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Uber Ready to Put Robotaxis on UK Roads by 2027

FILE PHOTO: A driverless car by Apollo Go, Baidu's robotaxi service, drives past another Apollo Go robotaxi parked on the side of a road, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ethan Wang/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A driverless car by Apollo Go, Baidu's robotaxi service, drives past another Apollo Go robotaxi parked on the side of a road, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ethan Wang/File Photo
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Uber Ready to Put Robotaxis on UK Roads by 2027

FILE PHOTO: A driverless car by Apollo Go, Baidu's robotaxi service, drives past another Apollo Go robotaxi parked on the side of a road, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ethan Wang/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A driverless car by Apollo Go, Baidu's robotaxi service, drives past another Apollo Go robotaxi parked on the side of a road, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ethan Wang/File Photo

Uber has said it is “ready to go” now with driverless taxis in the UK but the government has put back the date it expects to approve fully self-driving vehicles.

The previous administration said fully autonomous cars were “set to be on roads by 2026,” but the new government says it is now more likely to happen in the second half of 2027, according to BBC.

While limited self-driving technology is already permitted on UK roads, a human driver must be at the wheel and responsible for the vehicle, even if automated technology is being used.

With some companies trialing more advanced tech on British streets, a person took an automated car ride across central London in a car using a system developed by UK AI firm Wayve.

“We're ready to launch robotaxis in the UK as soon as the regulatory environment is ready for us,” said Andrew Macdonald, senior vice president of mobility at Uber, who joined me for the ride.

The ride-hailing firm is working with 18 automated car tech companies including Wayve.

It is one of several companies which already offers robotaxis in the US. They are also on the roads in China, the UAE and Singapore.

But Macdonald disagreed that the UK was behind the rest of the world, arguing that the US and China were ahead largely because that is where the majority of the tech had been developed.

“We are working quickly and will implement self-driving vehicle legislation in the second half of 2027,” the Department for Transport said in a statement.

“We are also exploring options for short-term trials and pilots to create the right conditions for a thriving self-driving sector,” it added.

'Hands-off' experience

In the US, Macdonald said robotaxis typically operate for 20 hours per day, seven days per week.

Even though there is no driver to pay, Uber says the fare is currently the same as a ride with a human behind the wheel.

The option to take one appears on the app if one is available, and customers can opt in or out.

That's partly because, aside from the regulatory environment, another potential barrier to their uptake is the public's reticence about travelling in a self-driving vehicle.

A poll by YouGov in 2024 suggested that 37% of Brits would feel “very unsafe” travelling in a car without a driver.

But Macdonald insisted new customers' initial nervousness was short-lived and the experience soon “becomes the new normal.”

In the UK there are also practical questions around insurance, ownership and liability when a self-driving vehicle is involved in an accident. Macdonald said they were all still being worked out.

Tom Leggett, vehicle technology manager at Thatcham Research - an independent car safety center - said robotaxis would have to be “safety-led” in the UK.

“Secondly, they will have to make sure the data is available to those who need it – insurers and those investigating incidents when they occur.”

The government says self-driving vehicles have the potential “to build an industry worth £42 billion and provide 38,000 jobs by 2035.”

But of course they are a source of concern for people who earn a living driving.
Andy Prendergast, GMB national secretary, said the “significant social implications” driverless cars and taxis could have - such as potential less work or unemployment - for workers and the public must be fully considered.

Uber's Macdonald meanwhile believes automated vehicles will transform the way many people travel in the near future.

“I've got young kids,” he said. “Do I think my daughters will necessarily get their drivers licenses when they turn 16?” [the legal age in his home country, Canada]. “No – I think the world is changing a lot.”

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Varieties

Secret Cameras, Mics and AI Reveal Rare Cambodia Wildlife

Hidden microphones, cameras and artificial intelligence to reveal the secrets of species living deep in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. TANG CHHIN Sothy / AFP
Hidden microphones, cameras and artificial intelligence to reveal the secrets of species living deep in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. TANG CHHIN Sothy / AFP
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Secret Cameras, Mics and AI Reveal Rare Cambodia Wildlife

Hidden microphones, cameras and artificial intelligence to reveal the secrets of species living deep in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. TANG CHHIN Sothy / AFP
Hidden microphones, cameras and artificial intelligence to reveal the secrets of species living deep in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. TANG CHHIN Sothy / AFP

Above the patter of rain cascading through the jungle canopy comes the haunting call of a pileated gibbon singing to fend off intruders in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains.

It is being recorded as part of work harnessing hidden microphones, cameras and artificial intelligence to reveal the secrets of species living deep in the rainforest and help protect them.

To conservationist Ratha Sor, the whoops and whistles are the sound of hope -- a sign that the country's largest remaining stretch of intact rainforest is healthy enough to support the endangered species, said AFP.

