Robopocalypse Report #111

Drones:

The first global standards for drones have been unveiled.

A 737 seems to have been damaged by a midair impact with a drone.

Amazon promised drone delivery in five years...five years ago.  Where are they?

In Britain, the Gatwick airport was seriously impacted by one or more drones flying through restricted air space.  The Army was deployed.  People were arrested and then released.  A British Minister stated new detection equipment is needed.

Drones are being used in Britain to spot European nightjar nests.

The Dauntless cargo UAV can lift 200 lbs.

Regular drones are being used to monitor and track sharks.

Drones can be used to replace several cameras in film making and even used in animation.

Foldable drones could be used in rescues because they can fly through smaller holes.

Google/Alphabet's Project Wing drones will start delivery trials in Finland next year.

Google/Alphabet is working to make those drones quieter.

Indonesian rescuers are using drones after the recent tsunami.

The NYPD will start using drones.

The number of drone flights in Russia are projected to increase 16 fold from 2015 to 2020.

Russia has demonstrated a new cargo drone with claims it is capable of carrying 400 kg (880 lbs) 350 km (~220 miles).

The Self Repairing Cities Project continues to develop 3d printing drones that repair potholes.

Self Driving Cars:

Congress did not pass its self driving car laws before the end of 2018.

How self driving cars handle tricky highway merges.

Self driving cars are here.  Here just depends on where you live.

Audi is using Luminar's lidar for its self driving cars.

Baidu is testing its self driving cars with the Unity game.

Bosch is developing self driving tech.  Even betting on it.

GM Cruise's has a new boss, Dan Ammann.

Honda is testing off road self driving work vehicles.

Kroger has launched a self driving vehicle based service for grocery delivery in Arizona with Nuro's help.

Levandowski, the troublesome ex Google, ex Uber self driving car engineer who founded a church that believes AI is the savior, claims to have ridden a self driving car from the Atlantic to the Pacific, over 3000 miles.

A Lyft patent shows how their self driving cars might communicate.

May Mobility is another self driving car startup.

Rinspeed has shrunk its self driving pod.

Tesla celebrates over 1 billion miles using Autopilot.

Musk is stating Tesla's Autopilot will recognize emergency vehicles shortly.

Musk misused Tesla's Autopilot on the tv show 60 minutes.

Tesla is testing its Autopilot system for successful navigation of traffic lights and roundabouts.

TuSimple's cameras can see farther than lidars can for self driving cars.

Uber apparently ignored warnings about its safety before the death of the woman in Arizona.

Uber got permission to return its self driving cars to the road in Pennsylvania in a scaled down test.

Volvo's self driving trucks will be hauling limestone from a mine.

As reported before, Waymo has returned safety drivers to its self driving cars.

Waymo has already launched its self driving car service in Phoenix.  They still have safety drivers as noted above.

People are harassing Waymo's self driving cars.

Zoox has won approval to carry passengers in its self driving vehicles in California.

3d Printing:

3d printed houses vary from mud huts to luxury mansions.

A software bots are able to recreate famous paintings in 3d printing.

An Australian woman has received a 3d printed jaw after a tumor removal.

Bugatti is testing 3d printed titanium parts for its cars.

A Bulgarian patient has received a 3d printed rib, a first for that country.

A custom 3d printer makes better microfluidic devices.

Harvard Innovation Labs has set up the MakerFleet 3d printer farm.

3d printed scaffolds could help bones heal.

3d printed homes may be the future of architecture.

An Italian bioengineer figured out how to 3d print a steak from vegetable proteins.

A new paper states there needs to be a better way to allow more people to design 3d printed components.

Norwegian researchers compared the results of 3d printing in both a factory setting and in a military cargo container. 

Robotics:

A new type of robotic hand can play the piano with more human like motion.

Where are the SciFi promised home robots?

Amazon is launching a cloud-based robotics testing platform.

Amazon is trying to get developers to make the control software for small robotic car.

24 Amazon workers were sent to the hospital when a warehouse robot broke open a can of bear spray.

Arm is building chips with a sense of smell.

