NASA’s new electric plane could be a significant step toward a cleaner era of aviation - The Washington Post

NASA is developing an electric plane to accelerate the introduction of zero-emission aircraft that use less energy and cruise at higher speeds than the aircraft of today. If successful, the plane could become a significant first step toward a new era of more efficient and environmentally friendly air travel.

The electric plane, which NASA is calling the X-57, will seat only a pilot. NASA is also planning five larger planes capable of carrying far more passengers and cargo.

The plane will include 14 motors that power propellers on an unusually thin wing. Typically such a narrow wing would be out of the question, because planes need the lift that a broad wing provides during takeoff and landing. But because NASA has a cluster of propellers lining the wing, more air will be blowing across the wing, providing extra lift.

While all 14 motors would operate during takeoff and landing, only two would be needed once the plane is cruising high in the sky.

The X-57 will have a limited range of about 100 miles and an hour or less of flight time. But the agency is thinking long-term and counting on advances in battery technology to dramatically augment the plane’s power in future years.

“If batteries continue to be on the same rapid increase in energy density that they have been on over the past 10 years or so, one can envision five to 10 years out in the future the battery technology would be such that this particular aircraft could be enabled for a commercial-type aspect,” said Matt Redifer, the chief engineer on the project.

NASA has a four-year timeline for developing the aircraft. Its first step will be to convert a Tecnam P2006T, an Italian twin-engine light aircraft, to a purely electric powered plane.

NASA hopes to show that switching to a distributed electric system relying on 14 motors will be five times as energy efficient as a typical plane.

The development of an electric plane could prove valuable amid concerns about climate change. Commercial aircraft contribute 11 percent of U.S. transportation emissions and 3 percent of all U.S. emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Another benefit of an electric airplane would be less noise pollution due to the quieter motors.

This is the first experimental plane NASA has designed itself in a decade. The organization’s history in experimental planes dates to 1947 with the first piloted airplane to break the sound barrier.

NASA is nicknaming the X-57 “Maxwell,” in honor of James Clerk Maxwell, the 19th-century Scottish physicist who is known for his work in electromagnetism.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden will be formally announcing the project Friday at a conference.

Matt McFarland was the editor of Innovations. He left The Washington Post in June 2016.

Matt McFarland

The Washington Post

Innovations

Exploring advancements in technology, transportation, education, health care, finance and energy.

Technology

How to get a free ride in a self-driving shuttle this summer - The Washington Post

Business

Local Motors officially unveiled its self-driving shuttle Thursday and said it will begin giving free rides to the public in Maryland this summer.

The electric vehicle, which seats 12, will drive slowly on public roads in National Harbor, Md., operating at speeds between 3 and 8 mph, according to Local Motors chief executive Jay Rogers. He characterized Olli as a “friendly neighborhood robot” that isn’t capable of traveling on highways.

“A full win for Olli, when we can hook up the victory flag and say we’re done here, is when a city says no more cars on our streets,” said Rogers, citing concerns about distracted drivers creating unsafe situations for pedestrians and cyclists as a motivation for creating Olli.

Olli will seat 12 and initially travel at speeds between 3 and 8 mph. (Local Motors)

Local Motors, which is best known for its 3-D printed vehicles, has produced two prototypes of Olli so far. A handful of its parts are 3-D printed, including the fenders. Rogers said the company has deals in place to operate in Las Vegas, Miami-Dade County and Denmark.

Eventually there will be a charge to ride on Olli, but not initially during pilot runs because the service won’t be offered on a set schedule. Local Motors recommends that anyone interested in riding visit the store to see what type of test ride opportunities will be occurring that day.

Rogers said Olli will travel at faster speeds as Local Motors becomes more confident in its abilities.

While many automakers and tech companies are pointing to 2020 as the time frame for when fully autonomous vehicle technology will be ready, Local Motors is jumping ahead with what is believed to be the first public trials in the United States of a completely self-driving vehicle. Olli has permission from National Harbor’s developer, Peterson Companies, to operate on the private roads it owns. Local Motors said it is in the process of working with Prince George’s County to get permission to operate on the surrounding public streets.

In early tests, the public will ride on Olli with at least one Local Motors engineer. Eventually no employee will be present.