Gibbons are "indicators that our forest is still alive", he said.

By showing that everything from pangolins to elephants call the Cardamom Mountains home, conservationists hope to secure its future, in a country that has lost over a third of its forest cover in the last 25 years.

"This is the real evidence... we are conserving very unique species in our landscape," said Ratha Sor, biodiversity and science manager at Conservation International (CI), a US-headquartered non-profit.

The Cardamoms range, spread across more than a million hectares (2.47 million acres) in southwest Cambodia, is regarded as one of the most important remaining rainforests in the region.

For decades, it was eaten away by rampant deforestation and emptied by poaching.

Bolstered protections have helped slow both, though infrastructure projects, including dams, remain a serious threat.

In 2024, CI published the results of the first-ever systematic camera trap survey of the Central Cardamom region, revealing more than 100 resident species, nearly two dozen of them either vulnerable or endangered.

That effort, involving nearly 150 devices placed at regular intervals, will be repeated later this year.

It is supplemented by ongoing targeted camera trapping, focused on areas where animals are likely to be and offering deeper understanding of how populations are changing and behaving.

- Macaques, dholes, elephants -

AFP joined conservationists, rangers and locals this month as they retrieved and replaced cameras and microphones in the forest.

Under a chaotic canopy woven with vines and studded with fearsome spiked stems, the group crossed streams, waded through mud and picked off dozens of leeches.

Local community members like Pan Sok, a member of the Chong Indigenous minority, guide CI on where to place devices.

The 50-year-old lives outside the forest but calls himself a "jungle man" after years tapping resin from its trees.

He sat to review black-and-white footage from a camera he helped locate, describing "pride" at the sight of pig-tailed macaques, endangered wild dogs called dholes and his favorite, elephants.

"My efforts paid off," said Pan Sok.

Some of these species are seen fairly regularly elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but encounters can be vanishingly rare in the Cardamoms.

A ranger told AFP he had not seen an elephant once in 12 years patrolling.

While camera traps can capture many of the forest's inhabitants, gibbons are rarely seen because they live in treetops and move too quickly, so CI is turning to bioacoustic monitors and AI.

Its staff spent three months training a machine-learning program to identify calls recorded by dozens of monitors placed at 10 sites.

They are set at least three kilometers (1.9 miles) apart, as close as gibbon groups come to each other without fighting, meaning each device is picking up a different troop.

- 'This is gibbon, this is not' -

In just six weeks, the monitors recorded nearly 800 calls.

The team labelled up to half the data for the AI, teaching it "this is gibbon, this is not", said Ratha Sor.

AI then processed the rest, and in the future will be trained to distinguish male from female, and eventually individual calls.

Experts say poaching in the region has waned, though a ranger found part of an old snare during AFP's visit.

Patrolling has also reduced small-scale encroachments, but infrastructure projects including multiple dams are still driving deforestation.

In the last five years, the Central Cardamom protected region has lost nearly 7,000 hectares of tree cover, Global Forest Watch data shows.

Ratha Sor trod carefully when asked about government-backed infrastructure projects responsible for some of that deforestation.

"It's out of our control," he said.

But he hopes evidence of the region's rich wildlife will show the benefits of leaving the forest standing.

"It is an encouragement to protect... one of the very pristine evergreen forests in this Cardamom Mountains."

Varieties

‘Fingerprints’ of Black Hole’s Event Horizon Detected for First Time

An actual image of the black hole where scientists looked for a ring of light, which is matter and radiation circling at extreme speeds around a region of darkness representing the black hole. (Event Horizon Telescope collaboration)
An actual image of the black hole where scientists looked for a ring of light, which is matter and radiation circling at extreme speeds around a region of darkness representing the black hole. (Event Horizon Telescope collaboration)
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‘Fingerprints’ of Black Hole’s Event Horizon Detected for First Time

An actual image of the black hole where scientists looked for a ring of light, which is matter and radiation circling at extreme speeds around a region of darkness representing the black hole. (Event Horizon Telescope collaboration)
An actual image of the black hole where scientists looked for a ring of light, which is matter and radiation circling at extreme speeds around a region of darkness representing the black hole. (Event Horizon Telescope collaboration)

Scientists have detected the "fingerprints" of a black hole's event horizon -- the boundary from which nothing can escape -- for the first time, according to research published on Wednesday.

The discovery was made by studying ripples in space-time called gravitational waves that were created when two black holes violently smashed into each other.

A black hole's event horizon is known as the "point of no return" because not even light can avoid being swallowed into its darkness.

This has made them incredibly difficult to learn anything about.

However, there is one event of such cataclysmic violence that it could offer a chance to glimpse this extreme phenomenon -- when two black holes merge into one.