BART is a type of bar tending robot.

DHL will spend $300 million to quadruple the robots in their warehouses.

European scientists have made an artificial neuron from nanowire.

Studying fish will help robotics.

Harvard developed a robot that can climb on ceilings.

A new huggable robot about to go on sale looks eerily like Cheburashka.

Intel has developed a wheelchair controlled by facial expressions.

Kiwi, a delivery bot, caught fire in Berkeley, California.

Larvalbot has been seeding the Great Barrier Reef with coral.

Postmates unveiled its robotic delivery bot.

A Robotic rice planter is being sent to the fields.

Toyota has invested in the autonomous ship company, Sea Machine Robotics.

The Velox robot skates over ice, but does so in way that creeps some people out.

Waitrose and Partner's parent company is testing in robotic farming equipment.

Walmart is rolling out 360 mopping robots as janitors for its stores by the end of January.  The same robots are in use at airports in Boston, Miami, San Diego, and Seattle,

Walmart is also supposed to be testing a burger flipping robot.

Youbionic has added 3d printed arms to a Boston Dynamics Mini Spot robot.

The Z6 robot is an unfolding hexapod.

Cyborgism:

Meet Elowan, the first(?) mobile cyborg houseplant.

Researchers have developed a new hydrogel electrode for brain implants.

A new artificial joint allows lower arm amputees to have wrist movements.

Software Bots:

US law makers are seeking to introduce bills to make certain actions illegal for bots during the holiday season.

100 AI researchers could not get visas to Canada for a conference.

Canada and France want to study the global impacts of AI.

Alibaba's Voice Assistant is way better than Google's.

An Amazon Alexa had a software error that allowed another user in another house to spy on one house hold.

Alexa is gaining self teaching algorithms to be able to learn from the people its communicating with to better understand them.

The BBC asked two software bots to come up with christmas dishes that were inspired by cultures around the world.

In China, a facial recognition software bot took an ad on the bus for a jaywalker.

Digital assistants are getting better, but have a long, long ways to go.

Europe actually publishes the most papers on AI, not China or the US.

Can software bots actually clean up Facebook?

Google's head of AI research wants bots to think more like a brain does.

Google's not being as open as it ought over the Duplex calls.

Google's Deep Mind can predict the 3d shape of proteins.

Google Deep Mind now has a generalized game playing system for any sort of game.

IBM is looking at Watson for human resources.

The Japanese have developed an automated technique for coloring anime.

Memristers are making circuits that mimic synapses better.

Microsoft wants to stop facial recognition AI's 'race to the bottom.'

MIT and Facebook are teaming up to use bots to give everyone who does NOT have a address in the world one.

Musicians are using software bots to master songs.

NBCUniversal is attempting to use software bots to make their ads more relevant.

Communication between two neural networks is being worked on.

Nvidia has developed a software bot to generate cityscapes in real time.

Nvidia has also released its new machine learning chip.

Oregon State University is looking at using machine learning to work on energy storage.

Texas A&M is using software bots for material science.

The UK is looking at AI to predict and prevent violent crime:  pre crime, here we come.

Software bots can be used to detect water leaks in city water systems.

Software bots can accelerate cancer discoveries.

Software bots can be trained without negative data.

Software bots can reduce the gadolinium dose needed for MRIs.

A new software bot can track biological age on multiple levels.

Bots are also being used to tell how healthy you will be in old age.

Software bots have mapped every last solar panel in the US.

Software bots are being used for hiring now and its producing some unorthodox results.

A new form of machine vision uses software bots to recognize objects like people do.

Software bots are being used to determine if you could have a potentially life threatening skin infection.

Software bots are being used to notice details in low exposure images.

Software bots are being used to design peptides.

Software bots can sort cancer cells now.

Codeveloping hardware and software makes neural nets less power hungry.

Technology companies and employees are pushing back against software bots, or at least putting limits on them.  Some.

Tumblr is banning porn on its site and has developed a software bot to find and delete it.  It's really bad at its job.

Automation:

2018 was the year bots began taking over service jobs.