Olli arrived in National Harbor this week to begin tests. The vehicle navigates via maps and a collection of sensors positioned on it. A pressure sensor on the front of Olli will trigger it to stop immediately if Olli strikes anything. Rogers said Olli will be able to function in rain or at night.

Local Motors has teamed with IBM Watson to add a voice interface so passengers can communicate with the vehicle while riding in it. Olli will be able to answer questions about where it is going, how the vehicle works and why it’s making certain decisions on the road. To summon the vehicle, an app will be used.

Olli will begin giving rides around National Harbor this summer. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

Eventually, Rogers said, facial recognition technology will be used to determine who has boarded Olli and make certain a rider who requested a ride boarded before the shuttle pulls away. The vehicle also senses how much its passengers weigh  so that it can rebalance itself to ensure that its sensors have a complete view of the roadway.

Rogers said National Harbor was selected because of its proximity to government regulators, who would need to see self-driving vehicles in action. He also described Olli as an efficient way for visitors to get around National Harbor, rather than moving their cars from one parking garage to another or walking.

Local Motors hasn’t announced the exact date public testing will begin, but Rogers said it would post more information on the company’s website once it’s available.

The city where cyclists have buttons on their bikes to report unsafe streets - The Washington Post

In London, a crowdsourced effort to track unsafe streets for bike commuters is giving cyclist advocates and the local government new insight into where the most dangerous spots to ride are.

Last week, 500 cyclists begin riding around the city with a button on their handlebars that they are instructed to push when they feel unsafe, nervous or frustrated on their daily trips.

When a cyclist hits the button, a message is relayed to an app on the cyclist’s smartphone, which logs the dangerous location on a public map, and e-mails the mayor, reminding him of his promise to protect those on bikes.

“Cycling could be even more the choice of people in London. But people are holding back because they feel that it is an unsafe environment,” said Fredrik Carling, the chief executive of Hovding, which provided the buttons at no charge. “We’re lagging behind on infrastructure and culture and experience in dealing with all these cyclists.”

The Swedish company is best known for its <a href="http://www.hovding.com/" target="_blank">creative helmet for cyclists</a>, which is essentially an airbag that wraps around the neck and inflates in the event of a collision. Hovding has sold 25,000 of them since 2012

Hövding Sverige

National

Hovding distributed the buttons with the help of the London Cyclist Campaign, which received 750 requests for the 500 buttons.

“It’s definitely captured people’s imaginations,” said Amy Summers, an activism coordinator at the London Cyclist Campaign, which has heard from officials in cities around the world who are interested in similar campaigns. “I think it can be a really effective tool used by other cities to make cycling safer and improve their streets.”

In about a week, <a href="http://www.giveabeep.org/#explore-the-map" target="_blank">the crowdsourced map</a> already has 1,000 locations cited for unsafe conditions. Summers said there are hardly any reports of unsafe circumstances along roads with protected bike lanes, which include barriers to physically separate cyclists from vehicles.

<del></del>Hovding does not plan to charge for the buttons, and is interested in distributing them in other cities, provided it can find a reputable partner with ties in the local cycling community to distribute the buttons.

“If we believe that cycling is one of the main transportation modes of the future, and a lot of people think that is,” Carling said, “we need to make traffic safe not only for people in cars, but people that walk on sidewalks and also for cyclists.”

This computer is selecting sound effects for silent videos that seem so real humans can’t tell they’re fake - The Washington Post

MIT researchers have developed a computer system that independently adds realistic sounds to silent videos. Although the technology is nascent, it’s a step toward automating sound effects for movies.

In a series of videos of drumsticks striking things — including sidewalks, grass and metal surfaces — the computer learned to pair a fitting sound effect, such as the sound of a drumstick hitting a piece of wood or of rustling leaves.

The findings are an example of the power of deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence whose application is trendy in tech circles. With deep learning, a computer system learns to recognize patterns in huge piles of data and applies what it learns in useful ways.

In this case, the researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab recorded about 1,000 videos of a drumstick scraping and hitting real-world objects. These videos were fed to the computer system, which learns what sounds are associated with various actions and surfaces. The sound of the drumstick hitting a piece of wood is different than when it disrupts a pile of leaves.

Once the computer system had all these examples, the researchers gave it silent videos of the same drumstick hitting other surfaces, and they instructed the computer system to pair an appropriate sound with the video.

