Public records reveal T-Mobile’s plan to make Seattle a 5G hub in partnership with UW and tech giants, ‘Infant to Work’ Program Expands at Washington State Offices, and more in this week’s Seattle in the Spotlight.

Public Records Reveal T-Mobile’s Plan to Make Seattle a 5G Hub in Partnership with UW and Tech Giants

GeekWire | Nat Levy | August 22

“T-Mobile wants to make the Seattle region the capital of 5G innovation, and it has brought along an all-star cast to make that vision a reality. T-Mobile, along with the city of Bellevue, the University of Washington and venture capital firm Quake Capital, applied with the state of Washington to designate parts of Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond as a 5G “Innovation Partnership Zone,” an alliance of institutions, government organizations and companies, according to records obtained by GeekWire. And while those organizations are leading the charge, the list of partners adds some major firepower to the plan: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Intel, WeWork and many more have signed onto the proposal.”

Robotic Race Car Platform from Univ. of Washington Designed to Speed Research around A.I.

GeekWire | Kurt Schlosser | August 21

The drive to better understand robotics and artificial intelligence now includes a cool little robotic race car thanks to researchers in the Personal Robotics Laboratory at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. MuSHR, or Multi-agent System for non-Holonomic Racing, looks a bit like the kind of radio-controlled car you might want to launch off some sweet jumps in the backyard. But it’s actually an open-source, full-stack robotics platform, and the easy-to-assemble, low-cost nature of it all makes it a fit for advanced robotics research and education — or plain old hobbyists and hackers.

‘Infant to Work’ Program Expands at Washington State Offices

KING 5 | Drew Mikkelsen | August 20

More Washington state employees are bringing their babies to work. The state’s “Infant to Work” program started as a pilot program in 2015 with a handful of parents who could bring their babies to work at the Washington State Department of Health. Since then, 95 Department of Health employees have taken part. Today, nearly 20 state agencies and commissions participate and the Health Care Authority recently expanded the program to allow babies up to nine months.