Automation is changing work.

Amazon is testing its cashierless system on larger stores than their Amazon Go.

Amazon wants to open its Go stores in company lobbies.

Space Tango plans a orbital robotic factory.

META:

Can an AI conference shed its sexist behavior?

Germany will attempt a universal basic income experiment in 2019.

New models can sense when and if people trust robots. Think of them as your robotic rat friends.

While the robopocalypse may be upon us, the singularity has a long, long ways to go.

Do not fear the robotic overlords!  Embrace them as coworkers!

The year in the robopocalypse.

Robopocalypse Report #107

Drones:

In Africa, autonomous drones will help curb illegal fishing.

Airbus' Zephyr S broke flight records on its maiden flight.

The Amazon Prime Delivery Drone has been inducted into Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

ATLAN Space has developed an AI drone to detect environmental crimes.

AT&T recently trialled medical supply deliveries by drone in Puerto Rico and has now teamed up with Softbox for their effort.

Austin PD will be holding public hearings about whether or not to use drones in traffic accident investigations.

Australian rangers are using drones to monitor and protect an endangered turtle.

Australia has established 10 new 'drone parks' across Brisbane.

Australia is also using drones to check if Koalas are in trees before cutting them down.

Blue Bear Systems and Cranfield University have teamed up for the UK's drone corridor.

Caltech, CAIST and Imperial College have developed an algorithm to herd birds away from airports autonomously using drones.

Cape May County in New Jersey just got a $3M grant to build a drone center.

China's new drone innovation center in Shanghai will help develop new drone tech.

The Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma is using drones to round up feral pigs.

The Chula Vista PD is holding off on the use of drones due to public perception.

Coimbatore uses drones to monitor and herd elephants in India.

The Denver PD has shelved a drone program due to public concerns.

Deveron, a drone company focused on smart farming, has acquired Veritas for its analytics capabilities.

Drake is using drones as part of his tour.

Drones are increasingly being used for crash scene analysis.

Drone swarms are something of an illusion...for now.

Drones are being used to thwart rhino poaching in South Africa.

Drone Dek has patented a solar powered docking station for drones.

Drone Delivery Canada has started a trial to deliver blood to remote areas.

An ambulance drone won a grant.

A drone enthusiast built a functional Lego helicopter drone.

English prisons supposedly had one inmate coordinating smuggling into prisons using drones.

Eversource Energy is using drones for electrical infrastructure inspection.

Flytrex is now testing food delivery in North Dakota.

Ford is using camera drones for inspection of its engine factory in Britain.

The French secret service intercepted a drone near the French President's summer home.

Georgetown police have been using drones, including to IDing and pursuing suspects.

IBM filed a patent for a drone to detect and deliver coffee if you are tired.

India will legalize commercial drones after reversing the UAV ban.

In India, a startup is looking to deliver medical supplies in rural areas.

Intel has unveiled an open standard for remote IDing drones.

Japan is trying to sort out how to deal with heat stroke at the 2020 Olympics using drones.

The Kansas Department of Transportation is about to launch its first flight for its drone integration program.

Korean Post will start trials of drone deliveries in August with an eye to a general roll out in 2021.

Drone company Korec has been hired to survey Ireland's roads.

Lincolnshire Charity uses drones to find homeless people.

Lockheed and the Drone Racing League have a challenge for people to develop a software bot that flies drones better than the pros in races.

MatterNet will begin testing medical supply delivery by drone in North Carolina.

North Dakota's UAV test site has received FAA approval to conduct beyond line of site tests of rones.

Pennsylvania law enforcement use of drones has raised privacy concerns.

Project Wing has demonstrated its first long distance residential delivery.

The Reno Fire Department has been testing a drone to approach and assess a fire before responders arrive.

The Royal Cayman Island Police were using drones as part of a disaster response test.

San Diego and Cape have teamed up.

Smuggling using drones may be happening across the Canadian-North Dakota border.

A solar powered quadcopter can fly for hours.  How big could a solar powered drone be?

In Spain, a life guard drone saved a swimmer's life.