To do this, the computer selects a pitch and loudness that fits what it sees in the video, and it finds an appropriate sound clip in its database to play with the video.

MITCSAIL

To demonstrate their accomplishment, the researcher then played half-second video clips for test subjects, who struggled to tell apart whether the clips included an authentic sound or one that a computer system had added artificially.

But the technology is not perfect, as MIT PhD candidate Andrew Owens, the lead author on the research, acknowledged. When the team tried longer video clips, the computer system would sometimes misfire and play a sound when the drumstick was not striking anything. Test subjects immediately knew the audio was not real.

And the researchers were able to get the computer to produce fitting sounds only when they used videos with a drumstick. Creating a computer that automatically provides the best sound effect for any video — the kind of development that could disrupt the sound-effects industry — remains out of reach for now.

Although the technology world has seen significant strides of late in artificial intelligence, there are still big differences in how humans and machines learn. Owens wants to push computer systems to learn more similarly to the way an infant learns about the world, by physically poking and prodding its environment. He sees potential for other researchers to use sound recordings and interactions with materials such as sidewalk cement as a step toward machines’ better understanding our physical world.

Microsoft researchers show how Web searchers can be used to identify pancreatic cancer. (Microsoft Bing screenshot)

What happens when your search engine is first to know you have cancer - The Washington Post

This week researchers demonstrated that by analyzing a person’s Web searches they could in some cases predict an upcoming diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

The team of researchers aren’t pancreatic cancers experts, but computer scientists at Microsoft. Unlike traditional medical professionals, they have the advantage of access to a trove of data that Microsoft collects through its search engine, Bing.

The Microsoft researchers identified Web users who had recently searched for queries indicating they have pancreatic cancer, such as “I was told I have pancreatic cancer, what to expect,” and then looked back months earlier to examine patterns in the symptoms that the users searched for. This included phrases such as “dark or tarry stool,” “abdominal swelling,” “dark urine” and “yellowing skin.”

From this analysis they realized trends in the queries of users who were soon to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, identifying 5 to 15 percent of cases with low false-positive rates. The research was published in <a href="http://jop.ascopubs.org/content/early/2016/06/02/JOP.2015.010504.full?version=meter+at+8&amp;module=meter-Links&amp;pgtype=article&amp;contentId=&amp;mediaId=&amp;referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FQjr4hXSyxi&amp;priority=true&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=meter-links-click" target="_blank">the Journal of Oncology Practice</a>.

“This is really a big step forward and I think it’s exciting research,” said Robert Grossman, a professor of medicine at University of Chicago and director of the Center for Data Intensive Science. “Finding low cost, low risk, high coverage health surveillance systems is an important challenge.”

But Alison Patricia Klein, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University who studies pancreatic cancer, cautioned that there are limits to how useful the early detection through Web searches can be for pancreatic cancer, because it’s generally too late for a patient once symptoms emerge.

“It’s interesting that they can pick out a portion of individuals that might have pancreatic cancer,” Klein said. “My concern is, for many of the people it’s picking up, they’re in the later stages of the disease where we don’t have very good therapies.”

She also warned that analyzing digital data would not necessarily deliver a representative sample of all individuals with a medical condition. Low-income patients tend to have less access to digital technology, so they will create less data to be analyzed. This is problematic because health-risk factors can differ across the population.

For Grossman, the Microsoft research demonstrates the power this new data can have, but a big hurdle is how to implement such an approach.

“There’s a lot of tough questions that need to be worked out,” Grossman said. “Research needs to be done on how best to design and deploy search-based surveillance systems, while [receiving consent from] the users and respecting their privacy.”

As consumers spend more time using digital services, ranging from Fitbits to smartphones and search engines, a wealth of new and potentially useful medical information is being created. And that data is largely in the hands of a new class of players such as Microsoft rather than the traditional health providers.

The Microsoft researchers acknowledge this challenge in their paper. A surveillance system would need to convey the uncertainty linked to detection while also considering the search engine’s liability, and the anxiety the news may generate in a Web searcher. They mention the possibility of alerting physicians separately from patients.

