Robopocalypse Report #103

Drones:

A nano drone has been created: a robotic 'fly' powered by a laser has taken a very short flight.

A US program plans on opening more airspace to testing drones.

Apple is joining a drone program to improve its maps.

Criminals used drones to thwart an FBI rescue.

DJI has partnered with Microsoft to make apps for its drones.

Drones are being tested for medical supply delivery in North Carolina.

Drone startups are getting squashed by big businesses.

Can self flying drones be taught without crashes using VR?

Ehang's drones did break the record for the largest swarm, but many didn't follow instructions.

Uber will be testing food delivery by drone in San Diego.

There is a wind tunnel just for drones.

The drone racing league expands into France.

The ACLU is worried about facial recognition coupled with drones.

A drone near the Saudi royal residence caused a stir.

Microdrones might be able to return home based on the visual record of the route it came in by.

A drone in NM saved lost hikers' lives.

Will the Whisper Drone deliver on its promise to make drones lose their whining noise?

Self Driving Cars/Vehicles:

Some are questioning self driving car terminology.

Where did this self driving car thing come from anyways?  (Really?!)

75% of Americans are skeptical of self driving cars.

When will you get to start using self driving cars?  This year.

8 million self driving cars are expected to ship in 2025.

Apple now has more than 50 self driving cars on the road in California.

Audi has its own self driving software that is not available in the US.

BMW's self driving ride sharing plans are glimpsed.

BMW is working with a company to bring solid state lidars to self driving cars.

Britain and the state of Michigan are teaming up on self driving car rules.

Didi, the Chinese Uber rival, now has permission to test self driving cars in California.

Drive.ai will start a pilot program for giving rides in Frisco, Texas.

Governor Kasich wants Ohio to be a testing ground for self driving vehicles.

LG bought ZKW to develop tech for self driving cars.

Lyft has deployed self driving cars in Las Vegas for testing.

MIT has developed tech to allow self driving cars to navigate without a map.

Mobileye is conducting self driving car tests in Jerusalem.

Mobileye's self driving cars are coming to California.

Roborace's self driving race car isn't faster than people. Yet.

A single self driving car can prevent traffic snakes.

Will self driving cars end car ownership?  Or is that a city centric POV?

Self driving cars' shortcomings are highlighted in a California DMV report.

A startup wants to develop autonomous flatbed train cars to help with deliveries.

A Tesla Model S crashed into the back of a firetruck while on Autopilot.  The driver has admitted to being on his phone when it happened.  

Just how safe IS Autopilot?  Some state there's no evidence Autopilot saves lives.  Tesla's Autopilot may be in a bit of a crisis.  Tesla apparently nixed more driver monitoring for cost reasons.  After the crashes, less Tesla owners are using Autopilot.  The head of Autopilot left and Tesla will now split the hardware and software portions into separate groups.

A Tesla owner is banned from driving for 18 months after setting the Autopilot and getting into the passenger seat while on the highway.

Toyota is building a self driving car test facility in Michigan.

Uber's self driving car fatality was caused by software that intentionally ignored objects on the road.

Uber will resume self driving car tests in a few months.

Uber hired a former NTSB official to help with safety.

Voyage wants to open up safety designs and source code for self driving cars.

Waymo will start accepting fares in its self driving cars this year.

Waymo has told law enforcement et al what to do in an emergency for its self driving cars.

Waymo has stolen away the head of safety from Tesla.

Waymo showed how its self driving cars navigate snow.

Waymo's most recent crash raised some questions.

Waymo & Uber are going after Levandowski for the IP theft.

3d Printing:

A German startup is selling 3d printed bicycle tires.

A new drone, the Tundra-M, is 3d printed.

Circuits can be directly printed onto the skin.

GM is planning on 3d printing parts for cars to improve them.

NASA successfully 3d printed a rocket engine's combustion chamber from copper.

Colombia's first 3d printed concrete house has been completed.

A portable 3d bioprinter prints skin.

A group is trying to 3d print prestetched fabric.

There is a startup to 3d print wheel rims.

Researchers have 3d printed human platelets.

BMW 3d printed a motorcycle frame.

A startup plans on creating 3d printed dental implants with a 24 hour turn around.

A 3d printed smart gel could produce underwater soft robots.

Improving 3d printing of plastic.

CMU has a cheap 3d printer that can print self folding objects.

