop high-precision HD maps for a customer in the United States which is at the forefront of autonomous vehicle technology.
Established in 1995, Genesys International Corporation Ltd has completed an extensive HD mapping of road and street network for an autonomous driving project in North America that will enable residents to access self-driving taxis at their doorstep.
Core to the autonomous vehicle technology, HD self-navigation maps enable, aid and guide autonomous cars to self-drive and navigate.
The HD map has high-precision navigational geometry and 360 degree panoramic imagery leading to a unique “fingerprint” of every stretch of the road.
“We cannot disclose the customer name as we are bound by non-disclosure. Through our technical expertise, we were able to support our customer to quickly verify the assumptions on large-scale areas,” Kuldeep Moholkar, CEO-Designate, Genesys International Corporation Ltd, told IANS.
“Once we completed initial data deliveries, we were able to scale up to the customer’s requirements. This has now given us the confidence to undertake HD map creation for large volume of work involving counties, states and even entire countries,” Moholkar emphasised.
The HD maps are created from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) source data which consists of billions of pixels — commonly referred to as a point Cloud.
These billions of data points are curated to extract the features to create a machine-readable image of the road as well as the entire surrounding environment.
LiDAR sensors calculate how far a given object is, by measuring how long it takes for a pulse of infrared laser light to reach a car and bounce back.
Currently, Google’ Waymo and global cab-hailing service Uber rely on the LiDAR technology but not Elon Musk’s Tesla that uses high-end computer vision technology via cameras.
HD maps aid the autonomous vehicle in real time decision-making capability, by localising the earth spatially and letting the vehicle know the position of its exact location, thus guiding the vehicle to align to the road, when to drive, where to head and when to stop.
The HD map content is currently being rigorously tested on autonomous cars for real world readiness and large scale deployment. Once successfully passed, the autonomous car fleet will start using the HD maps data for self-navigation within the community in the US,” Moholkar explained.
Genesys has nearly 2,000 professionals with expertise in Geographical Information System (GIS) and Geospatial Engineering domain.
The company is working in the fields of remote sensing, LiDAR, aerial survey, photogrammetry and GIS-based e-governance solutions.
Based in the financial capital, Genesys also operates production and software development centres in Dehradun and Jaipur.
“We are in discussions with auto-makers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and various product/services companies in the autonomous vehicle eco-system to partner and provide value-based services.
“We are also close to signing a formal MoU with another technology company for supporting their autonomous vehicle initiative. We will talk about that subsequently,” Moholkar told IANS.
Considering the existing infrastructure, driving culture and the breadth of our geography, lamented Moholkar, the idea of an autonomous vehicle being fully functional on the Indian roads looks a little distance away at the moment.
“Having said so, Genesys and many Indian technology companies are investing heavily to build competence in this space via LiDAR technology, deep learning and Machine Learning (ML),” the Genesys executive said.
Hundreds of technology startups are currently engaged in creating products and services related to autonomous vehicles in the country.
“The resultant technology stack can be potentially used to build and implement our very own indigenous autonomous cars which will operate within a small geographical area such as corporate campuses, universities, airport lounges and large industrial premises, etc,” Moholkar noted.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Mike Pompeo
Washington : The US Department of State has said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to discuss Helsinki meeting fruits and issues over bilateral and regional concerns.
According to a statement issued by State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert on Sunday, the phone conversation took place on Saturday when the two foreign ministers discussed a broad range of issues, “some of which were following up from the meeting between President Trump and President Putin” in Finland on July 16, Xinhua reported.
Among the topics discussed was the situation in Syria.
The two also discussed how to implement ideas on counterterrorism process coordination and the mutual goal of establishing business-to-business dialogue between private, non-governmentally controlled entities in the two countries, another deliverable of the Trump-Putin meeting.
Pompeo and Lavrov also discussed “the need for Russia to provide equal diplomatic access to the US, at a level that is fair and reciprocal”.
US White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said Thursday that Putin will be invited to Washington in the autumn, and “those discussions are already underway”.
Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said on Friday in response that that his country is open to a new meeting between the two presidents.
