US Navy funds 'MacGyver' robot that can create tools

A US team aims to build a robot that can work out how to use nearby objects to solve problems or escape threats.

The US Navy said its MacGyver Bot project could create a first-of-its-kind team-mate for its personnel

The machine has been dubbed a MacGyver Bot, after the TV character who cobbled together devices to escape life-threatening situations.

The challenge is to develop software that "understands" what objects are in order to deduce how they can be used.
The US Navy is funding the project and says the machines might ultimately be deployed alongside humans.
It is providing $900,000 (£562,000) to robotics researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to carry out the work.
"Our goal is to develop a robot that behaves like MacGyver, the television character from the 1980s who solved complex problems and escaped dangerous situations by using everyday objects and materials he found at hand," said project leader Prof Mike Stilman.
"Researchers in the robot motion planning field have traditionally used computerised vision systems to locate objects in a cluttered environment to plan collision-free paths, but these systems have not provided any information about the objects' functions."
Rescue bot
Mr Stilman said he planned to create software that first identified an object, then determined potential things that could be done with it, before turning it into "a simple machine" that could be used to complete an action.
Examples given include stacking boxes to climb over something, building a bridge out of debris or climbing on a chair to grab an object out of reach.
By the project's end, the software should be able to combine such tasks when necessary.
To test whether this is the case, the researchers hope to load the code onto Golem Krang - a robot already developed by Mr Stillman's laboratory - to see if it works in action.
The researchers ultimately envisage a situation in which the machine might be deployed to rescue trapped officers without needing to risk anyone else's life.
Perception problem
One UK-based artificial intelligence (AI) researcher said the challenge was harder that it sounded.
"For example, vision alone is not enough to tell you if an object can support your weight or be used as a lever - you need to interact with it physically to understand its physical possibilities," Prof Barbara Webb, from the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, told the BBC.
"This is probably a harder problem for current robotics than making a plan to solve the task."
Another AI expert suggested the project might like to draw on existing research into how animals use tools.
"A monkey will use a stick to reach a longer stick to reach an out-of-reach banana," said Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield.
"A crow will bend a piece of wire to get a trapped food.
"I have seen this kind of work with robots, but it is a very difficult project and like all research may not work as planned, but it is well worth the effort and will advance the field."

Samsung announces Galaxy S3 Mini smartphone

Samsung has unveiled a smaller version of its Galaxy S3 smartphone, reducing the screen size by 0.8 of an inch to 4 inches, bringing it in line with Apple's iPhone 5.


The smartphone can track a user's eyes to remain illuminated when being looked at

The handset runs on Jelly Bean, the latest version of Google's Android operating system.

Samsung has not yet shared details of when the device will go on sale.
The announcement comes at a time Apple are expected to launch a 7-inch iPad, although that has yet to be confirmed.
The Galaxy S3 Mini, details of which had been widely leaked prior to Thursday's announcement, comes just six months after the launch of the well-received larger model.
The Mini has a five megapixel camera on its rear, with a lower quality VGA camera on its front.
It retains some key features of the larger model, such as an Near Field Communication (NFC) chip, which enables contactless payments.
Sacrificed in the downsize is some processing power - the model drops from the big S3's quad-core chip to a dual-care - and some screen clarity.
The S3 Mini's display offers fewer pixels - 800x480 - compared to the higher definition 720p display of the original.
While obviously smaller in size, the S3 Mini is a millimetre thicker.
'Just too big'
Stuart Miles, editor of UK gadget website Pocket-lint, told the BBC he thinks Samsung are playing a shrewd move to react to the demands of the market.
"I think from Samsung's point of view its about offering breadth and depth of choice.
"There's lots of people out there who thing the Galaxy S3 is an amazing phone, but there's a lot who think it's just too big."
He said the impressive early sales of the iPhone 5 will have spurred the need for a smaller competing device.
"If you see that there's a massive demand for a 4-inch screen device, and you have the capability to make it, then you're going to make it, aren't you? I think it will do really well."
Simon Stanford, vice president of Samsung UK's telecommunications and networks division, said in a statement: "We will continue to develop smartphones to cater for a variety of customer needs and this latest release demonstrates our ongoing commitment to offering our customers more choice at every price point."

Mozilla Firefox browser upgrade taken offline due to vulnerability

The latest version of Mozilla's Firefox browser has been taken offline after a security vulnerability was discovered.

The Firefox browser is used by millions worldwide
Users who had upgraded to version 16 were advised to downgrade to the previous safe release until Firefox developers released a fix.