Robotics:

Boston Dynamics is at it again.  

And again.

Boston Dynamics' SpotMini robot (see the second above) will go on sale next year.

Dyret the quad, but adaptable robot.

MIT has created a robotic boat that uses the wind to help it sail like a plane does.  Sorta.

Saildrones are being developed to monitor the ocean.

Spyce is a restaurant in Boston that has replaced the chefs with robots.

A new automated system has been created to grow organoids.

Robots are learning the art of gripping.

Meet Mia, the pet entertaining robot.

Meet Henry.  The sex bot that wants to know all your hopes and dreams.  Yep, you read that right.  And you thought privacy was a problem already!

Misty robotics has a personal robot.

Nemo is an underwater drone.

An Arab speaking bot enters the uncanny valley.

A motorless polymer, soft robot has been developed.

DARPA is starting a new challenge for bots going underground.

A robot taught itself how to dress people and it didn't use computer vision.

Robotic spinal surgery is a thing now.

The Smithsonian has a new tour guide, a Pepper robot.

Robot launched weather balloons have brought the robopocalypse for remote outposts in Alaska.

Amazon has big plans for home robots.

The Aquanaut is a submersible robot.

Starship's delivery robots are coming to college campuses.

An eelbot has been developed to study marine life.

There is a skull drilling bot for surgery coming.

There is a bot designed to clean up the balls on a tennis court.

There is a robot designed to explore the surf zone on beaches.

Apple's iphone disassembling robot is rather impressive.

An industrial robot was used to help build a school.

A robotics startup went under and lessons were learned.

Self learning robots may be used to inspect nuclear power stations.

Edible...robots?!

French nanorobots built a tiny house, 300 micrometers by 300 micrometers.

Why robots cannot out jump a flea.

Exoskeletons:

Exoskeletons may not completely remove physical stress, but might move it to another part of the body.

Cyborgism:

Lightning struck a woman's home and her neural implant stopped working.

Mutual learning may be key to greatly improving brain computer interfaces.

Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside their bodies.

A module brings a sense of touch for prosthetics.

An adhesive 'skin' acts are a controller for devices.

Animal cyborgs created by KAIST.

Software Bots:

Google conducted a demo of its Assistant calling to make an appointment with a hair salon.  The demo was, if it worked as advertised, mind blowing.  However, skepticism hit immediately and now Google is refusing to disclose details of the demo and folks are starting to believe the whole thing was, well, fake.  Google has stated the Assistant will ID itself when it does call.

Google's news app has a software bot running in the background.

The ethics of using AI in health care are being broached.

A software bot is helping diagnose patients more accurately when using brain scans.

Software bots plus wearable tech is being tested by the University of Waterloo to detect the onset of medical problems.

A software bot better IDs which patients are at risk of developing pneumonia while on a ventilator.

A software bot can detect a heart condition in LQTS.

Can a software bot detect autism in babies?

There's a software bot oncologist now.

Bots seem to be better at detecting the cause of blindness in preemies than people are.

Tech firms are claiming to be putting up ethical guard rails around the use of AI.

Human rights groups are worried about bias being built into AI and machine learning.

Can bots make art?

A Canadian startup is applying machine learning to bond issuance.

What is Alexa teaching kids?!

Alexa was hacked to be used as a spy tool by researchers.

The head of Amazon's Alexa efforts has quit.

Alexa will soon have a memory.

Big data and machine learning are the future of commercial fishing.

Software bots ought to debate and judge one another?!

A software bot developed for navigation developed some interesting features in its neural net.

CMU has launched an undergrad degree in AI.

Digital assistants can be controlled via inaudible sounds.

Facebook is using instagram photos and their hashtags improve its computer vision.

Zuckerberg has stated its easier for bots to recognize nipples than hate speech.

Software bots are being used to keep gamblers hooked and gambling.

Software bots are being used to try to understand illegible hand written items in the Vatican Archive.

Google Assistant may be smarter than Amazon's Alexa.

Europe is planning a big AI research hub to compete with the US and China.

A software bot has been successfully taught to classify galaxies based on images from Hubble.

Software bots can scour code for passwords.

Software bots are being used to, yes, really, farm billions of cockroaches.

A spam algorithm has been used to help study animals.

Our own flaws might become reflected in AI.

Microsoft is pursuing its own path to AI.

Can AI fix Facebook?

