Robopocalypse Report #16: Drones, Cars, and the Hype-opocalypse!

The Chinese Predator equivalent(*), the Wing Loong, tests different weapon systems.

Two men were arrested for the attempt to smuggle contraband into a prison via drone.

Australians are using drones to track wild life.

The joint Sony-ZMP company Aerosense's drones have taken flight.

California's State Assembly is considering a bill that would ban drones over private property below 350 feet.  The only way to do drone delivery, the bill's author states, would be for drones to follow public roads.

Gizmodo speculates on a future where we will all have a personal drone.

North Dakota has legalized cops using taser armed drones.

Switching to the self driving car, Uber is rolling out its own mapping cars in Arizona.  First in Tuscon, but its making everyone speculate Uber will be using the data gained for their own self driving cars. 

Supposedly, self driving cars have hit their hype peak and theory is they will go down through the floor and then to adoption...in around 5 years.  

Careful with the hype! yells another article.  That one argues self driving cars are not coming any time soon.

The RAND Corp speculates whether or not cops ought to be allowed to take control of self driving cars.  Given all the problems with hacking with pre self driving cars, putting a backdoor in for the cops cannot be a good thing.

Apparently, Google's self driving cars can be confused by fix-gear bicycles.

Moving onto the 3D printing arena!  I am going to make sure this is a regular part of the Robopocalypse Report.

MIT has come up with a 3d printer able to print ten different materials simultaneously.

What are some of the implications of 3d printing for car markers?   There are many.

Or the oil and gas industry?

Related to the 3D printing is that of 3d scanning.  Microsoft has successfully developed a method of making a cell phone camera into a 3d scanner.

Tangential to 3d Printing, these 3d printed micro "fish" could be the precursors of microbots.

In general robotics, it seems robot movements can be made to be up to 40% more energy efficient through smooth rather than sudden acceleration.

In the economics of the Robopocalypse,  in Australia, at least, 60% of students are pursuing careers that will be obsolete in the near future.

The question is which jobs are the robots coming for?  Or is at simple as the bots are going to take our jobs?  Hackaday has their answer.  Wired has their own answer.  Forbes has their's.

The Financial Review has stated bots will savage the financial sector worse than offshoring has.

In the psychology of the Robopocalypse, the US Air Force is working to improve human trust of machines.

As far as the hype machine goes, there's a Silicon Valley conference, RoboBusiness, set for September 23-24.  It has Kurzweil as a keynote speaker, so it's already an epic fail, IMO.

In a retrospective on the Robopocalypse, ten years ago, Toyota claimed it would be selling household robots in 2010.  Careful how much koolaid you drink!