Monday, December 28, 2015

Robopocalypse Report #68

Drones:



After a drone nearly hit a skier, they have been banned at the World Cup.

There are some rumblings the FAA's drone registry is ...well... illegal!  OTOH, it is going ahead and the folks wishing otherwise might be just grasping at straws.  That said, the registration and regulations are already clashing with established local and state laws.  Oh!  The mess regulation is now.

Russia is requiring a drones be registered, too.

Russia is also claiming it will be building military versions of the flamethrowing drone.

Japan will be using drones for disaster relief.

Can you stop your neighbor from flying over your property with their drone?

It seems even drones get confused about what they are going to do when they grow up.

North Dakota is aiming to be the Silicon Valley for drones with its wide open spaces and few people.

Tennessee is banning guns on drones except for the police.

Home insurers are trying to get drones excluded from policy coverage.

Drones have been banned in the San Francisco Bay's East Bay Regional Parks.

Coming in 2016, GoPro's own line of drones.

Its coming: twitter enabled drones.

Self Driving Cars:


Mercedes' self driving 'lounge'

California's DMV has issued it's draft regulations for self driving cars.  It outlines how the makers must prove safety, requires reporting on cyber security/etc,  and mandates the cars must allow for people to take over.  Google is unhappy with it.

Google has teamed up with Ford for building self driving cars.  Here's possibly why.  Some are heralding the teaming arrangement as having the potential for Ford to become the king of self driving cars.  That might be a bit overblown.

Samsung has decided to work with BMW.   The start of teaming with traditional manufacturers along with tech companies is getting to be interesting.

Google and Uber are racing to who gets to the self driving taxi market first.  Or that's one take.

Rinspeed has turned a BMW i8 into a self driving, drone launching concept car.

Tesla is a little miffed about one guy supposedly being able to create a self driving car.

Some are claiming there is a serious problem with driverless cars: they follow the law and because people do not, the self driving cars keep getting hit.

The University of Cambridge has been working on machine vision for self driving cars.

Elon Musk is now predicting self driving cars are only two years away. 

Bosch on the other hand claims self driving cars are a decade away.

Cory Doctorow is fretting over who controls the code behind self driving cars.  This is a stupid issue.  Airliner or even private planes do not release the code for their aircraft avionics.

3d Printing:

In a provocative article, it is claimed CNC manufacturing killed 3d printing.  In return, 3d printing advocates point out 3d printing vs cnc is a false dichotomy. Others are claiming 3d printing is actually on the upswing, not petering out.

Intellectual Property and 3d printing are two areas where there is a strong chance something will go really off rails.  After all, when a physical object is purely a design downloaded, all sorts of IP can be violated.  Well, it seems it can even happen accidentally

How could the 3d printing could revolutionize car manufacturing businesses?

Local Motors' 3d printed car gets a profiling again.

How to 3d print a water powered robot.

Made in Space has created the first 3d printed cubesat chassis intended for an actualy launch.

NASA's first 3d printed rocket engine is 75% complete and then was tested. Successfully.

Is 3d printed medicine one of those Next Big Things?

Will HP succeed in dominating the 3d printing market in 2016?

There is now an autonomous robot with a 3d printer in it.

Robotics:

Tel Aviv University has developed a jumping, locust inspired robot and proposed it be used for search and rescue.

A company  has developed a robot to strip the sound dampening rubber tiles from their submarines.

The NSF has awarded $37M for the development of bots designed to cooperate with people.

LG has combined a security system with a mobile robo vacuum.  This can only end well!

A sea going robot could clear plastic and trash from the sea.

China is betting big on robotics.

It had to happen sooner or later, but someone has been named the Robot Whisperer.

Japan has designed and built a tomato picking robot.

Another opinion piece on the introduction of construction robots.

Remember that guy jumping around with the sign on the street corner to promote a business?  The bots might be coming for his job, too.

A humanoid robot company is opening in Turkey.

Cyborgism:

Get ready for the first cyborg olympics.

Software Bots:

An AI was 'crowdtaught' how to drive.

Meet Xiaoice, the sympathetic chatbot app on Chinese phones.  Her is here?

Computer World worries about the dark side of the coming chatbot revolution.

Will Google's AI research spark an arms race?

Philosophy and Economics:

 CNET discusses the Robopocalypse.

The News & Observer does the same.

Here's some more AI Anxiety.

Rotterdam's dock workers have decided to strike, in part, against the introduction of robots.

Some arguments made by the OpenAI Foundation as to why they ought to open source AI software code and their hopes for the foundation.

Psst.  Get over your AI Anxiety.

And can we hope the anxiety over the Robopocalypse has peaked and get on with dealing with its economic consequences (and implementation).

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