The Spry drone can fly and swim underwater.

The Ukrainian Border Patrol found a tobacco smuggling drone.

Unifly will provide the drone traffic management system for NY's drone corridor.

Self Driving Cars:

Even semi autonomous cars have flaws.

Consumers have become MORE apprehensive of self driving cars than they were before.

Self driving cars are being tested in a massive simulation.

An OpEd against self driving cars and for car ownership.

Self driving cars should look down, not just forward.

Almost all self driving car accidents in California were caused by human drivers, not the self driving ar.

Apple has hired back Tesla's former test engineer.

An Apple self driving car had its first accident.  It was the fault of the safety driver.  Doh.

How Aurora is making self driving cars.

Autonomous pods have been given huge eyes to make eye contact with pedestrians.

AutoX has started testing its autonomous grocery delivery service in California.

Blackmore has a new lidar for self driving cars.

CMU and Yamaha showed how drones can be used for simple cinematography.

Daimler applied for a trademark that strongly implies it is going for AI driven self driving cars.

Drive.ai is not just making self driving cars, but making them connected cars as well.

Fiat Chrysler confirmed it invested $300M in self driving car testing grounds.

Ford has outlined its approach to self driving cars.  They have stated they want to get self driving cars right rather than be the first to market.

Hyundai just test drove a self driving semi on South Korean highways.

Kodiak has jumped into the self driving truck business.

Kroger has confirmed Scottsdale, AZ as the site of its self driving delivery vehicle tests.

Lyft and Aptiv have provided more than 5,000 rides in self driving cars in Las Vegas.

Nuro is running their self driving car grocery delivery service beta test in Phoenix.

Olli, a self driving 3d printed shuttle, made its debut at the University of Buffalo.

Scale wants self driving cars to be connected.

Tesla claims its self driving car chip is ready.

Toyota claims there are passenger safety issues with self driving cars.

Uber lost $900M last quarter and is being urged by its investors to dump the self driving division.  Toyota just invested $500M into Uber's self driving division. Uber is not going to dump its self driving car divison.

Volvo unveiled its self driving car concept, the 360c.

Waymo's self driving cars have problem with turning corners and Arizonans absolutely hate the vehicles.

Waymo gave a writer for The Drive a ride in its self driving car.

A new study states truckers are in no danger any time soon from self driving tech.

Yandex has started testing its self driving car tech in Russia.

The CEO of Zoox, a unique self driving car company, has been suddenly fired.

3d Printing:

Could 3d printed stem cells patch spinal cord injuries?

The ArianeGroup wants to 3d print its new turbine blades for the new rocket engines.

GM thinks 3d printing will make cheaper, better cars.

Graphene can now be 3d printed as an aerogel.

Researchers 3d printed an autonomous underwater robot.

A prototype bionic eye was 3d printed.

Despite a court order extending the ban on 3d printed gun plans online, the manufacturer has placed those plans on its website for a pay-what-you-want amount.

The CDC is using HP bio printers to expedite new antibiotic tests.

A 3d printer using metallic glass has been developed.

How economically viable is 3d concrete printing?

Lawrence Livermore National Lab developed a nanoporous gold that can be 3d printed.

Is 3d printing a viable technology for manufacturing  medium altitude long endurance drones?

Robotics:

Robotics has a serious security issue.

Human hands are far superior to robotic ones to date.

Anki's new home robot is cute, but will it be a viable product?

Using autonomous robots can greatly accelerate marine exploration.

An ESA astronaut remotely controlled a robot from the ISS.

The Peacock Spider has inspired a soft robot.

Robots can be used in rehabilitation.

Skin for a robot is more sensitive than human skin.

People react differently to robots, especially if they are...mean.

Children give in to robot "peer" pressure.

UUVs have been studying the Antarctic Sea and found there's a surprising amount of CO2 exhale.

New materials might become the basis for grippers for robots.

A robot IDs electric vehicles and automatically charges them up.

Japan is trialing robots to teach english.

Yale has conducted a study that found robots can help autistic children with social interaction.

Robots can help kids read more, too.