Trump has been widely attacked after his meeting with Putin on July 16, due to his reconciliatory remarks that many saw as a sign to side with Moscow against US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 US elections.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Safvan Allahverdi,
Washington: Citing comments by members of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), a major U.S. news channel has attempted to defame the Maryland-based Diyanet Center of America (DCA) and Turkish mosques across the country.
An article titled “Critics say Turkish government using US mosques to play politics, spy on foes” published Tuesday by Hollie McKay, a reporter for the U.S.-based Fox News Channel, claimed that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promotes “Islamist-nationalistic” fervor through a network of mosques and religious centers.
Targeting the DCA — the largest mosque in the U.S., which was inaugurated by Erdogan in 2016 — the article also accused the center of “collecting data illegally” on behalf of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT).
“The allegations were absolutely provocative, biased and manipulative,” the president of the DCA, Fatih Kanca, told Anadolu Agency Wednesday, adding that the aim of the allegations is to undermine the unity and solidarity of the Turkish Muslim community by weakening religious and nationalist sentiment.
Kanca said he regretted that the Islamophobia in European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria had begun to impact American society.
“This is saddening. Under no circumstances has any imam or employee of our mosques acted contrary to the Constitution and laws of this country. Nor will they,” he noted, adding they were only making efforts to enhance socio-cultural values of American society, not to manipulate them.
Kanca emphasized that the center has been transparently engaging with the authorities of the state of Maryland and does not do anything against U.S. law.
In the report, Fox News also accused employees of the DCA and other Turkish mosques in the country of not accepting FETO members on their premises by hanging banners that read “FETO is not welcome here” as well as intimidating and targeting them in the U.S.
The report cited the former deputy of Turkish main opposition party CHP Aykan Erdemir, FETO fugitive and former Chief of the Counter-Terrorism and Operations Division of the Turkish National Police Ahmet Sait Yayla, former Ankara representative of the defunct FETO publication Today’s Zaman Abdullah Bozkurt and an anonymous journalist over the allegations.
FETO and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated a defeated coup in Turkey in July 2016 which left 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.
Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary.
FETO also has a considerable presence outside Turkey, including private educational institutions that serve as a revenue stream for the terrorist group, including in the U.S.
Rejecting the claim that FETO members are not being allowed to enter the DCA and Turkish mosques across the country, Kanca underlined that they have never experienced any incident of showing the door to anyone, even a pro-FETO person.
“We will never and will not in any way single out someone and never has a banner saying ‘pro-FETO people cannot enter’ been written,” he said. “Those who are traitors and terrorists that attack our country [Turkey] and its citizens with warplanes do not come to our mosque anyway. And they never have.”
Describing FETO as “one of the most dangerous terrorist groups along with the PKK and Daesh” [ISIS], Kanca added that it was designated as a terrorist organization for what they did in Turkey during the coup attempt and the DCA had nothing to do with any terrorist organization.
Touching on another claim by Fox News that the center has been funded by the Turkish government to promote its “Islamist-nationalistic” fervor, Kanca rejected the claim, saying the center and its likes are non-profit organizations, maintaining themselves through aid from businesspeople and citizens.
“We have no income that can be evaluated as illegal. We do not have any document that we cannot submit to pertinent officials,” he added.
The Secretary General of the DCA, Ahmet Aydilek, also told Anadolu Agency that the center has taken the necessary steps and safety precautions against the allegations.
“We have talked with Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, Maryland Representative Anthony Brown as well as local government and security units,” Aydilek noted. “They all told us that they would visit us at the earliest to show their support.”
Citing the Muslims who visit the DCA on a regular basis, he also said the center “is one of the most beautiful structures with its artistic design and representation of Islamic culture that can be handed down to the next generations”.
Aydilek also emphasized that “many churches which were inherited from the Byzantine and the Roman empires still remain functional in Turkey and Turkish people have always respected and embraced these structures”.
“Our Christian citizens can freely go and fulfill their religious obligations there. However, it is extremely saddening to be tarnished by these baseless allegations while the DCA is the only major mosque we have,” he added.
“The DCA is the center of a Muslim community in the U.S. that represents the most beautiful, most peaceful and the purest side of Islam. We strongly reject these baseless claims”.
*Servet Gunerigok contributed to this report
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Markets, Technology
San Francisco : Gaining ground, Apple improved its position in the US smartphone market during the second quarter of 2018, eating into Android’s share and equalising its standing with rival Samsung, a report said on Wednesday.