The vulnerability allowed "a malicious site to potentially determine which websites users have visited", Mozilla said.
The non-profit company said that only a "limited number of users are affected".
The download had been taken offline within a day of its initial release, the organisation's UK spokesman said.
He added that no users had been upgraded automatically to the new version.
Automatically upgraded
In a blog post, Mozilla's director of security assurance Michael Coates said a fix was being worked on and should be expected on Thursday.
"At this time we have no indication that this vulnerability is currently being exploited in the wild," he added.
"Firefox 16 has been temporarily removed from the current installer page and users will automatically be upgraded to the new version as soon as it becomes available.
"As a precaution, users can downgrade to version 15.0.1 by following these instructions. Alternatively, users can wait until our patches are issued and automatically applied to address the vulnerability."
Firefox was one of the three leading web browsers, with more than 450 million users worldwide, Mozilla said.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer and relative newcomer Google Chrome are its key competitors.
In recent months, various figures suggested Chrome had overtaken Firefox's market share, pushing the Mozilla Foundation's flagship product into third place in the browser race.

Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers

The multibillion-dollar data brokerage industry, a growing force in online marketing, is drawing intensified government scrutiny.

Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Senator John D. Rockefeller
 
On Wednesday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, opened an extensiveinvestigation of nine leading information brokers. Because Americans now conduct much of their daily business online, the senator said he was concerned that “an unprecedented amount” of personal, medical and financial information about people could be collected, mined and sold, to the potential detriment of consumers.
“An ever-increasing percentage of their lives will be available for download, and the digital footprint they will inevitably leave behind will become more specific and potentially damaging, if used improperly,” Mr. Rockefeller, who is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, wrote in letters to the data brokers. “It is critical that we understand what information companies like yours are already collecting and selling.”
Linda A. Woolley, the acting chief executive of the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group, called the senator’s investigation “a baseless fishing expedition.”
“I hope Senator Rockefeller understands what he’s tampering with,” she said in an e-mailed statement.
The Senate investigation represents the second Congressional inquiry into the industry’s practices this year. In July, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, began a House inquiry into data compilers, which is ongoing. And the Federal Trade Commission has been looking into the practices of about a dozen major data brokers.
Data brokers collect a wide variety of information from public sources and third parties, including details like consumers’ financial status, race or ethnicity, buying history, hobbies, health concerns, travel preferences, Internet providers and social networks.
The companies often use the information for a practice called “database marketing” — that is, using data mining to help clients like retailers, banks and airlines tailor marketing pitches to their best customers or identify potential new ones.
Collecting, analyzing and selling such information for marketing purposes is perfectly legal. Indeed, it’s a huge business. Some data brokers have said they maintain several thousand details on the majority of adults in the United States.
But some legislators and regulators say they are concerned that neither they nor consumers know the extent of the material that data brokers collect; whom they disclose or sell it to; and exactly what they are doing with it.
Unlike consumer reporting agencies, which are required by federal law to show people their own credit reports and allow them to correct errors, data brokers are not required to show consumers information collected about them for marketing purposes.
Earlier this year in a report on protecting consumer privacy, the F.T.C. urged the industry to create a centralized Web portal where consumers could learn about companies’ practices and their options for controlling information collected about them. The agency also recommended that Congress pass legislation giving people access to information that data brokers hold about them. Underlying regulators’ efforts is their concern that some information brokers could create financial dossiers about individuals that are akin to credit reports and use them to unfairly exclude individual consumers from certain offers or charge some people higher prices than others.
“There are data brokers whose marketing lists may not cross the line into credit reports but come very close,” said Julie Brill, a member of the F.T.C. “The question is whether the lists are being used for marketing purposes or for something very close to credit purposes.”
Industry representatives say that data-based marketers use consumer marketing data for legitimate commercial practices, not for regulated purposes like making offers of credit or insurance.
They add that collecting marketing data benefits consumers because it allows companies to send people offers for products and services they are interested in. It also increases efficiency because companies know ahead of time not to send pitches for, say, lawn mowers to people who live in apartments.
“Consumers love getting what they want — information, products, benefits, upgrades — when they want it,” said Ms. Woolley of the Direct Marketing Association. “There is no evidence that data-driven marketing harms consumers in any way.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Rockefeller sent letters of inquiry to established database marketers like Acxiom, headquartered in Little Rock, Ark.; credit reporting agencies like Experian and Equifax, which have separate marketing arms; and newer companies, like Rapleaf and Datalogix, that specialize in helping companies pursue online and mobile consumers.
Mr. Rockefeller asked each company to provide extensive business details about its data collection operations since Jan. 1, 2009.
Scott Howe, the chief executive of Acxiom, said the company looked “forward to continuing to work with the Congress to help the members gain a deeper understanding of Acxiom’s business and how people and the economy benefit from the appropriate use of data.”
In an e-mail, Demitra L. Wilson, a spokeswoman for Equifax, said the company is not a data broker and that the only a small portion of its business involves unregulated, aggregated data about consumers.
And Gerry Tschopp, a spokesman for Experian, said the company welcomed the opportunity to discuss “the benefits of the appropriate use of consumer data” with legislators.
Representatives of Datalogix and Rapleaf did not immediately respond to e-mail and phone requests for comment.
Mr. Rockefeller asked the companies to respond by Nov. 2.

