Saturday, June 29, 2019

Robopocalypse Report #117

Drones:

AirPix has created a self drone.

Amazon's delivery drone has evolved into a tilt wing of sorts.

Amazon - the company with all the facial recognition software it is selling to police! - has patented surveillance as a service.

BMW's might get cleaned by drones some day.

Dutch scientists have created the world's smallest autonomous racing drone.

Extinction Rebellion is considering - at least claiming to - be considering shutting down Heathrow Airport with drones as a protest.  They are now stating they will wait until after summer - tourist season.

Flytech's Birdie UAV can become VTOL with an add-on.

Guam's coral reefs are being assessed by drone.

Harvard has made its Robobee pico drone take flight without a tether.  The whole pico drone weighs 256 mg.

Intentional fires are being studied by drone to improve models of how forest fires will spread.

Japan has banned flying a drone while drunk.

The ROTORWing UAV puts an interesting spin on a fixed wing VTOL UAV.

Singapore's airport was disrupted by drones for the second time in a week.

Telefonica has developed an autonomous drone for monitoring forest fires.

Uber will start delivering MacDonald's food via drone in San Diego this summer.

The Vector Scorpion transforms from a fixed wing UAV to a tricopter drone.

YOUBIONICS has created a nightmare inducing addition for UAVs: hands.

Self Driving Cars:

How close are self driving cars, really?

The shifting alliances of self driving cars make for interesting viewing.

To make self driving cars safer, look to how human brains recognize things.

A new study suggests self driving trucks won't wipe out trucker jobs.

How do you build a self driving car?  Forget about the car.

Apple is reportedly in talks to buy Drive.ai.  How this jives with the interest in buying Tesla is a little uncertain.

BMW unveiled a self driving car concept, the Vision M.

Boxbot wants to do autonomous deliveries.

Carnegie Mellon will collaborate with Ford's self driving car branch.

Daimler has a plan to get its self driving trucks on the road.

Domino's is planning on starting pizza delivery by self driving Nuro car in Houston.

EasyMile's self driving shuttles are supposed to be hitting campuses this year.

Florida is allowing fully driverless cars on its roads.

Ford will test its self driving cars in Detroit.

Lyft has completed 55,000 self driving rides in Las Vegas.

Self driving Nissan Leafs may be prowling Gongzhou, China soon.

Don't overestimate the semi in semi self driving cars.

Starsky Robotics' self driving truck has hit 55 mph.

Starsky is testing its fully automated semis on Florida's roads.

A Tesla Model 3 was sent driving without anyone in the latest, illegal stunt by a YouTuber.

A Tesla Model X accelerated out of the blue and nearly killed a pregnant woman.  Tesla is being sued.

A Tesla Model 3 driver was caught literally napping.

A driver is upset by Tesla's Autopilot and wants it regulated in this OpEd.

People keep spotting folks sleeping in their Teslas as the Teslas drive.

One of the reasons people may be overestimating the capabilities of Tesla's Autopilot might be the name.

Toyota and Softbank's self driving car venture, Monet, is getting more backing.

Uber and Volvo's latest self driving car has been unveiled.

Volvo's cabless self driving semi, the Vera, is moving loads in Sweden.

Volvo's vehicles use Nvidia tech.

Waymo is developing driverless cars with Renault and Nissan.

Waymo's self driving Jaguars are going to be field tested in Mountain View, California.

Waymo has hired former Anki staff.

Robotics:

Amazon 'cloned' a neighborhood to test its delivery robots.

Amoeba Energy has developed a soft robot for deliveries.

Autonomous 'roboats' may assemble water platforms as needed.

Boston Dynamics is preparing to launch its first commercial robot, Spot.

The creators of the social robot, Buddy - in something of a scandal - need more money to launch.

Carnegie Mellon has developed a wild robo fish that using a fluid for hydraulic driven motion and as electrical storage.

Dishcraft has a robodishwasing machine.

DJI has developed an educational robot for kids.

Facebook has released software to make robots easier to program.

Fieldworks Robotics demoed its first raspberry picking robot.

GEBCO-NF's USV won the XPrize for ocean mapping.

A Georgia Tech Slothbot gets outed to the public.

