Robopocalypse Report #75

Drones:

DARPA is working on high speed autonomous flight for quadcopters.

Camcopter has successfully demonstrated 'sense and avoid,' a very important capability needed for drones.

Drones are learning to search for lost hikers on trails.

The FAA is easing restrictions on drone flight around Washington, DC.

The Russians have put off the shelf quadcopter drones to work in occupied Sebastopol for emergency services.

Rwanda has started using drones for the emergency delivery of medical supplies.

Drones are becoming a highly useful tool for scientists in the geo sciences.

Style seems to be finally coming to drones moving them beyond merely the same functional shape with the coming of PowerVision's PowerEgg. 

Amazon  announced the winners of its IoT hacking contest: one of them was a voice controlled drone.

A would-be John Connor plead guilty he shot down a drone in New Jersey.

Google continues to persevere (paywall link) with trying to get internet carrying drones to work at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Drones are being used by archaeologists.

The Rook drone is meant to be connected to your wifi and flown, remotely, by your smart phone while you are anywhere in the world...inside your house.  hmmm.   Talk about home (in)security!

EADS is working to integrate drones into European airspace safely.

Take a look at Dronebox: a remote basing capability for commercial grade drones.

Drones are being developed to 3d print remote shelters.

Bats have inspired the design of micro drones.

Self Driving Cars:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Agency considers the computer in a Google Car to be the driver for regulatory purposes.

A new algorithm improves the ability of self driving cars to recognize pedestrians.

A risk management company has started working on self driving cars.

Some think self driving cars will take longer than what people think.

NVIDIA thinks self driving cars will be coming sooner than those others think.

Google wants to deliver packages with self driving trucks.

The revolution of self driving cars may not be a positive one.

The paradigm shift is going to be very large.

3d Printing:

A robot has been developed to 3d print intricate filigree chairs.

It turns out 3d printing can make awesome springs.

Parts of the Russian T-14 tank were 3d printed.

Another 3d printed dress has debuted.

We are getting close to 3d printing tissue.  It seems a Croatian cancer patient received a 3d printed ear.  This may be further along than people realize.

3d printed toys are a kids creation now.

The additive manufacturing revolution gets a profile.

3d printing may have already infiltrated the auto parts manufacturing process.

Robotics:

Here's another robo vacuum.

Airbus is studying whether or not humaniform robots can build aircraft in the future.

What would it take to enable joint human-robot rescue teams?

There's even a bot that beats the previous rubick's cube solver: this one does it in under a second.


China is ahead of the US in robo waiters.

Are bots central to graceful retirement?

Japan thinks so and is building the City of Robots.

That's an amazing android hand.

That hand just needs to be tied to this software from John Hopkins.

This is how to automate anything that moves.

There are even robotic arms for drummers now.

Software Bots:

Sarcasm is a real problem for software bots' speech recognition systems (PDF).

Google Mind Project has made progress modeling languages.

Teaching human values to bots through stories.

Financial bots are rising in prominence.

Hardware Bots (but not robots):

It seems the Robopocalypse might be coming for swim team coaches!

Philosophy and Economics:

When the bots can do everything people can, what will people do?

The robots are coming, but not for your job.

Or are they?  Perhaps 1 in 11 jobs will be lost to the bots.

Then again , maybe they WILL take our jobs, but we ought not be afraid of the Robopocalypse.