In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology news:

  • The Navy unveils an unmanned sub hunter
  • Philips is spinning off its lighting group
  • Senator wants probe of billboards that track mobile data
  • Delays in Oculus VR devices generate complaints

The details:

  • Pentagon’s drone warship

It’s not only drones and driverless cars that may become the norm someday — ocean-faring ships might also run without captains or crews.

The Pentagon on Monday showed off the world’s largest unmanned surface vessel, a self-driving 132-foot ship able to travel up to 10,000 nautical miles on its own to hunt for stealthy submarines and underwater mines.

The military’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in conjunction with the Navy will be testing the ship off the San Diego coast over the next two years to observe how it interacts with other vessels and avoids collisions. Unlike smaller, remote-controlled craft launched from ships, the so-called “Sea Hunter” is built to operate on its own.

“It’s not a joy-stick ship,” said DARPA spokesman Jared B. Adams, standing in front of the sleek, futuristic-looking steel-gray vessel docked at a maritime terminal in the heart of San Diego’s shipbuilding district, where TV crews filmed the robotic craft.

“Sea Hunter” relies on radar, sonar, cameras and a global positioning system. Unmanned ships will supplement missions to help keep service members out of harm’s way, Adams said.

Besides military leaders, the commercial shipping industry will be watching the ship’s performance during the trial period. Maritime companies from Europe to Asia have been looking into developing fleets of unmanned ships to cut down on operating costs and get through areas plagued by pirates.

  • Philips spinning off its lighting group

Royal Philips NV announced Tuesday that it is spinning off its iconic lighting division in an initial public offering so it can focus on its future as a health technology provider.

The listing on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange will involve the company selling at least 25 percent of its stock in Philips Lighting, which had sales of 7.5 billion euros ($8.7 billion) in 2015, Philips said in a statement. After the IPO, Philips aims to sell the remaining shares in its lighting division over the coming years. The price of the stock and timing of the IPO were not announced.

The announcement brings to an end a long and fruitless search by Philips for a buyer for the lighting division and marks a cutting of ties with Philips’ roots.

Philips CEO Frans van Houten called the decision “historic” for the Dutch company that is still a world leader in lighting.

The company started life in 1891 making carbon filament lamps in a factory in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven and became a world leader in the manufacture of light bulbs before branching out into the consumer and medical electronics markets, making everything from X-ray equipment to electric shavers and televisions.

“We believe Philips Lighting’s future status as a listed entity will strengthen its position as a global market leader in connected LED lighting solutions,” Van Houten said. “At the same time, Royal Philips will focus on the exciting and fast growing health technology market.”

  • Schumer: Probe billboards using phone data to track shoppers

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate an advertising technique that uses mobile phone data to learn about people who pass by billboards.

An outdoor advertising company, Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, says it works with partner companies to match aggregated location data. It can then cater ads to specific consumers based on the demographics of passers-by and determine if the people eventually end up at the advertiser’s stores.

The company uses aggregated data from partners, including AT&T. It says individual consumers cannot be identified.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, wants the FTC to investigate whether it is a deceptive trade practice because he says most people don’t realize their location data is being monitored.

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas spokesman Jason King said in a statement Sunday its RADAR program used for billboard advertising has existed for years and is based on anonymous information.

Clear Channel Outdoor operates more than 675,000 billboards throughout the world.

  • Oculus VR delays continue

Virtual reality, oddly enough, isn’t immune to the problems that arise in practical reality. Just ask would-be fans of the Oculus Rift headset, many — possibly most — of whom are still waiting for their $600 gadgets more than four weeks after they started shipping .

The delay, naturally, has sparked online grousing and even some data-based activism, including the creation of a crowdsourced spreadsheet for tracking who received their prized VR gear and when. Some longtime supporters of Oculus have declared themselves alienated by the company’s inability to deliver; others have defected to rival VR systems, or are at least considering it.

Christian Cantrell, a software engineer and science-fiction author in Sterling, Virginia, put in his pre-order roughly 15 minutes after Oculus started accepting them in January — and is still waiting. It’s been a “bummer,” he says, because he passed up buying a rival headset, the HTC Vive, hoping to be part of a VR “renaissance” with Rift.

“I’ve been kind of like an Oculus believer,” he says. “But if they bump it again, I might just order a Vive.”

It’s too soon to say how the delays will affect Oculus, much less the overall acceptance of VR, a technology that submerges users in realistic artificial worlds. (Early VR “experiences” consist primarily of video games .) In other contexts, big companies like Apple have managed to weather shortages and shipping delays for products such as the Apple Watch and its new iPhone SE.

But some find the Rift delays intolerable, especially given that Oculus is no fledgling startup, but part of Facebook — the social network bought it two years ago for $2 billion. “There’s an element of inexcusable incompetence going on,” says J.P. Gownder, a Forrester Research analyst, who placed his preorder in the first 10 minutes but doesn’t expect his Rift until mid-May.