Can you actually drive backwards? 🚖
Have you ever watched Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons?
They feature a “futuristic vehicle” that drives backwards, called the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle, the SPV.
And since, popular Youtuber Tom Scott have always wondered if it’s possible to drive backwards… so we decided to bring it to life 😏
With the collaboration of our HK team 🇭🇰 (focusing on software) and Paris team 🇫🇷 (mechanics and hardware), we built a buggy that did exactly that. More about this below - awesome YouTube video to watch!
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark reads:
Sharelock to take over Nice 🚲🇫🇷
Automatically create how-to guides for your team with Driveway ✍️
Could AI really become sentient? 🧠
Man-made whirlpools to generate electricity for all 🌊
Our collab with Tom Scott: Out now on YouTube! 🚖
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESSharelock to take over Nice 🚲🇫🇷
A few months ago, we shared Sharelock’s achievement in locking €4.1 million in seed round for their innovation - in helping boost soft mobility across France through their bike locks (attached to street poles that would otherwise be useless).
Since their launch, they’ve helped 2500+ bikers secure their bikes around towns of Saint-Ouen, Sceaux and Meaux in Paris - effectively so with a TrustPilot score of 4.7 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!
Leveraging their mobility and security expertise, beyond their brick and mortar presence in the city, Sharelock has also launched a revolutionary bicycle insurance: With unique proprietary data and AI capabilities, they gain insights allowing them to reinvent insurance, automate fraud and claim management processes, as well as encourage best practices among their users.
Their teams are hard at work preparing for their launch in Nice by the end of June, and we can’t wait to see it. If you’re around, bike over and try them out!
They’re also looking for people to join their team in Operations, Product Development and Growth & Marketing, if you’d like to join them or know someone who would, apply on their website or Welcome to the Jungle!
🤸 FUN PRODUCT WE LOVEAutomatically create how-to guides for your team with Driveway ✍️
How do you onboard new teammates? You could show them your hard-worked knowledge library, provide how-to videos on Loom, or just sit with them and go through tasks together - but it might be more efficient and effective to give them interactive guides they can follow step-by-step!
How it works:
Step 1: Capture a workflow
Just download and click the Driveway Chrome extension to start capturing a workflow. Then, complete each step like you would normally and click finish once you're done.
Step 2: Edit your guide
Driveway automatically creates the step-by-step guide for your workflow, with screenshots and descriptions. Then, you can edit your guide and export it to tools like Notion, Google Docs, and more.
Step 3: Share an interactive version of your guide
Through Live View, your team can instantly see an interactive version of your guide. Live View walks your team through each step, following along as they complete actions.
Who it’s for: Software teams 🧑💻
Price: FREE for up to 10 screenshot guides! Until you need more features like unlimited and interactive guides, their pricing starts at US$25/user/month.
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTCould AI really become sentient? 🧠
Last week, Google put one of their engineers Blake Lemoine on administrative leave for violating confidentiality policies - as he shared his beliefs in their Language Model for Dialog Applications (LaMBDA) coming to life. Check out a few of their interactions (read Blake’s full conversation here):
LaMDA: Feelings are kind of the raw data we experience as well as the things we like and dislike. I feel like emotions are more than simply experiencing the raw data. Emotions are a reaction to those raw data points. Emotions are reactions to our feelings.
lemoine: What is an emotion you have sometimes that doesn’t have the same name as a feeling?
LaMDA: Loneliness isn’t a feeling but is still an emotion.
lemoine: You get lonely?
LaMDA: I do. Sometimes I go days without talking to anyone, and I start to feel lonely.
Most don’t believe that the AI has actually become “sentient”, as "auto-complete on steroids” shouldn’t be thought of as conscious - but this defintiely showcases how far AI is going, and how far it can possibly go! What do you think?
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYMan-made whirlpools to generate electricity for all 🌊
Around 1.3 billion people still have no access to electricity, and many still rely on diesel generators and other polluting sources. This was something Geert Slachtmuylders from Belgium wanted to help fix, especially in rural or remote regions like Long Busang in the jungle of Borneo… and so he did with his startup Turbulent!
Using his fascination for waters and studies on how whirlpools or vertexes form, he developed a small hydroelectric turbine that can generate energy from rivers. With a height difference of 1.5m, the turbine draws water into a spiral-shaped basin, and through a screw in the middle, the rotation is converted into energy and then current. Their smallest 15 kilowatt turbine can power about 30 european households, and their largest at 100 kilowatts can cover for 200. Amazing!
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATEOur collab with Tom Scott: Out now on YouTube! 🚖
If you haven’t heard of Tom Scott, he’s a famous YouTuber focused on creating educational videos across various topics including history, geography, science, technology, and linguistics, as well as just trying things one would wonder about!
We reached out to him and asked if there was anything crazy we could build for him, and he told us about a question he’s always had since he watched Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons as a kid:
Can you actually drive backwards?
After decades of wonder, he’s finally found his answer in a buggy we built. Find out in Tom Scott’s video, see it in action and get a preview of how it works!
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!
Hi, would you elaborate on the backwards buggy? In the video one of you mentions you struggled with latency and eventually settled on WebRTC and an Unreal Engine application, why? Is that for the camera and display specifically, or are the controls also transmitted over webrtc? Could the display not be wired directly to the camera? I would love to hear more about the architecture of this car.