Ikea is working with startup Ori to make robotic furniture for small apartments.  Just imagine the assembly of that.

iRobot's latest bots cooperate to clean.

Lancaster University has created semi autonomous robots to help with decommissioning nuclear reactors.

University of Leeds is working on a miniature robot to check for diseases of the colon.

Microsubs might deliver drugs in the body one day.

MIT developed a sensor covered glove to help robots ID objects.

MIT also developed an algorithm to allow robots to predict where people will move next.

MIT also developed a robot that can detect what an object is by both sight and touch.

Meet the Movo Robot.

NASA's Astrobee robots are flying around in the International Space Station.


Nissan is testing a robot to weed rice paddies. 

Ocean Cleanup is testing its plastic cleaning robot.

A Purdue researcher is developing a smart phone app to allow average people to program robots.

Robotic surgery for throat cancer isn't any better than radiation therapy.

Are robots getting a little too good at how they move?  Some think so and are creeped out.

Imagine robot muscles powered by glucose.

Social robots can benefit hospitalized children.

Robots with a sense of "taste."

A robot has been designed with a software bot to pack boxes.

Shadow Robot Company demonstrated haptic feedback using a robotic hand.

3d Printing:

A 3d printer for human tissue is launching to the ISS.

Anisoprint is using basalt fibers for 3d printing of composites.

Boom Supersonic will be using 3d printed parts in their supersonic aircraft.

Chinese engineers are printing supercapacitors with graphene.

Columbia University researchers are 3d printing molds for hair follicles.

Scientists can now 3d print biological tissue without scaffolds.

Cyborgism:

An experimental prosthetic foot deals with uneven terrain.

A chip can upgrade your memory.

Software Bots:

The United States Congress is very unhappy about how big tech has turned loose the bots online.

True AI is hard.

AI researchers in China want to continue a global sharing culture.

The ACLU points out connected security cameras plus software bots is 1984 and then some.

Adobe created a software bot to detect when images have been manipulated.

Alexa and Siri were not built to deal with harassment.

Amazon's TextTract bot can read millions of pages of text in hours.

Experts are urging the EU to ban a social credit software bot like the Chinese have deployed.

Facebook has a photo realistic virtual sandbox running at 10k fps for AI work.

Google's DeepMind can thrash human players in Quake III capture the flag.

Google's AI Assistant is really a fraud.

Twitter has purchased a software bot company Fabula to fight fake news on its platform.

USC ISI has developed a new tool for detecting deepfakes and can do so 95% of the time.

Walmart is using software bots to watch for theft.

The World Economic Forum is developing rules for software bots.

Digital assistants might be able to tell if you are having a heart attack.  or an orgasm.  awesome.  not.

A software bot driven subreddit has been a thing for a while.

Software bots are being used to detect brain aneurysms.  

How software bots detect rare diseases.

Can software bots make decisions like people do?

Using software bots for genome research.

Can software bots detect Deep Fakes?

Using software bots for proteome research.

Training a single software bot can cost as much as 5 cars' lifetime carbon footprint.

Using echolocation, software bots can tell what you are doing.

A software bot generated face was used on linkedin by a spy.

Researchers have developed a software bot that generates your face from the sound of your voice.

Can software bots help with attribution of art to its proper creators (fake detection!)

Software bots can provide online legal help, but when will the legal profession allow it?

Software bots can ID which kissing bugs spread Chagas.

Software bots were used in quantum imaging experiments.

A new software bot allows you to generate deepfake videos with the person's voice by simply typing the words you want the person to say.

The power and limits of software bots and machine learning.

Software bots are being used to personalize radiation therapy for cancer treatment.

A software bot is being used to capture players' strategies in an RNA based game.

Software bots are helping to understand how electrons behave.

Software bots are also helping predict heart attacks.

Software bots could be a game changer for Alzheimer's research.

Software bots could be used to study student brains so teachers could improve their courses.

Automata:

Inside an Amazon warehouse.

The British Antarctic Survey has an automated station that works through the winter.

Are robots job killers or coworkers?

Another study says automation will destroy another 20 million jobs and worsen inequality.

META:

The robopocalypse isn't coming for your job, management is.

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