Why America’s drone problem may not be as bad as some think - The Washington Post

A new report suggests that drone pilots are now flying more responsibly amid heightened public concerns over the dangers of the unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Academy of Model Aeronautics <a href="http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=85229" target="_blank">analyzed FAA data</a> and found that even as drone sales surge, drone sightings by airplane pilots have declined. Aviation safety experts have long warned that a drone sucked into an airplane engine could be devastating, hence restrictions that require drones to stay far from helicopters and airplanes.

“It looks like we’re getting the message out there,” said Rich Hanson, the AMA’s government and regulatory affairs representative. “We’re pretty confident that education is one of primary factors if not the primary factor.”

Hanson acknowledged there’s no hard proof that educational efforts spurred the change, but said the organization, which has advocated for model aircraft pilots for decades, has seen similar examples before.

[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/03/29/how-airports-and-the-drone-industry-are-teaming-up-to-protect-planes/" target="_blank">How airports and the drone industry are teaming up to protect planes</a>]

When lithium batteries emerged in the 1990s, the AMA saw a rash of mishaps with the batteries combusting. The organization launched a campaign to educate users on how to safely charge the new batteries and saw the incidents decrease.

In December 2014 the AMA, along with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and FAA launched the “<a href="http://knowbeforeyoufly.org/">Know Before You Fly</a>” campaign to educate a flood of new drone pilots about safety concerns. Some drones ship with safety guidelines in the box or rely on software designed to restrict dangerous flying.

Drone sales have skyrocketed from 450,000 units in 2014 to 1.14 million units in 2015, according to the Consumer Technology Association. The association expects sales to top 2.8 million in 2016.

According to the AMA analysis, drone sightings peaked in the summer of 2015 and have declined since. Even so, there are far more reported drone sightings by pilots than in 2014.

“We don’t want to minimize the risk by saying it doesn’t exist. The risk does exist,” Hanson said. “In our experience we don’t believe the risk is truly as significant as it’s been made to be.”

The organization was disappointed in the FAA and felt it hadn’t analyzed its data of drone sightings in enough detail to distinguish between innocuous and harmful incidents. The AMA concluded that only 3.3 percent of the incidents in which pilots reported seeing drones were actually near misses or close calls.

The organization is concerned that potential legislation will restrict the model aircraft and drone pilots that it represents.

Google’s computers are creating songs. Making music may never be the same. - The Washington Post

Google has launched a project to use artificial intelligence to create compelling art and music, offering a reminder of how technology is rapidly changing what it means to be a musician, and what makes us distinctly human.

Google’s <a href="http://magenta.tensorflow.org/welcome-to-magenta" target="_blank">Project Magenta</a>, announced Wednesday, aims to push the state of the art in machine intelligence that’s used to generate music and art.

“We don’t know what artists and musicians will do with these new tools, but we’re excited to find out,” said Douglas Eck, the project’s leader in a <a href="http://magenta.tensorflow.org/welcome-to-magenta" target="_blank">blog post</a>. Just as Louis Daguerre and George Eastman did not predict what Annie Leibovitz or Richard Avedon would do, “surely Rickenbacker and Gibson didn’t have Jimi Hendrix or St. Vincent in mind.”

Google has already released a song demonstrating the technology. The song was created with a neural network — a computer system loosely modeled on the human brain — which was fed recordings of a lot of songs. With exposure to tons of examples, the neural network soon begins to realize which note should come next in a sequence. Eventually the neural network learns enough to generate entire songs of its own.

The project has just begun so the only available tools now are for musicians with machine-learning expertise. Google hopes to produce — along with contributors from outside Google — more tools that will be useful to a broad group, including artists with minimal technical expertise.

[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/03/10/googles-psychedelic-paint-brush-raises-the-oldest-question-in-art/" target="_blank">Google’s psychedelic ‘paint brush’ raises the oldest question in art</a>]

Efforts to use computers to make music stretch back decades. But experts say what’s unique here is the extent of Google’s computing power and its decision to share its tools with everyone, which may accelerate innovation.

“It’s a potential game-changer because so many academics and developers in companies can get their hands on this library and can start to create songs and see what they can do,” said Gil Weinberg, the director of Georgia Tech’s center for music technology.

David Cope, a retired professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz and pioneer in computer generated music, believes it’s inevitable that one day the best composers will use artificial intelligence to aid their work.

