Axios

Amazon is planning to unveil a new version of its Echo digital assistant with a display screen on Tuesday, according to media reports. The device will have a seven-inch touch screen, include video-calling and provide visual answers to verbal questions, according to reports.

The device is expected to cost over $200 — more than the $180 price tag for the original Echo, according to the Wall Street Journal. VentureBeat's Evan Blass tweeted a photo of the device on Friday:

Amazon's next move: The original Echo was quite successful, but it didn't take long for competitors like Google to come out with their own devices. Now, Amazon seems to be attempting to stretch the Echo's success with new devices, like the apparel-focused Echo Look it recently unveiled, along with this forthcoming touch-screen version.

America's two largest cable companies are exploring the wireless business together. Comcast and Charter Communications have inked a deal to look at places where they could potentially collaborate in the wireless space. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Worth noting: The two companies have "agreed to work only together with respect to national mobile network operators … for a period of one year."

Why it matters: It comes as both companies eye the mobile business, which is dominated by AT&T and Verizon. Working together could make some sense: mobile is a scale game and neither of them have scale at the moment. However, committing to each other could make it harder if either realizes what they really need to do is buy a carrier.

Note: Comcast's NBC is an investor in Axios and Andy Lack is a member of the Axios board.

Citymapper, a U.K.-based startup whose app helps users navigate various transportation modes, is debuting a "smart bus" pilot test in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, the company said in a blog post. The startup has purchased a small bus and outfitted it with display screens, custom software, and even USB charging ports for smartphones, and will be a suggested option when it fits into a user's route.

Better busses: Startups have been trying to "rethink" busses for years, some much more successfully than others. Chariot, a Bay Area crowdsourced shuttle bus service, was purchased by Ford last year, for example. Meanwhile, luxury bus line operator Leap Transit was forced to close shop for operating without a permit.

Uber has hired Raquel Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor and expert on artificial intelligence, to lead a new self-driving car unit in Toronto, the company told TechCrunch. Urtason and her team will work on perception, localization and mapping, and general machine learning.

Urtasun is a founding member of Vector Institute, a new AI research organization funded by federal and local governments, and technology companies like Google and Thalmic Labs.

Why it matters: Uber's self-driving car unit has lost several engineers and managers in the past year. The unit has also been embroiled in a high-profile lawsuit since February when Alphabet's self-driving car unit filed a lawsuit over intellectual property. Urtasun told TechCrunch that her work isn't related to LiDAR, the vision sensor technology at the center of the lawsuit, and that she doesn't have reservations about joining the company.