Even Small Players Can Seize the Day With an App Strategy

Sheri Gurock, co-founder of Magic Beans, a store that specializes in toys and baby gear, first used a mobile app in 2010.

 

In the summer of 2010, Sheri Gurock, co-founder of Magic Beans, a retailer specializing in toys and baby gear, decided to join the mobile app craze. But her timing may have been a little off.

Ms. Gurock deployed an app that allowed in-store customers to bypass the cash registers and check out their purchases themselves, on their mobile devices. Magic Beans got the app at no charge by working with its creator and agreeing to be a retail testing ground.

The app also allowed customers to scan a bar code to get product information, descriptions and reviews that had previously been available only to customers shopping online. When a customer bought an item usingAisleBuyer, the app would automatically recommend two related products in the store and offer discounts and coupons. That resulted in an 8 percent increase in sales to those who used the app, Ms. Gurock said.

But the app has been used by just 5 percent of customers, Ms. Gurock said. Although she contends mobile self-checkout represents the future of retail, Magic Beans, which has five stores in the Boston area and 50 employees, was “very early to the party,” she said. “This app was on a mission to change 100 years of shopping habits, where the in-store experience is bringing your items to a cashier.”

As a result, she said Magic Beans was phasing out AisleBuyer, but she expected to try again — and with good reason. By the end of this year, according to the digital marketing firm eMarketer, there will be 116 million smartphone users in the United States.

At that point, reports Cisco, the number of mobile-connected devices globally will exceed the number of people. That is a large and expanding canvas for apps when consumers have come to expect one for almost everything, said Noah Elkin, an analyst with eMarketer. “It’s getting to the point where apps are similar to search,” he said. “If you don’t get any results for a brand, that brand doesn’t exist.”

That puts growing pressure on small businesses to create and publish their own apps. This guide looks at the experiences of several companies that have tried.

BUILDING IT: THE BASICS There are essentially two kinds of apps. Native apps are written for specific operating systems — Apple’s iOS, for example, or Google’s Android — and are installed directly on a device. They are available through online stores like iTunes or Google Play. Mobile Web apps run on a device’s Web browser — and because of that can be slower — but they work on a variety of systems. There is no app store for the mobile Web so those apps can be harder for consumers to find.

Small businesses can build native and mobile Web apps using do-it-yourself tools or by hiring a developer to custom-design one. Tiggzi, a development platform made by Exadel, offers drag-and-drop tools for building apps and integrates services like Facebook andOpenTable.

Titanium from Appcelerator does not require developers to have deep programming experience, but they do need to know JavaScript, HTML or CSS. EachScape, which also uses drag-and-drop tools, lets users build and manage apps that are delivered to a device as a native app.

Most platforms allow the builder to add features like push notifications (alerts that can announce sales, for example) and the ability to connect to social networks.

The cost depends on the scope and complexity of the app, Mr. Elkin said. For example, using Tiggzi, which is a cloud-based subscription service, the cost ranges from free for one app to $50 a month for 50. Custom designing an app can cost several thousand dollars.

MARKETING TOOL PrimeGenesis, an executive consulting firm in Stamford, Conn., created an iPad app last year to encourage users to buy the firm’s book, “The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan,” written by three of the company’s founders.

The firm has 13 partners and about $2 million in annual revenue, and it used Mobile Distortion, an app developer in San Diego. The app, which cost about $35,000, provides executives entering a new company with an interactive, mobile template for creating and carrying out a 100-day action plan.

PrimeGenesis sells the full app for $9.99 (a basic version is free), but George Bradt, managing director, says the firm measures the app’s success by the number of clients it produces. “The app is there to drive people to the book, which markets our firm,” he said.