The iPhone-maker’s iOS platform accounted for 36 per cent of US activations as compared to 63 per cent for Android, said Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).
When it comes to brand loyalty, Apple ended the quarter with a 36 per cent share of activations. Samsung too had 36 per cent of the market.
The US smartphone market further consolidated in the quarter ending June, with iOS improving its take from the previous year.
“Apple iOS improved its share of activations relative to last quarter and to one year ago,” Apple Insider reported, quoting Josh Lowitz, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP.
“This reverses the trend from a year ago, when Apple’s share fell relative to the March 2017 quarter. As we’ve seen before, consumers have become increasingly loyal to an operating system,” Lowitz added.
CIRP expects things to even out with the Cupertino-headquartered giant taking one-third of the market and tech titan Google taking two-thirds.
According to Lowitz, a further consolidation of smartphone sales is in the offing with Apple and Samsung leading the way.
According to the report, Apple had its best holiday quarter ever in February though iPhone sales were down 1.2 per cent (year over year) with 77.3 million units.
Smaller smartphone players such as LG and Motorola have lost ground over the past year, a trend which is expected to continue in the months ahead.
The findings were based on a survey of 500 people who activated new or used phones during April to June 2018, according to MacRumors.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Johannesburg (South Africa) : Barack Obama has used his first high-profile speech since stepping down as US president to take swipes at “strongman politics” and politicians’ disregard for facts.
Obama on Tuesday here mounted a passionate defence of democracy and warned against the politics of the day as his successor, Donald Trump, was heavily criticised for a humiliating news conference on Monday with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the BBC reported.
In his address in honour of the late Nelson Mandela ahead of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Obama slammed populist movements toward authoritarianism around the world and ridiculed the “utter loss of shame among political leaders” who lie.
Obama, who has made an art of criticising Trump’s values without explicitly naming him, peppered his speech on Tuesday with warnings against some of his successor’s key policies, including protectionism, climate change denial and closed borders.
“The politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment is on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago,” he told the crowd of around 15,000 people in Johannesburg.
“I am not being alarmist, I’m simply stating the facts. Strongman politics are ascendant, suddenly, whereby elections and some pretence of democracy are maintained,… those in powers seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.”
His remarks followed Trump’s news conference in Helsinki, Finland, in which the US leader sided with Putin over his own country’s intelligence agencies on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US election, the CNN reported.
Dashing expectations of him confronting Putin over the issue after the US indicted 12 Russians, accused of hacking the Democrat’s emails and computer networks to target Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Trump sort of toed the Russian line.
“You have to believe in facts. Without facts there’s no basis for cooperation. If I say this is a podium and you say this is an elephant, it’s going to be hard for us to cooperate,” he said.
“I can’t find common ground if somebody says that climate change just isn’t happening, when almost all the world’s scientists tell us it is. I don’t know where to start talking to you about this. If you say it’s an elaborate hoax, where do we start?”
He said politics today often reject the concept of objective truth. “People just make stuff up. We see it in the growth of state sponsored propaganda, internet fabrications, the blurring of lines between news and entertainment, the utter loss of shame among political leaders…,” he said, to laughter in the crowd.
Obama had opened his speech reflecting on the recent chaos of the world that gave him the opportunity to seek perspective.
“But in the strange and uncertain times that we are in — with each day’s news cycles bringing more head-spinning and disturbing headlines — I thought maybe it would be useful to step back for a moment and try to get some perspective,” Obama added.
He warned that the press was under attack, that censorship and state control of media is on the rise and that social media was being used to promote hate, propaganda and conspiracy theories.
“So, on Madiba’s 100 birthday, we now stand at a crossroads,” he said, using a clan name of affection for Mandela.
He said that there was a choice between two visions of humanity’s future that the world must choose between.
“Let me tell you what I believe. I believe in Nelson Mandela’s vision, I believe in a vision shared by (Mahatma) Gandhi and (Martin Luther) King (Jr), and Abraham Lincoln,” he said.
He talked about equality and justice and freedom and multi-racial democracy built on the premise that all people were created equal and were endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Obama’s speech at the 16th annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, is one of his highest-profile appearances and his first return to Africa since he left office in 2017.
—IANS
