Saturday, March 10, 2018

Robopocalypse Report #100

Drones:

The Brits have developed a drone for mapping and monitoring the radiation at Fukushima.

Dedibot is a 3d printer married to a drone.

Dedrone can not only find rogue drones, but also their operators.

Dolce and Gabbana just had drones fly their bags down the runway.

Drones could help self driving cars navigate.

Edgybees has raised money to bring AR to first responder UAVs.

The EU Aviation safety board has submitted its proposed regulations for drones.

A drone was used to deliver bread in Ireland.

Drones are being used in sea turtle conservation efforts.

Watch drone footage of the 2011 eruption of Kirishima.

Ford proposed a tracker for all drones in the US.

Parrot's Flight Director mode automatically edits your drone videos.

A police drone found a driver that had left the car and collapsed from hypothermia.

San Diego State University has launched a lab to accelerate UAV development.

Skydroid has been contracted by the Brits to stop drones smuggling items into prisons.

University of Warwick students created a drone for search & rescue in mountainous terrain.

The US Whitehouse wants to allow law enforcement

Windhorse Aerospace wants to make and fly edible, yes, edible drones.

The WingtraOne PPK drone can make ultra precise 3d maps of locales.

Winter surveys of farmland by drone could be very helpful.

Self Driving Cars:

The backlash against self driving cars has begun.  In California, some people are attacking self driving cars.

Will autonomous vehicles improve traffic flow?

Self driving cars might actually make traffic worse?

Self driving cars can't use the automated car washes.

How do you get self driving cars to bend the traffic rules?

The US Senate is being urged to move the stalled self driving car bill forward.

Arizona is now allowing fully autonomous vehicles with no safety drivers.

Self driving cars that may launch in California in April will have remote drivers if there is a problem.

The British have kicked off a review of self driving car regulations.

California has changed the rules that allow truly driverless cars on its roads.

The Chinese are the most trusting of the idea of self driving cars on the road.  Germans and Americans are only half as trusting.

Computer vision systems for self driving cars are starting to be used for motion prediction.

A new lidar sensor could allow self driving vehicles to see around corners.

Fisker talks autonomous transportation amongst other topics.

Ford has launched its self driving car service in Florida.

A Gallup conducted a poll on self driving cars where Americans are rather uncomfortable with self driving cars and trucks.  Some are calling the poll interesting, but flawed.

Huawei claims its new smartphone can make cars autonomous.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also released their findings from a poll.

Lyft will start its self driving car tests in Concord, California on the former military base.

Nissan's self driving taxi will begin tests in Yokohama, but the program will only last two weeks.

Pony.ai has launched its own self driving ride sharing car program in China.

The next gen Porsche will not have self driving tech.

Qualcomm will be testing out self driving shuttles at Miramar, the USMC base.

Renault unveiled its EZ-GO autonomous car sharing service.

Starsky tested a completely driverless semi.  It had a problem.

Toyota has launched TRI-AD, a company dedicated to only working on self driving cars, with a $2.8 billion investment.

Uber's self driving trucks are making runs for paying customers in Arizona.

Volkswagen's Vizzion concept dumps the ability to steer for a digital chauffeur and unveiled in person in Geneva.

Waymo took some journalists on a ride in their self driving car.

Waymo's self driving trucks may begin work in Atlanta next week.

Robotics:

Biomimicing robots get discussed.

Boston Dynamics is teaching robots how to resist human interference.

In Brazil, papayas may soon be harvested by robots.

The Deebot N79S vaccumbot gets reviewed.

Canadarm2, the robotic arm on the ISS, has an earth bound derivative being used in surgery.

Flippy the robot has started cooking burgers at Caliburger in Pasadena.  It was turned off for being too slow.

Harvard has developed an extremely thin artificial eye.

MIT has developed a basic robotic autosaw.

Oslo wants to use unmanned underwater vehicles to help clean up trash in the Norwegian fjords.

Researchers have developed a robot that can pick and sort objects pretty well.

A robot wolf is going into production in Japan to protect crops.

Segway's Loomo transporter doubles as a robot and apparently doesn't impress some.

Tokyo's robots are getting a new way of controlling their motion.

Long range autonomous underwater vehicles are being designed to sample the ocean and its microscopic life.

Robots are getting a sense of touch.

Cyborgism:

Oregon Health and Science University has a prototype of a permanent artificial replacement for the heart.

Exoskeletons:

Cyberdyne (hmm) has launched their medical exoskeleton in the US.

Harvard has applied machine learning to exoskeletons so they can learn to help you walk.

Software Bots:

AI research may be facing a reproducibility problem.

AI researchers have been using Blockchain tech to share medical data.

Alibaba wants to overtake Google et al to become the foremost Cloud based AI provider.

Amazon wants Alexa to be a real time universal translator.

Alexa is also randomly laughing and its creeping people out.

Cortana can now check your Outlook mail.

Google's AI has been scanning and tagging old Life photos.

Google's Assistant now has more capabilities.

The Lawgeex software bot can do a better job of evaluating contracts than lawyers can now.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has developed a image recognition bot trainable with minimal data.

Why Humans can learn faster than AI does.

Machine learning is being used for medical decisions.

Software bots are being used to understand quantum systems faster.

Porsche is testing a neural net to ID problems based on vibrations detected in running cars.

META:

AI will create jobs, but the skills needed will change.

Automating jobs is how society makes progress, or some say.

Most Americans believe the robopocalypse will take away other people's jobs, but not their's.

The first robopocalyptic farm successfully grew barley in Britain.

AiFi has replicated Amazon Go's system for personless markets without needing much retrofitting.

I'm a bit uncomfortable with this one: automated smart mazes?  Doesn't that normally end up as a young adult dystopia?

A single malicious vehicle can block a 'smart' intersection.

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