Each new client it attracts represents about $50,000 in revenue. “If we sell 10,000 books a year and convert five buyers into consulting assignments,” Mr. Bradt said, “that’s a quarter of a million dollars.”

SUPPLYING INFORMATION In June, Zeitlin & Company Realtors in Nashville introduced an app that puts updated Multiple Listing Service data at the fingertips of its agents, clients and potential clients. Zeitlin has 130 employees and about $8 million in annual revenue.

Its app takes a user’s location and creates a map of all the homes for sale in the immediate vicinity. It gives information about each house, including lot size and price, as well as school zoning and nearby restaurants, banks and grocery stores, said Sam Averbuch, a co-owner and the company’s chief financial officer.

A house hunter can mark a particular house as a favorite and that preference is stored in the cloud, so the agent can see it and then suggest other, similar homes in the neighborhood. Users can get information on any house they see and like, even if the house does not have a “for sale” sign out front.

Created by Virtual Properties, a developer in Madison, Wis., that specializes in the real estate industry, the app has been downloaded more than 1,500 times since it was introduced a few months ago. It costs $25,000 annually, which covers both the initial development fee and the expense of keeping the information up-to-date.

DEEPEN BRAND LOYALTY Carpe Diem Private Preschool, which has 120 employees, $5.8 million in annual revenue and four preschools in suburban Dallas, created an app in August 2011 to let parents observe their children through a classroom webcam.

The app, which cost about $5,000, was developed by one of the school’s founders, Tim Murphree, who happens to be a Web developer. Mr. Murphree wrote the most recent version using PhoneGap, a free, open-source framework for creating apps.

Ashley Murphree, a co-founder who is Mr. Murphree’s wife, wanted the app to reinforce the brand’s image as an innovative preschool that embraces new technology. “I think it sets us apart and has helped us gain new customers,” Ms. Murphree said. “The app says we are making a commitment to always improving.”

BE SURE YOU ARE READY Salumeria Biellese, which produces a variety of handmade cured salami and sausage, had the advertising firm Quinn Fable redo its Web site and create an app for customers, largely restaurants and wholesalers.

Salumeria Biellese has 20 employees spread among its Hackensack, N.J., production plant, its Manhattan retail store, and a Manhattan restaurant called Biricchino.

Fouad Alsharif, one of three owners, said the company is eager to introduce the app, which will allow customers to place and review orders using mobile devices, but it is waiting until it has the back-end infrastructure in place to support the app’s functions.

“We are in the process of expanding our production facility, adding drying rooms and refrigeration,” Mr. Alsharif said. “If I advertise that we have 100 pieces of a product available, it has to be available. So we can’t launch until we are really ready for it.”

The Global Arbitrage of Online Work

Physical work, like plumbing, is the only type of work unlikely to go online, according to oDesk.

 

If you thought it has been tough to find good work over the last couple of years, just wait.

The old problem was a bad economy, the kind of thing that ends. Trends suggest that we’re heading for a global online arbitrage of opportunity, however, with good workers in bad places able to snatch business away from better-performing environments. If that happens in large numbers, the competition will get really fierce for everyone.

Recently two of the biggest online staffing companies, oDesk and Elance, have released surveys concerning the companies that hire workers over the Internet to do things like write software, and the mindset of online workers themselves.

Between them, oDesk and Elance claim to have more than four million coders, Web designers, marketing professionals and other workers. Some even spot porn on Facebook at a rate of four for a penny. In the second quarter of 2012, oDesk says, its contractors worked over 8.5 million hours, a 70 percent increase over a year earlier. The average freelancer at Elance, meantime, expects to make 43 percent more money in 2013, as more employers come online.

Taken together, the reports indicate a lot of growth ahead in the business, and a lot of talented people looking for work wherever they can find it. oDesk, which surveyed over 2,800 companies that used its service, found that 10 percent of these buyers were college students, and 58 percent described their companies as start-ups.

Not all those young companies will survive, but the habit of hiring online seems baked in; 64 percent of respondents said at least half of their work force would be online by 2015, and 94 percent predicted that in 10 years most businesses would consist of online temps and physical full-time workers.

The range of jobs done online is increasing, too. Workers on Elance said the highest-growing job categories in 2013 would be Web programming, making mobile applications, design, marketing and content writing. oDesk respondents were heavily in those categories too, but also saw employment in customer service, secretarial work and high-level technology development.

“As we move along, we see an increase in all the categories of work,” said Gary Swart, the chief executive of oDesk. “We now have lawyers, accountants, financial executives, even managers.” The only work unlikely to go online is immediate physical work, like plumbing, he said, adding, “but even a plumber needs an accountant.”