These robotic hands are made of paper.

Brexit has caused a push for robotic strawberry pickers.

Senator Flake is attempting to get funding for 'beerbots' banned from the Pentagon budget.

Developers at the University of Tokyo and Keio Unversity have developed a robot you strap to your back and someone else operates remotely.  That way you have another set of hands and eyes.  Telling your boss to get off your back has a whole new meaning.

Queensland University has developed RangerBot, a UUV intended to monitor and protect the Great Barrier Reef, especially from starfish.

Using robots to help those who are housebound to interact with other people.

A simple, but clever robotic hand as been developed.

Some hospitals will use robot ducks to comfort kids with cancer.

A robot was developed to simulate a VERY uncooperative patient for surgery.

Robat is an autonomous robot that explores its surroundings via echo location.

An MIT grad developed a robot that will swim through pipes looking for leaks.

A robot sailbot autonomously crossed the Atlantic for the first time.

Exoskeletons:

Ford thinks exoskeletons are ready for prime time in the factory.

LG just added an exoskeleton to its line up.

Software Bots:

AI can develop prejudices, too.

Transliteration can help Amazon's Alexa find data across languages.

Baseball players want software bots to replace umpires.

The British are facing an AI brain drain.

Will China overtake the US as the lead in AI development?

Christie's will auction AI generated art for the first time.

Facebook and NYU have banded together to improve MRIs using software bots.

The dangers of Frankenalgorithms.

Google's Assistant can understand two languages at once now.

Google's DeepMind has teamed up with eye doctors to ID eye diseases.

A small team of part time student coders beat Google's software bots on a benchmark.

Google seems to be working on a software bot fitness trainer for smart watches.

Google is using a software bot to control the cooling in its data centers.

Google is letting anyone use its software bot toolkit to find child sex abuse pictures.

IBM's Watson might be flopping.

Machine learning technique reconstructs images passing through a multimode fiber.

Microsoft is using bots to make searchable video transcripts.

Microsoft is enabling testing of Alexa and Cortana to control your XBox One.

MIT thinks it can secure cloud based AI without slowing it down.

MIT also produced a software bot that can tell if you're depressed based on how you walk.  Take your pills, citizen.

An OpenAI software bot steamrolled a pro DOTA2 team.  Apparently, it happened, because its basically cheating.  The latest round, the OpenAI bots just got thrashed.  

A path to AI.

Samsung's Bixby is still rough around the edges.

The dilemma of software bots and drug patents is being debated already.

What happens when software bots teach themselves to cheat?

A software bot uses patient data to make cancer treatments less toxic.

A software bot was taught how to do simulated dribbling.

Software bots were taught to write Shakespearean sonnets.

Software bots can probably learn to ID authors of anonymous code.

Software bots will help improve how your avatar looks and behaves in video games.

Software bots are being used to develop brain cancer treatments.

A new software bot has been connected to big data to discern the potential for disease development in people.

A software bot has been IDing heat resistant coral reefs in Indonesia.

A software bot has been used at Mount Sinai to ID acute neurological disorders.

Software bots might be able to fix the 'bad' lip syncing in the future.

Are software bots running amok on Amazon's Mechanical Turk?

Software bots can now spot cheating at universities.

A software bot is very good at predicting earthquake aftershocks.

A software bot is being developed to diagnose detection of diabetic retinopathy autonomously.

Software bots can even edit video to make it appear you can actually dance.

Software bots as music producers, not artists...

Software bots might be used to help fight elephant poachers.

Are software bots for the consumer doomed?

Software bots can now recognize text.

Startups in Silicon Valley want to use software bots for debt collection.

Supercomputers and machine learning are improving power plants.

Uber says it has a software bot that can distinguish whether a trip taken is for personal use or business.

The World Economic Forum is warning software bots (or AI) could disrupt the financial system.

Automata:

Amazon Go's checkout free store is coming to NYC.

An Amazon Go competitor has opened to the public in San Francisco.

META:

The robopocalypse ought to benefit even the workers.

Some are wondering why there are so few women involved in AI research.

