Sunday, January 17, 2016

Robopocalypse Report #71: There's a bot for that!

Drones:


The making of Drones 100 is here, here and here

Airbus has an anti UAV (drone) system.

The Coyote UAV is being used to investigate hurricanes.

DSLRs cameras are going to the drones.

What's getting in the way of delivery by drone?  Google, Amazon and the FAA have different opinions.

California's Assembly is going on a blitz for regulating drones.  Or at least trying.  The regulations would require insurance and contact information for flying drones in the state.

How to register your drones with the FAA is laid out here. 

Kentucky is considering banning police drones.

Kim Komando asks whether or not you can shoot down drones over your property.  Really.

 In the state of Georgia, drones have been smuggling cell phones to inmates in prisons.

700,000 drones have been sold in the US and there have been an estimated 700 near misses with aircraft.  This is going to be a problem for military aircraft.

The UAE is having a drones for good prize competition.

Self Driving Cars:




Apparently, riding in Nissan's self driving car is "still a white knuckle affair."

A 'normal' Honda decided, in California, to see what it would be like to be a self driving car and do donuts.

Trust is the central issue with self driving cars.
Google's self driving cars appear to be not quite ready for prime time.  Google has released it latest performance report on its self driving cars.  And the cars would have hit things 13 times if not for human intervention.  Here's a look inside Google's self driving car testing center.  Google I/O conference's location in May hints that self driving cars might be taking center stage.

MCity gets profiled again.

The US federal government wants to accelerate the deployment of self driving cars.  Here's more from the LA Times.

RoboRace is an attempt at getting self driving cars in a Formula E style race format.
Apparently, the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic actually would ban a self driving car without a person being able to take control of it and a driver being present in the car.

Megan McArdle over at Bloomberg states self driving cars would thrive if they had more regulation.

3d Printing:



3d printed trilobites.

3d scanning is the flip side of 3d printing.  And the BeastCam is intended to do 3d scanning of live animals.

Some get testy over 3d printing's name and want it called additive manufacturing.  I think the label has stuck though, guys.

More on Aerojet's efforts to test 3d printed rocket engines.

Croft Additive Manufacturing has teamed up to print custom spacecraft parts.

Northwestern's 3d metal printing technology gets another expose.

UPS may be diving into 3d printing in a big way.

Why your next car should be 3d printed. 

3d printing is changing medical education.

Robotics:



 This bot lives in the uncanny valley.  It almost defines the uncanny valley.

Will we become emotionally dependent on bots?

Alphabet/Google is shaking up its robotics division.

Robotics can be used for physical therapy.

Addibot is a mashup of two different concepts, robotics and 3d printing, for repairing potholes.


Robotics are the next big thing.


Software is being developed to allow robots to copy the movements of people.

Monsanto is starting to deploy robots for specific jobs.

Are Japan's robot manufacturer's losing ground to Silicon Valley?

MIT has a robot for intentionally temporary housing.

Here come the the sex bots.  oy.

Exoskeletons:

 

Software Bots:

Personal digital assistants are what Eric Schmidt wants.

Even nonself driving cars will be incorporating software bots.

Software bots are apparently buying up Adele's concert tickets at Seattle Key Arena and a state senator wants to an investigation.

Meet Lunchbot, one of the new trend of software bots.

There's even a bot for helping with office etiquette now.

Baidu, the Chinese Google rival, has released its speech recognition AI software as open source.

Militaria:

The Brits seem to have a serious worry about a skynet/Terminator scenario.  I keep seeing the headlines of such from them.

Despite what the Russian media claims, the Russian military did not use combat robots in Syria, at least at the battle for the Syriatel tower in Latakia.

Philosophy and Economics:

CNN frets again the bots will be taking our jobs.

Techcrunch also wonders about the future of work and the bot wave, but with slightly different spin.

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