What he doesn’t need, apparently, is an accountant anywhere nearby. Some 30 percent of the United States citizens working on oDesk are working for overseas companies, Mr. Swart said. An even greater number of overseas people are probably working for Americans, too. In interviews, both companies say the continuing economic troubles in Europe are driving more people to online employment. oDesk has seen a 78 percent growth in hours billed by companies in Britain this year, even though it has never had much of a presence there.

The online work is already changing how some governments think about labor. Last May the government of Bangladesh decided to classify online work as export-related commercial income, free of taxes, instead of as a taxed offshore remittance.

The idea, Mr. Swart said, is to foster the growth of online workers. In other words, if you’re reading this from one of the better parts of the global economy, it’s a good time to think about how to be indispensable.

Another interesting wrinkle from the oDesk survey: Education alone probably won’t help you get hired. Only 6 percent of the survey respondents rated schooling as a “very important” reason to hire someone. It was the lowest-rated reason to hire someone. Work experience was first, followed by how other people rated the contractor, pay, portfolio of work, references, and scores on skills tests that oDesk offers online.

In the future, having a degree may be helpful, but having a reputation will be even better.

A Bedding E-Commerce Start-Up Cuts Out the Middlemen

A new e-commerce company, Crane & Canopy, is trying to use the Web to save customers department store markups on pillows and comforters.

The three-month-old Bay Area start-up says it saves customers up to 70 percent off designer prices, because it designs, sells and ships the products itself, cutting out the fees from licensing firms, importers and exporters, and retail stores.

Crane & Canopy is one of a bunch of e-commerce start-ups that is cutting out the middlemen to sell items directly to consumers at discounted prices. They make their products at the same factories the designers use, but contract with them directly. The trend has the potential to reshape the way everything from office supplies to eyeglasses are sold.

A queen-size white, pintuck duvet cover on Crane & Canopy, for instance, is $99, while a similar one at West Elm is $119 and at Bloomingdale’s is $190.

“From the get-go, flattening the supply chain was part of the process,” said Christopher Sun, who founded the company with Karin Shieh after they met at Harvard Business School. “It took almost a year to get through the supply chain. It’s that convoluted.”

The strategy also means that the company can introduce new products every few days, instead of just every season like the big brands that have to coordinate with stores and licensing companies months in advance.

That means the company gets almost immediate feedback from customers, on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, so it can adapt on the fly based on what people like and don’t like, Ms. Shieh said.

Ms. Shieh said she had tried to create contemporary, feminine designs that she and her friends could not find when they wanted to decorate their homes. The designs, which tend to be bland, are named after San Francisco locales — the Marina has a swirl pattern and the Dolores is floral.

Another innovation for people who hate to make the bed: its signature duvet cover looks like it has a flat sheet for people who want to get rid of the pesky flat sheet that bunches up at the end of the bed, and zips instead of buttons for easy removal.

Crane & Canopy, which so far has raised money from angel investors, hopes to expand to other home products beyond bedding, like towels and sofa pillows.

“We’re trying new things with home goods that the big players have never tried, because we’re going to the factories directly and saying, ‘Let’s do something different,’” Ms. Shieh said.

For Some Drivers, an Electric Motorcycle Could Be the Best of Both Worlds

A prototype of an electric motorcycle, which has a gyro stabilization system.

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Zipping around on a motorcycle can be fun, but being in a downpour or an accident on one is not. Driving a car is safer and more comfortable, but traffic and parking can be annoying.

What if you got rid of the bad parts of both?

You might end up with something like the C-1, an electric motorcycle that looks as if it came out of the movie “Tron.” For protection, the bike is encased in a metal shell, and it is controlled like a car, with a steering wheel and foot pedals. Two big gyroscopes under the floor are designed to keep it from tipping over, even when a car hits it from the side. The C-1’s top speed is 120 miles an hour, and it can travel 200 miles on a full charge.

A small start-up called Lit Motors is developing the C-1 in a three-story warehouse here. Its 33-year-old chief executive, Daniel Kim, was tinkering with a biodiesel sport utility vehicle eight years ago when a 500-pound chassis nearly crushed him. The experience got him thinking about cutting out the bulk.

“Most people drive alone,” Mr. Kim said in an interview. “Why not cut the car in half? I was really into bicycles at that time and I thought, Why can’t we have the efficiency of a bicycle and motorcycle but all the amenities of a car?”