GM is using software bots to improve lightweight auto parts.

Machine learning systems are only as good as the training data sets.

Machine learning bots are looking for very young stars.

Facebook's software bot can create fake VR 'memories.'

NVidia's software bot can fix photos by recognizing what's missing.

Is Google Assistant an easy way to automate your home?

The Screen Actors Guild has declared it will fight bot created face swapping porn.

Robotic counselors?!

Software development is getting a bot.

With the deluge of data from CERN's experiments, scientists are turning to software bots to sort through all the mess.

Has AI become alchemy?

META:

Robert Downey Jr will narrate a series on AI on Youtube Red.

Wired's guide to robots.

Who will do well in the robopocalypse?  The educated in the West, supposedly.  However, 50% of jobs can be automated.

The US White House is hosting an AI summit and task force.

Gary Kasparov is sounding a bit...Singularitarian.

The creator of West World opines.

Researchers are rebelling against a new paywalled journal by nature on Machine Learning.

Sergei Brin, one of the cofounders of Google, is warning of the darkside of AI.

The robopocalypse may have been dealt a setback because factories of the near future may have a lot more humans than previously thought.

Is Universal Basic Assets (*cough*communism*cough*) to fund Universal Basic Income the answer to the unemployment from the robopocalypse?

Kurzweil, the fallen prophet of the Singularity and now Oracle for Google, is now predicting Universal Basic Income will be wide spread in the 2030s.

AI researchers are making bank.

How to interact with robots and not be an idiot.

A RAND report paints a pretty grim future with the robopocalypse.

The current approach to AI misses an important point: the ability to reason why.

Boston Dynamics Mini Spot can Open Doors

John Connor's Dog Found

Or is the dog afraid robots will become man's new best friend?

The Next Generation Atlas Robot is Here

Robopocalypse Came for Santa's Reindeer

Robopocalypse Report #14: If the Terminator Walks in the Woods...

The Robopocalypse Report normally starts with the buzzwords of the robopocalypse, the drones.  However, today something pretty impressive came across the feeds.  Atlas, Boston Dynamics' Proto Terminator, went for a walk.  In the woods.   So let's start there.

Skip to 00:43 to see.  Here's an article to accompany.  Some people find it creepy.

 Now back to our photogenic Kardashians of the Robopocalypse, the drones.

Bezos has come out to state he sees drones being crazy common for deliveries.  Some have twisted it to say more so than mail trucks and are less than happy about it.  The mail truck is likely to be replaced.  A bot can or will be able to drive to the mailbox and drop off 24/7, 365 with little concern about overtime. 

Some are wondering if we will pick privacy or convenience when it comes to drones.  I don't think its that simple.

Boeing has patented the concept of a drone which turns into a submarine.  Considering what Sandia National Labs has been working on, I'm not sure this ought to be patentable.

Nevada researchers have been exploring whether or not drones can be useful for firefighting.  behind a paywall, sorry. 

Europeans have successfully developed the software for drones to land without the use of GPS.

The market for drones is expected to grow from $4 billion annually today to $14 billion over the next decade.

In the military side of the looming Robopocalypse, the Russians are finally embracing drones for artillery spotting with their own, smaller drones; the US MDA is looking to try the Airborne Laser again on a drone (I made the mistake of commenting)...which sounds a bit like the FD Avenger I wrote up and not too different for use than the 20 year old Raptor/Talon program they attempted but with a laser instead of missiles; and the Pentagon is planning on having 90 drones in the air at a time by 2019 while still retiring the Predator.

On to the self driving cars, some are wondering whether or not self driving cars can actually replace people.

On the other hand, drive sharing - like through Uber - has dramatically impacted the incidences of drunk driving in San Francisco.  You have to wonder what it would be like if inexpensive robo cabs were everywhere.

Auro Robotics unveiled their self driving campus shuttle prototype.

Those nefarious Koreans and Germans have developed a brain computer interface for exoskeletons.

The Australians have developed a passive exoskeleton for helping with soldiers' heavy loads.

The University of Bristol along with NTT have created a new photonic chip.  They are, of course, claiming a breakthrough.  Been hearing that for 25 years, too.

IBM claims to have a 'brain inspired' non von Neumann architecture chip called TrueNorth which can simulate "1 million programmable spiking neurons and 256 million configurable synapses." 