“It’s going to rampage through the film music industry,” Cope said. “It’s going to happen just as cars happened and we didn’t have the horse and buggy anymore.” He’s confident in this given the exponential growth of computing power, which for decades has doubled about every two years.

With digital tools improving so quickly, it’s become difficult for musicians to stay on the cutting edge while also mastering their instrument of choice.

“The violinist uses the same instrument for a whole career potentially, and they develop the kind of virtuosity on that instrument because they have that intimate relationship with it day after day for years and years,” said Peter Swendsen, an Oberlin professor of computer music and digital arts. “Software comes and goes in weeks sometimes.”

Amper Music is a new start-up that like Google is interested in harnessing the latest software to create music. Amper uses artificial intelligence to create original songs that match the emotions a video producer wants to convey in their work. Creating the music takes only seconds.

“If you take the sum of everything that has affected music historically and add them together, in 20 or 30 years I think you’d look back and say, ‘Wow, music AI rivals all of that,’ ” said its co-founder, Drew Silverstein.

For now, the potential of music made with artificial intelligence is still largely unrealized. Silverstein is only beginning to tap the entertainment market in Los Angeles. The song Google’s Magenta project released recently demonstrates what it’s currently capable of, but also how much work lies ahead.

Project Magenta/Google

“It is indeed very basic,” said Swendsen, the Oberlin professor, after listening to the song. “That’s not to say that the system they are using doesn’t hold lots of promise or isn’t working on a much deeper level than a simple random generator.”

The emerging power of this technology is also a wake-up call for what makes us really human.

“A lot of the uniqueness that we like to ascribe to ourselves becomes threatened, ” said George Lewis, a professor of American music at Columbia University. “People have to get the idea out of their head that music comes from great individuals. It doesn’t, it comes from communities, it comes from societies. It develops over many years and computers become a part of societies.”

As machines have become more a part of our lives,  we can count on them to share a hand in the artistic process. For the 75-year-old Cope, this is a great thing, and nothing to be afraid of.

“The computer is just a really really high class shovel,” Cope said. “I love this new stuff and want it to come fast enough so I’m not dead when it happens.”

Even cowboy jobs may not be safe from robots - The Washington Post

An Australian professor is developing a robot to monitor the health of grazing livestock, a development that could bring big changes to a profession that has relied largely on a low-tech approach for decades — but is facing a labor shortage.

Salah Sukkarieh, a robotics professor at the University of Sydney, sees robots as necessary, given how cattlemen are aging. The average age of a farmer in Australia is 52, according to the Australian Farm Institute.

Sukkarieh is building a four-wheeled robot that will run on solar and electric power. It will roam pastures alongside livestock and monitor the animals using cameras, thermal sensors and infrared imaging. A computer system will analyze video footage to determine whether a cow is limping. Radio tags on the animals will measure temperature changes. The pasture's quality will be tracked by monitoring the shape, color and texture of grass. That way, cattlemen will know whether they need to move their herd to another field for nutrition purposes. Sukkarieh plans to run trials later this year and is aiming for the final product to cost about as much as an all-terrain vehicle.

Machines have largely taken over planting, watering and harvesting crops such as corn and wheat, but the monitoring of cattle has gone through fewer changes.

For Texas cattleman Pete Bonds, a former president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, it’s increasingly difficult to find workers interested in careers watching livestock.

"It's 110 degrees and you're wearing a coat and bull-hide leggings and no air gets through," Bonds said. "Getting a good enough man to be able to go through that brush and take it, there's not any of them left."

But Bonds does not believe a robot is right for the job. Years of experience in the industry — and failed attempts to integrate technology — have convinced him that the best way to check cattle is with a man on a horse. Bonds, who bought his first cattle almost 50 years ago, still has each of his cowboys inspect 300 or 400 cattle daily and look for signs that an animal is getting sick, such as a steer that does not stretch when standing up.

Other cattlemen see more promise in ground robots. Michael Kelsey, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association, said a roving robot that stays with livestock 24/7 could be extremely useful given rising concerns about cattle thieves. Cattle tend to be located in remote locations and their value has risen, making them appealing targets.

Kelsey said that the younger cattlemen in Oklahoma are beginning to experiment with another type of robot — drones — to remotely check on the location of cattle. Some use a drone’s thermal sensor to pinpoint the location of a missing cow that could be hidden in the brush.