The Chief Economist of the Bank of England is warning about the robopocalypse.

AI can be a force for good.

It's not the automation taking the jobs...

Is it time to start talking about AI's effects on xenophobia?

Studying universal basic income has turned out tougher than expected.  Whooda thunk something political would be so complicated?

Another anti self driving car rant.

Robopocalyse Report #105

Drones:

Aergility is moving its cargo carrying UAV work to the full scale prototype stage.

Amazon patented 'hack proof' delivery drones.

Aspen, Colorado swapped its fireworks display for a drone show for the 4th of July.

AT&T and Verizon are testing using drones as emergency cell towers.

The British Drones Bill may finally be working its way through Parliament.  At least to the public consultation stage.

British researchers have a pothole filling drone.

Bularia has developed a cargo drone.

Are cargo drones the way to go for the shipping industry?

Colombia is planning on using drones to wipe out the coca plant.

One Colorado lawmaker wants to make it a felony to fly a drone over a wild fire.

The Commercial Drone Alliance will meet with the House of Representative's Subcommittee on Aviation.

Delft Dynamics is developing a tugboat towline delivery drone.

DJI has partnered with a South Korean telecom to stream drone video.

Drone photography from the POV of architect.

Drones can be used to detect butterfly mines after wars.

Drones are learning to fly themselves.

Drones launching fireworks is a bad idea.

Drones are being used to survey African wild life.

Drone Harmony has an app that automates inspections of cell phone towers.

Dropcopter's drones can improve pollination 60% in 'bad' bee years.

Two drug dealers who were delivering by drone have pled guilty.

Exyn is going to release a drone in a South American mine to map it...without using GPS.

The FAA's new program, LAANC, will cut the time to getting a commercial permit for drones.

The FAA has banned drone flights above prisons and US Coast Guard stations.

Green Peace crashed a superman shaped (yes, superman) into a French nuclear reactor building to 'prove a point.'

An Idaho Falls police officer has been tapped to create a roster of all Idaho state agencies using drones.

Indiana's first responders are increasingly using drones.

Intel's Shooting Star drones were used at Travis AFB in California for a 4th of July celebration.

The International Drone Racing Association has selected the drone for this year.

KT Telecom has unveiled an airship drone for search and rescue.

Medical supply drone delivery company Matternet just got a $16M investment from Boeing.

MIT has developed a chip for micro drones.

Mystic is a bot powered drone that follows you and recognizes gestures.

NASA has flown one of its drones in public air space in a solo flight.

New Zealand is seeking stricter rules for hobbyist drone users.

NOAA is using drones in the Arctic to monitor the environment.

Ohio is testing using drones to monitor traffic.

Pilsner Urquell used a drone to inspect its beer bottling plant.

Reykjavik residents will see drone delivery of goods expand soon.

A Swedish woman encountered a peeping drone.

Switzerland is seeing a disturbing increase for the number of drone-aircraft incidents.

UNICEF is calling on companies to deliver vaccines via drone in the South Pacific.

The University of Tokyo has created the Dragon drone that can autonomously decide what shape it needs to navigate through terrain.

The USGS is using drones to monitor the craters of the active volcanoes in Hawaii.

Vicksburg, MS' police department got permission from the FAA to use drones.

Volvo is using Luminar's lidar.

Wisconsin police used a drone to save a man from self harm.

Hundreds of drones are on display at the 2018 World Drone Congress.

Wichita police bought a drone for search and rescue, but some are skeptical.

World Economic Forum has launched a drone policy group.

Self Driving Cars:

The gov has blocked a device that can fool the Tesla Autopilot.

Members of the self driving industry have created a group to study the impacts of the technology on society.

A societal impact for self driving cars might be the massive loss of parking fees.

How much could a family potentially save by giving up its car to use a driverless car sharing service?

There are calls for the gov to get the regulations for self driving cars, and autonomous vehicles in general, right.

Some experts believe self driving cars are much further away than people think.

Self driving cars can have issues telling if people are going to cross the road.  Or not.

Is the hype holiday over for self driving cars?

