Monday, May 23, 2016

Robopocalypse Report #82

Drones:


Harvard's robobee can now stick to surfaces using static electricity.

First responders are hoping to improve their ability to get to disaster victims faster with drones.

Rwanda is expanding its blood delivery by drone to 20 hospitals this summer.

Janus is a new double headed drone.

Xiaomi is getting into drones.

Drones caught 70 sharks in a feeding frenzy in the Great Barrier Reef.

There are calls to minimize the impact of drones on wild life.

There's a plan to plant trees via drone.

Self Driving Cars:

Otto is a self driving truck start up.  More info.

Major automakers are using the same equipment to test their self driving cars.

Lyft & GM's self driving cars will be hitting the road in San Francisco next year & GM is already testing them out.

Uber is also going that route and their first self driving car has hit the road.

Will self driving cars make traffic infinitely worse rather than better?

Ford says self driving cars are 5 years away from changing the world.

Who owns the self driving car's data?

Meet Audi's self driving car called Jack.

Honda has developed its second self driving car.

The French have created a self driving shuttle bus.

Google received a patent to have glue on the hood of a car for when an impact takes place with a pedestrian.  For a thriller movie, I think we can see the kidnapping scene now.  For the zombie apocalypse comedy...

Tesla has updated its Summon capability for self parking on its cars.

3d Printing:



Harvard created a 3d printer that can print structures in mid air.

 HP has unveiled the Multijet Fusion.  A monster of a 3d printer.

3d printing is hitting the fashion runways.

3d printing and architecture, a combo that's coming together.

MIT has started 3d printing ... hair?

Robotics:

This robot's eye is really handy.

There's a robotic ping pong trainer.

Robots are getting smarter to deal with clutter.

And they are getting stronger, but gentler.

The Germans have come up with a soft actuator for robots.

The fire starter drone has been lighting it up in Nebraska.

An American football team has picked up a robo dummy for practice.

The Knightscope bot is working a mall in California.

Robots are being used in Australia for ranching.

Exoskeletons:

More news on the Hyundai exoskeleton.

Harvard's soft exoskeleton gets covered again.

Cyborgism:

Meet DARPA's luke skywalker.  Or at least the guy with a robo arm.

Software Bots:

Using animal training techniques for machine learning.

Machine learning is being used to run physics experiments.

Amazon is upgrading Alexa.

Google's AI efforts have gone full Vogon...for poetry.

Google has their own competitor to Alexa.

Here's Google's vision of software bot assistants.

Singularity:

Huawei is prepping for the Singularity.  Really.

Philosophy, Economics and Navel Gazing:

The Robopocalypse will render some people completely useless.

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