Kelsey said that the drones do not stress the animals because cattle tend not to look up. He mentioned there would be concern that a land robot could startle cattle, but he thinks that if one is carefully introduced, the animals would acclimate to it.

Sukkarieh’s plan for a robot goes a step further than the use of drones that Kelsey describes. His robot would be automated and operate independently, which would reduce labor costs. A cattleman would receive an occasional notification that a specific animal needed human attention.

But for some in the business, an influx of machines could remove some of the fun of raising livestock.

“A lot of times it’s the therapeutic side of what they do, going to check on their cattle,” said Tyler Dupy, executive director of Kansas Cattlemen’s Association. “If you inject robots into the mix, then they wouldn’t have any interest in doing it anymore.”

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The source for business news and analysis. Covering economic policy, business policy, financial news, economic issues, stock market data, local business, technology and more.

Salah Sukkarieh, a professor at the University of Sydney, expects that his new livestock-monitoring robot will resemble the RIPPA, above, another robot that he developed to aid farmers. The RIPPA precisely delivers small amounts of weed killer rather than spraying parts of a field that don't need treatment. (ACFR)

An Australian professor is developing a robot to monitor the health of grazing livestock, a development that could bring big changes to a profession that’s relied largely on a low-tech approach for decades but is facing a labor shortage.

Salah Sukkarieh, a robotics professor at the University of Sydney, sees robots as necessary given how cattlemen are aging. The average age of a farmer in Australia is 52, according to the Australian Farm Institute.

Sukkarieh is building a four-wheeled robot that will run on solar and electric power. It will roam pastures alongside livestock and monitor the animals using cameras, thermal sensors and infrared. A computer system will analyze video footage to determine whether a cow is limping. Radio tags on the animals will measure temperature changes. The quality of pasture will be tracked by monitoring the shape, color and texture of grass. That way, cattlemen will know whether they need to move their herd to another field for nutrition purposes. He plans to run trials later this year and is aiming for the final product to cost about as much as an ATV.

For Texas cattleman Pete Bonds, a former president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, it’s increasingly difficult to find workers interested in careers watching livestock.

“It’s 110 degrees and you’re wearing a coat and bull-hide leggings and no air gets through,” Bonds said. “Getting a good enough man to be able to go through that brush and take it, there’s not any of them left.”

But Bonds doesn’t believe a robot is right for the job. Years of experience in the industry — and failed attempts to integrate technology — have convinced him that the best way to check cattle is with a man on a horse. Bonds, who bought his first cattle almost 50 years ago, still has each of his cowboys inspect 300 or 400 cattle daily and look for signs that an animal is getting sick, such as a steer that doesn’t stretch when standing up.

Australian Centre for Field Robotics

<del></del>Other cattleman see more promise in ground robots. Michael Kelsey, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association, said a roving robot that stays with livestock 24-7 could be extremely useful given rising concerns about cattle thieves. Cattle tend to be located in remote locations and their value has risen, making them appealing targets.

Kelsey said that the younger cattlemen in Oklahoma are beginning to experiment with another type of robot — drones — to remotely check on the location of cattle. Some use a drone’s thermal sensor to pinpoint the location of a missing cow that could be hidden in the brush.

Kelsey said the drones don’t stress the animals because cattle tend not to look up. He mentioned there would be concern that a land robot could startle cattle, but he thinks that if one is carefully introduced, the animals would acclimate to it.

Sukkarieh’s plan for a robot goes a step further than the use of drones that Kelsey describes. His robot would be automated and operate independently, which would reduce labor costs. A cattleman would receive an occasional notification that a specific animal needed human attention.

But for some in the business, an influx of machines could remove some of the fun of raising livestock.

“A lot of times it’s the therapeutic side of what they do, going to check on their cattle,” said Tyler Dupy, executive director of Kansas Cattlemen’s Association. “If you inject robots into the mix, then they wouldn’t have any interest in doing it anymore.”

What you are doing online and other top findings from an exhaustive study of the Internet - The Washington Post

Mary Meeker, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, <a href="http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends" target="_blank">released her 21st annual report</a> on the biggest trends in technology and the Internet on Wednesday. The report, which is embedded in its entirety above, covers a wide swath of issues, from slowing smartphone sales, photo sharing and online advertising.