Apple has hired an ex Waymo engineer for its self driving car development.

An ex Apple Employee was charged with trying to steal Apple data for its self driving car project.  The employee bought a last second plane ticket to China and was attempting to go work for a startup there.  XMotors, the company the employee was hired by, claims no secrets were passed along.

Baidu has built its 100th Apolong self driving bus.

Baidu will be testing 10 of its self driving buses in Japan.

comma.ai, George Hotz's latest insanity, has released its Level 2 autonomy software to retrofit Honda Civics to become self driving cars.

Two of Cruise's self driving Bolts bumped each other, possibly providing the first case of self driving cars having an accident with each other.

Daimler has received permission to test its self driving car tech on the streets of Beijing.

Einride has developed an electric, self driving logging truck.

A 1965 Ford Mustang has been modified to be self driving.

Georgia Tech is using scale RC cars to test self driving tech.

Google's Loon and Wings UAVs have been spun off into their own separate companies like Waymo was.

Kache.ai is a new, secretive startup that may be getting into self driving semis.  The funky part?  They hired Levandowksi, the engineer in the middle of the self driving car IP theft from Google and Uber.  This is the same Levandowski who started a church stating AI was going to be our Messiah.  Not kidding.

Mercedes will launch its self driving taxis in California next year.  They will be using nvidia's chips and tested somewhere in Silicon Valley.

When will Nissan EVs drive themselves?

nuro and the grocery store Kruger are planning a driverless delivery system.

nuTonomy can now test its self driving cars throughout all of Boston.  Previously, it had been restricted to a single area.

Perceptiva automata is trying to make self driving cars safer for pedestrians.

roborace will attempt its first self driving climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

StreetDrone announced an open source self driving car software stack.

Tesla Model S and X's will be able to park themselves with the Summon feature.  There may be some confusion as it is also being said this is coming to the Model 3.

Uber has started increasing its simulations for its "drivionics" for self driving cars since the accident.

The Uber 'driver' behind the wheel of the self driving car was streaming Hulu at the time of the crash.

Uber is going to restart testing its self driving cars this summer.

Uber has laid off 100 of its employees in the self driving division.

Voyage has selected Enterprise to manage its fleet of self driving cars.

One of Waymo's self driving car testbeds was hit by a red light runner in Arizona.

Waymo has added Jaguar I-Pace's to its self driving car fleet.

British startup Wayve claims to have an algorithm that can learn how to drive in 20 minutes.

Robotics:

Say hello to Disney's stuntbot.

Inside the not Boston Dynamics lab, the Caltech AmberLab, making mad robots, too.

China has new UUVs.

fuRo has an awesome mashup of a bot that will follow you and a scooter.  Replace the scooters in SF with these.  geez.  Much better.  Just keep them off the sidewalk.

An autonomous electric ferry is starting service in Norway.

Harvard has developed a cockroach-like bot that can walk on land or water.

Honda has ceased developing the Asimo robot.

KLM has a bot to carry your luggage to the right gate.

A maker created a iphone controlled robot to act as a tug for his Cessna.

MIT's Cheetah bot can now climb stairs with obstacles.

The first MRI guided surgery robot.

Ovis has a self driving suitcase.

Robots have an improved method of picking things up.

Robots still have issues picking up objects.  You can help improve their abilities.

Roboticists are delving into biomimicry a lot.

SmokeBot is a robot for firefighters.

Tesla is touting a new type of factory.

An unmanned underwater vehicle was used by search and rescue to find bodies after a tragedy with an Indonesian ferry.

Volvos wants self parking tech for yachts.

3d Printing:

3d printing photosensitive materials is now possible.

3d printing will radically change factories.  For real this time.

Prellis Biologics has a way of 3d printing tissue with capillaries.

Rice University is working on 3d printed graphene foam.

The Russians have found a new way to 3d print tissue.

The US Army has applied for a patent on a new 3d printable concrete composition.

Researchers have come up with a way to create custom 3d printed polymers.

Data files for 3d printed weapons are protected as free speech.  This is gonna get weird.

