First off, the Robopocalypse will have its casualties and those elements which will be going extinct. The first of these is the venerable Predator drone. So ubiquitous and even iconic, the US Air Force will be retiring the MQ-1 Predator from its inventory by 2018.
Do drones bother wild life? Apparently, they do for bears.
Apple's self driving car plans seem to have been outed.
Google has also improved automated pedestrian detection.
Not exactly a self driving car moment, but it seems that BMWs and Mercedes are just as vulnerable to being hacked.
The Robopocalypse is coming for the lawn mower, too. iRobot has gotten its blessing from the FCC for its robo lawn mower. OTOH, the robo lawn mower has been around since the roomba first came out. Just not by iRobot. This is actually one of the examples of why we need to place more radio telescopes in space.
Apparently, the robopocalypse is also coming for shipping! As in ocean going ships. MARS - Mayflower Autonomous Research Ship - is supposed to cross the Atlantic in 2020 on the 400th anniversary of the crossing of the Mayflower.
The University of Cambridge has developed a proof of concept bot which can assemble other bots, then tests them and improves upon the design. Its very basic at this point. The pop sci write up is here and the scientific paper is here.
Russia's first medical exoskeleton is going to clinical trials.
The Economist has an article entitled "Automation Angst" about the concerns with the increasingly advanced robotics and software bots. The basis for the article is the set of three papers in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. One of the papers commits one of the Mortal Sins for Will: over use of hyperbole. A Cambrian Explosion for Robotics. oy.
A bit oddly, a Futurity article takes a couple authors scientific paper (and its associated model) about evolutionary rates and mass extinctions and applies it to artificial intelligence and robotics.
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