When this cosmic death spiral occurs, it shoots gravitational waves across the universe which scientists have been detecting for the last decade.

For the new research published in Nature, an international team of researchers analyzed data from the strongest gravitational wave ever recorded, known as GW250114, detected by the LIGO observatory in January 2025.

By isolating the last burst of waves -- known as "direct waves" -- from this black hole merger, the scientists said they were able to extract information from closer to an event horizon than ever before.

"This black hole horizon concept normally appears in science fiction," lead study author Sizheng Ma of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada told AFP.

"But now we are really able to touch the region around the horizon with gravitational data," he added.

"Sometimes I cannot believe this is really happening."

- Causing a stir -

The last stage of two black holes merging is like a spoon stirring a glass of water, Sizheng Ma explained.

The resulting swirl in space creates the ripple of gravitational waves that travel at the speed of light in all directions.

If the metaphorical spoon is stirring close enough to the black hole's event horizon, "this offers us a chance to decode the physics around that region", Sizheng Ma said.

By supporting the theory of general relativity, the results "proved that Einstein was correct again," he added.

The scientists emphasized that more research was needed to decipher what can be gleaned about event horizons using this method.

But they did detect information about how black holes twist space around themselves as they rotate -- a phenomenon known as "frame dragging".

"This is similar to pushing a glass into a table and twisting it, so that the tablecloth winds up around it," Maximiliano Isi, a gravitational wave astrophysicist at Columbia University, told AFP.

In the future, the team of scientists hope to find signs of tiny changes known as quantum fluctuation.

"In this way, we can really probe this near horizon region to look for a new physics," including searching for a deviation from general relativity, Sizheng Ma said.

- Reaction mixed -

Experts not involved in the study urged caution.

Francesco Sannino, an Italian theoretical physicist who studies black holes, told AFP it was "compelling analysis" but needed to be checked by other researchers.

Still, it was "striking" that the scientists were able to show that gravitational waves carried the event horizon's "fingerprints," he said.

The astrophysicist Isi described the work as "tantalizing".

"More generally, understanding the physics of black holes and their mergers is important as it might shed light on how space and time are woven together at a more fundamental level," he told AFP.

Sean McWilliams, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University, was skeptical that the gravitational wave frequency analyzed by the scientists was actually "dictated" by the event horizon.

For this reason, "the actual observed signal doesn't really tell us anything about the horizon or the other properties directly related to it", he told AFP.

Sizheng Ma said McWilliams's statement was "not correct," suggesting he had conflated two different aspects in the paper.

"There is often considerable resistance and criticism in the early stages of promoting a new concept," he said, adding he is working on another paper to "clarify these confusions and possible misinterpretations".

Varieties

Asteroid Zooming Past Earth on Saturday Visible to Stargazers

FILE PHOTO: A nighttime view of Earth, derived from satellite images taken daily over the past decade, capturing human activity on the planet through the emissions of artificial light, is seen in this image released on April 8, 2026. Michala Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory/Handout via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A nighttime view of Earth, derived from satellite images taken daily over the past decade, capturing human activity on the planet through the emissions of artificial light, is seen in this image released on April 8, 2026. Michala Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory/Handout via REUTERS
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Asteroid Zooming Past Earth on Saturday Visible to Stargazers

FILE PHOTO: A nighttime view of Earth, derived from satellite images taken daily over the past decade, capturing human activity on the planet through the emissions of artificial light, is seen in this image released on April 8, 2026. Michala Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory/Handout via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A nighttime view of Earth, derived from satellite images taken daily over the past decade, capturing human activity on the planet through the emissions of artificial light, is seen in this image released on April 8, 2026. Michala Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory/Handout via REUTERS

A large asteroid that will zoom harmlessly past Earth on Saturday will be visible to stargazers using a small telescope or large binoculars, the European Space Agency announced Wednesday.

The asteroid will come within 2,560,000 kilometers of Earth at 1114 GMT on Saturday, which is more than six times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Called (152637) 1997 NC1, the asteroid will be speeding along at nearly nine kilometers a second, posing no threat to Earth as any chance of an impact has been ruled out.

Discovered in 1997, the asteroid is estimated to be between 750 and 1,650 meters wide, according to calculations based on how much sunlight it reflects.

However other estimates suggest it could be smaller, AFP quoted the ESA as saying in a statement.

"A close approach to Earth by an object this size only occurs every few years, although this time the bright nearby Moon might impede its observability at closest approach," Juan Luis Cano of the ESA's Planetary Defense Office said in a statement.

For stargazers with telescopes or binoculars, the asteroid will be visible in parts of the Northern Hemisphere as it approaches, almost everywhere as it speeds past Earth, and only from the Southern Hemisphere as it departs.

But this depends if people are in areas of the world where the sky is dark enough as it passes.