Robopocalypse: Boston Dynamics' Atlas Gets an Upgrade

Boston Dynamics Introduces new Robot: Here's Calworthington and his Robopocalyptic dog Spot!

DARPA's Atlas Unplugged

DARPA's Atlas robot is designed for its Robot challenge and in its first version it was impressive, if slightly threatening. Now it's back with an up-grade and its 75% new and amazing.

Atlas was the robot from sci-fi, big, black and powerful - only it had these cables that provided it with power and made it look a little like a dog on a leash. It was designed to provide a hardware platform for teams competing in the DARPA Robotic's Challenge DRC - a competition designed to encourage the construction of an effective disaster response robot. Now it has been revealed that the finals of the DRC require that the robot used not to have a tether and hence Atlas needed a redesign.

link.

Robopocalypse: I Keep Looking for the Wires

Robopocalypse Now: MIT Gave DARPA/Boston Dynamics Atlas Hands

China Unveils Boston Dynamics Big Dog Knock-off, Other Unmanned Advances

In early September Norinco revealed a "Mountain Quadruped Bionic Mobile Platform": a four-leg walking unmanned ground vehicle. A brief mention in a Chinese press report noted that it could perform transport, reconnaissance or combat missions or could be used for disaster relief in mountainous areas.

The same article noted that it weighs 130 kg while carrying a payload of 50 kg at a maximum speed of 6 km/h. It can traverse a 30 degree slope and has an endurance of two hours. An image showed it carrying four backpacks.

link.

The Robopocalypse Will be Squishy

[A] phase-changing material built from wax and foam, and capable of switching between hard and soft states, could allow even low-cost robots to perform the same feat.

The material — developed by Anette Hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering and applied mathematics at MIT, and her former graduate student Nadia Cheng, alongside researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and Stony Brook University — could be used to build deformable surgical robots. The robots could move through the body to reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way.

Robots built from the material, which is described in a new paper in the journal Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, could also be used in search-and-rescue operations to squeeze through rubble looking for survivors, Hosoi says.

link.

Are Google and DARPA Headed on Collision Course?

Even though the Internet search giant owns two companies that have contracts with the Pentagon, Google is choosing to forego military funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in at least one robotic competition.

Google bought the robotics firm Schaft that had developed a bipedal robot that won DARPA’s Robotics Challenge. The competition asked companies to develop a robot that could perform disaster response tasks to include navigating debris, climbing ladders and turning off a valve.

Schaft earned the highest score in DARPA’s competition. Google and Schaft are not bailing from the program all together, but the company is moving to the “self-funded Track D of the program,” DARPA officials announced last week.

Google earned $37 billion in 2013 and it appears the company would prefer to distance itself from the military in its initiative to develop next generation robots. Enough questions are already being asked about Google and other companies’ cooperation with NSA and U.S. intelligence agencies.

Along with Schaft, Google also bought Boston Dynamics, a company that DARPA has come to depend on to develop multiple pieces of equipment.

link.

Cyberdyne's Real Name is Google: Google Acquires Boston Dynamics

Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.

It is the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the last half-year. Executives at the Internet giant are circumspect about what exactly they plan to do with their robot collection. But Boston Dynamics and its animal kingdom-themed machines bring significant cachet to Google’s robotic efforts, which are being led by Andy Rubin, the Google executive who spearheaded the development of Android, the world’s most widely used smartphone software.

The deal is also the clearest indication yet that Google is intent on building a new class of autonomous systems that might do anything from warehouse work to package delivery and even elder care.

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has not sold robots commercially, but has pushed the limits of mobile and off-road robotics technology, mostly for Pentagon clients like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. Early on, the company also did consulting work for Sony on consumer robots like the Aibo robotic dog.

Boston Dynamics’ walking robots have a reputation for being extraordinarily agile, able to walk over rough terrain and handle surfaces that in some cases are challenging even for humans.

link.

Or is it  Greystone Industries?

I think its more a Cameron style Robopocalypse here.  After all, google has enough computer power for a skynet.  Are we sure Larry and Sergei haven't been replaced?  True, no austrian accents from either...;)

DARPA's Terminator Hackathon is Coming

link.

Boston Dynamics' Atlas: A VERY Impressive Update

Put some very good sensors on this. Link to this and place on soldier's head. Give data feeds from something like this.   And war just radically changed.

Then page Joe Haldeman.