Fully electric vehicles have long been a dream among environmentalists and technologists, but companies have found it hard to deliver affordable and practical vehicles to the mass market. One of the biggest names in this field is Tesla Motors, which makes expensive sports cars and has had trouble increasing manufacturing.

But Lit Motors, which has just 10 people on staff, thinks it can bring the benefits of an electric vehicle even to those who aren’t rich. Mr. Kim says his motorcycle will be money-saving, safe to drive and simple to build.

The main culprit in the high price of electric vehicles is the battery, said Dan Sperling, a professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis and director of its Institute of Transportation Studies. Unlike computer chips and digital storage, which have improved rapidly while dropping in price, battery technology has made slow progress, he said, so vehicle batteries are still bulky and pricey.

The other challenge, Dr. Sperling said, is that most people are not ready to embrace electric vehicles yet. Consumers could be nervous about the reliability and maintenance of such an expensive purchase — buggy software, for example, could lead to more serious consequences than it would on something like a smartphone. That’s why many auto companies have stuck to making hybrid vehicles, which use both gas and electricity and are more affordable, easier to produce and more familiar to drivers.

“It’s not like when you buy an iPhone and you throw it out or don’t use it as much when it gets old,” Dr. Sperling said. “Unlike an iPhone or Windows system, it can’t crash — it has to perform with high reliability all the time.”

Mr. Kim, who dropped out of Reed College and the University of California, Berkeley and later studied industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design, has plans to overcome those obstacles. The motorcycle is lighter than a car so its batteries can be smaller and cheaper. And to improve reliability, the system is equipped with more components than it actually needs, Mr. Kim said.

The C-1’s secret weapons are the gyroscopes that allow it to balance itself, similar to the approach used in the Segway scooter. In a video, the company shows the bike remaining upright as a car yanks it from the side. Only one gyroscope is needed to maintain balance, but there are always two running; each gyroscope has redundant computer chips, controllers and sensors, so if any one of those fails, there are extras to back it up.

The bike is made up of 2,200 parts, or one-tenth the number in the average car, which should make it easier to mass-produce, Mr. Kim said. He plans to start manufacturing the motorcycle in the United States.

There are two main target markets for the vehicle, said Ryan James, chief marketing officer for Lit Motors: motorcyclists between 45 and 60 years old who are concerned about safety but don’t want to give up their two-wheeler and younger commuters who live in urban or suburban areas where driving a car can be a bother or feel wasteful.

Still, Mr. Kim’s start-up, which is on a hiring spree, faces some tough hurdles. So far it has raised just $720,000 from early investors and another $80,000 from family and friends. It will have to get people to buy a vehicle they haven’t had a chance to drive or even see in real life — and spend some serious money on it. Each motorcycle will cost $24,000 for the first production run of 1,000 in 2014, Mr. Kim said, and he hopes to bring the price down to $14,000 by around 2016, putting it in the range of a nice Ducati motorcycle or an entry-level car like a Honda Fit.

The company is already taking early orders and down payments on its Web site. About 250 people have signed up.

Mr. Kim said the company plans to team up with car dealerships in California, San Francisco and Los Angeles, in addition to selling the bikes online. And next summer, Mr. James will be driving an early version of the electric motorcycle to college campuses and conventions to show it to people and let them test-drive it. The company is also working on smartphone apps so C-1 owners can be part of their own social network.

Mr. Kim has his doubters. Kevin See, an analyst with Lux Research, which studies electric vehicles and alternative energy, said the motorcycle might appeal only to a small niche, and the initial price tag would be much higher than most people were willing to pay for a two-wheel vehicle. There are also plenty of more affordable vehicles on the market that perform well and already have a trusted brand, he said.

“It’s very tough to roll out a vehicle of any kind with such a significant price premium versus an incumbent,” he said. Mr. See said the C-1 reminded him of Aptera Motors, a start-up that tried to sell a futuristic car but went out of business in December. (Steve Fambro, a founder of Aptera, is listed as one of Lit’s technical advisers.)

Dr. Sperling of the University of California said the biggest challenge for Mr. Kim would be finding buyers for the vehicle and then finding the means to deliver it.

“He’s got some clever ideas, and it really comes down to questions that all these companies face, and that is can they find a market for the product, and can they actually do the manufacturing in an efficient and effective way?” Dr. Sperling said.

Still, he said he was optimistic about the company’s chances.

“There are people who want to do something to save the world, make a contribution to it, do something both in terms of energy and climate,” he said. “If it’s cool and good for the world, you’ve got a winner.”