Around Town

Some Arlington customers ordering on Uber Eats can now get their food delivered with futuristic flair — and no delivery driver.

Self-driving delivery robots, which began exploring the sidewalks of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor back in April, will begin providing their services today (Wednesday). From 10 a.m.-10 p.m. at participating restaurants, customers will be able to select whether to have a bot or a human courier deliver their food.


News

An information technology company is relocating its headquarters from Bethesda to Crystal City, promising 450 more jobs.

Spatial Front is moving through a $6 million investment from the company, assisted by a $500,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D) office said a press release today. The Virginia Jobs Investment Program will provide funding and services to support employee training at the company.


Schools

Arlington parents are organizing to push for new limits on school-issued classroom devices, joining a growing national movement to scale back screen time at school.

A group of parents in Arlington gathered on a recent Saturday night to share their children’s struggles with screen addictions and other side effects of school-issued devices.


News

A Ballston-based defense technology firm is investing $19 million to expand its Arlington headquarters and add 210 jobs, doubling its Virginia workforce.

Innovative Defense Technologies, headquartered at 4401 Wilson Blvd, develops automated software tools that help U.S. military programs integrate, test and field new systems faster. The expansion was announced today by Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), who approved an $800,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to help Arlington land the project.


News

A company that uses self-driving robots to deliver food, groceries and online purchases has begun mapping out the streets and sidewalks of Arlington County.

Avride, a Massachusetts-based company that produces autonomous cars in addition to delivery bots, has deployed at least one “personal delivery device” to chart a two-mile radius in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. The initial phase is expected to last for about two weeks, according to a county webpage about the devices.


Schools

A Wakefield High School senior is heading to the VEX Robotics World Championship for the second year in a row — and this time, he’s bringing an elementary school team with him.

Greyson Schroeher has spent the school year mentoring two Arlington robotics teams that both qualified for the World Championship in St. Louis later this month: his own Wakefield squad and a group of fourth and fifth graders from Glebe Elementary competing in their first season.


News

Arlington has a new publicly traded company after a local AI cloud computing platform completed a merger with a California-based health technology firm last week.

Virginia Square-based Corvex finalized a reverse merger with Movano Inc. — a group that develops “wearable solutions” for users to track their personal health data — last Thursday. Movano is now called “Corvex” and remains under the “MOVE” symbol on the Nasdaq Stock Market.


News

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Nearly two decades ago, Virginia gave tech companies a tax break on equipment and software, and they began to build. The state became a data center hub, and they kept building. Residents bemoaned the noise while they built some more. Artificial intelligence boomed, and the power grid strained — still, more building.

Now, amid a growing national pushback on data centers, Virginia senators have voted to end a projected $1.6 billion annual tax break, requiring the industry to resume paying a minimum 5.3% sales tax. The proposal has left some opponents warning that it would bring construction of data centers in Virginia to a screeching halt.


News

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) hopes to maintain national competitiveness on AI while preparing the U.S. economy for potentially massive disruptions brought on by new technology.

Speaking yesterday (Monday) at the grand opening of a new Ballston office for the cybersecurity company KnowBe4, which focuses on human and AI risk management, the senator emphasized the need to prepare for sweeping technological changes and their impacts on society.


News

Arlington’s summertime experiment using high tech to evaluate the state of sidewalks delivered mixed results.

The county used Kiwibots — laser-equipped robots — to roll up and down the sidewalks of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor for two weeks in July, assessing conditions.


Around Town

ARLnow and its parent company are developing an upgraded version of our Community Content Hub — and we need your help.

The Content Hub lets local businesses and organizations post events, announcements and home listings on our owned and partner local news websites: ARLnow, ALXnow, FFXnow, PoPville, Potomac Local and MoCoShow.


Schools

Arlington Public Schools is expanding an initiative that provides parents with information on how, and for how long, their children are using school-distributed devices.

In November, APS will move from an opt-in to an opt-out model for the Lightspeed Parent Portal, which provides families with weekly summaries of web-browsing activities for students in grades 2 to 12.


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