Here’s a quick take on some of the most interesting findings. We’ll continue to add more here throughout the day.

1. Mobile ads will grow by tens of billions of dollars in the coming years — and will mostly line the pockets of Facebook and Google

The two Silicon Valley giants account for 76 percent of all U.S. Internet advertising. Google’s share of the pie is far larger, but Facebook is growing more rapidly. Meeker sees mobile advertising growing another $22 billion in the United States because the time consumers spend on mobile devices — 25 percent — is more than double the share of ad dollars the platform receives. However, a major concern is the 420 million smartphone users who utilize ad-blocking technology.

2. Tech companies now run the two most lucrative brick-and-mortar stores

Diamonds are incredibly expensive, so Tiffany & Co. has always had one of the highest sales per square foot of retail space. But Apple surpassed it in recent years on the strength of its huge iPhone business. Now another tech company — Warby Parker, which sells eyeglasses — has also passed Tiffany & Co. Warby Parker began selling eye-wear online, but now has 31 locations.

3. The growth of photo sharing is stunning

More than three billion photos are shared everyday on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp. This number has more than doubled in the last two years. The chart also shows the rapid rise of Snapchat (shown in gold) in just a few years. And while there are plenty of other platforms for photo-sharing, they are all controlled by Facebook.

4. Millennials don’t want to talk on the phone

You might as well throw out that landline now.

Individuals born from 1981 through 1999 would rather hear from a business via social media, digital messaging or an app. Their least popular option is the telephone, with only 12 percent saying they preferred that option.

That’s a stark contrast to Generation X and especially Baby Boomers and the so-called “Silent Generation,” which was born before 1945. Those groups prefer the phone by far.

5. A big warning for Apple — smartphone growth is definitely plateauing.

Smartphone users are still growing around the world. In 2007 only 34 percent of smartphone users worldwide were in Asia-Pacific. Now its share is 52 percent.

But in North America and Europe, the biggest gains appear to be in the past. This has huge implications for Apple, which leans on the iPhone for the majority of its profits. Here’s another chart that shows how the year over year growth in smartphones is now plummeting.

6. Consumer spend almost as much time commuting as on Facebook

Meeker suggests that the arrival of autonomous vehicles could free up a significant amount of time for consumers, creating a new entertainment opportunity for businesses.

But where will people spend their time? If this chart is any measure, Facebook could be a big winner. People are already spending more time on the social network than behind the wheel. Smartphone users in the U.S. and globally spend 80 percent of their time using only three apps.

In general, in looking through this chart and others, you can see the dominance of Facebook’s properties, whether it’s their messaging apps or the flagship social network. There is little doubt we are living in the age of Facebook right now.

One final note from this chart — despite the launch of Apple Music and others in the music space, Spotify is still holding its ground, at least in terms of user engagement.

Of course, you can be on Facebook while listening to Spotify at the same time. Either way, both companies are probably pretty happy with how people are spending their time.

7. We’re creating and sharing more videos online

Consumers are increasingly sharing videos via platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat. In the most remarkable recent example a video of Candace Payne in a Chewbacca mask was viewed more than 153 million times. And now advertisers are looking for ways to co-opt these videos to reach potential customers. Snapchat offers sponsored video filters, such as Taco Bell’s Cinco de Mayo Lens and Gatorade’s Super Bowl Lens.

8. There are more ways than ever to express ourselves via smartphones

Messaging is evolving from simple conversations to rich interactions complete with GIFs, videos, stickers and filters. While millennials communicate with text, today’s teens communicate with images.

9. Why type when you can talk to your smartphone?

Meeker notes the massive uptick in Internet searches for apparent voice commands such as “call mom” and “navigate home.” These commands have grown more than 35 times since 2008, according to Google Trends. Baidu, the Chinese Internet search giant, has seen a rapid increase in vocal queries. Its chief scientist Andrew Ng has predicted that in 2019 50 percent of Web searches will be voice or image activated.

Other voice-related offerings are growing too, such as Amazon’s Echo, a wireless speaker that accounts for about 25 percent of the U.S. speaker market, according to 1010data Meeker cites. Google and Apple are reportedly building competing devices that also rely on voice activation.

Disclosure: Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Matt McFarland

Washington, D.C.

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