USAF is now 3d printing its toilet seats.

Estonian researchers have created a peat mixture to 3d print houses.

Austin based Icon can now 3d print houses up to 800 sq ft in 24 hours.

Cyborgism:

MIT has an interface that uses brain control and gestures to control rockets.

There is prosthetic skin that can perceive pain and touch.

There is also a prosthetic ankle that can handle rough terrain.

Software Bots:

Adobe is developing a bot that detects shopped images.

Amazon has launched a version of Alexa for hotels, starting with Marriots.

Amazon's Alexa for IoS can now use voice commands.

Amazon's Alexa is losing market share in an amazingly horrible way.

Apple has snatched Google's former head of 'AI.'

Baidu has also developed a software bot to detect tumors.

A British judge has suggested using software bots to review social media data.

The British NHS is asking Google to explain its business model for DeepMind Health.

DARPA is funding development of bots that can design computer chips.

Facebook has acquired Bloombury, a software bot for natural language processing.

Facebook has been sending bots into a virtual NYC to improve.

Fuel3d has started testing its facial recognition software.

Google's Cloud TPU's are online for paying users.

Google is attempting to train bots to be able to predict if and when a patient will die.

Google has trained a bot to create 3d models from 2D pictures.

Google Assistant has an upgrade.

Google Home and Chromecast went down for some users.

Google has started publicly testing its Duplex software bot.

Could Google's voice assistant actually handle your next insurance claim?

If a Google bot decides your use of the cloud for your business should be banned, what do you do?

Google's DeepMind can now play Quake III like a person.

Guess has created a store where Alibaba bots can help you put together outfit combinations.

Hinge is using bots to match people for dates.

IBM developed a version of a bot to debate and present unbiased arguments.  hmm.

IBM is laying off a lot of people at its Watson Health unit.

An Instagram Influencer is nothing more than a software bot: she doesn't even exist.

The IRS wants a software bot to secure its data.

Could the first machine learning algorithm able to correctly project extrapolations been found?

Microsoft's Azure face recognition software now works on more than just caucasians.

Microsoft's software bots may help predict natural disasters.  Sort of.

MIT has developed a software bot to help with medical image analysis.

MIT also has a software bot that can identify and isolate individual instruments in music.

NVidia has released new tools for software bot developers.

Nvidia has added more containers full of computers for software bots.

Nvidia's bot fixes bad photos by looked at other bad photos.

OpenAI entered its bots into a DOTA 2 competition.

Software bots could be a nightmare for the pharmaceutical industry.

Software bots are being used to create phishing links for hacking your computer.

Software bot generated deep fakes can be detected, for now, by the fact they don't get blinking right.

A software bot is getting predictive for food choices.

Software bots are needed to map roads in real time.

A Software bot has built the largest to date library of intercelluar interactions.

Software bots are being used to help study the brain.

Software bots are being used to ID different types of volcanic ash.

Software bots are being used for ecological studies, IDing, counting, etc. animals.

A software bot has been developed to help predict outcomes for schizophrenia treatments.

Software bots have been developed to help spot protein crystals under a microscope.

Should sports switch to bot referees?

Stanford has a software bot that helps predict the side effects of drugs.

Uber has applied for a patent for a software bot that can tell if a passenger is drunk.

Automata:

Automated systems, including access control, can have drawbacks.

Microsoft is trying to compete with Amazon for personless stores.

The University of Haifa has developed an autonomous system for detecting schools of fish.

Momentum Machines has opened its first burger restaurant in San Francisco.

Why you ought to let a bot make your next meal.

META:

The Robopocalypse might not take your job, but it might make it boring.

One of the potential answers to the robopocalypse has been suggested to be the guaranteed income or universal basic income.  Ontario, Canada is conducting an experiment on what happens when a UBI is used.

A call for creating AI to serve humanity rather than replacing it.

The US House of Representatives wants to know when the robopocalypse is coming.

Can AI have values, but not conscience?

Some economists are getting worried because too much time is being spent on discussing whether or not automation will take what jobs rather than planning for what comes after jobs are taken.