Robopocalypse #91

Drones:

There is now a drone for your nightmares!  It comes with two claw robotic arms!   It can carry away a small child (22 lbs)!

DARPA wants a way to track drones in a city.

The delftacopter takes off vertically and flies like a plane.

Drones have been observing the Hajj.

Is dronesurfing the next thing in sports?

Drones are being used to test the legalities of airspace.

Dutch police's drone hunting eagles are ready for use.

ESPN is expanding its drone racing coverage.

Flybrix are Lego's entry into drones.

GoPro's KARMA drone is ready.

The Pouncer drone is unveiled.

A Russian has been arrested for flying a drone too close to Polish government buildings.

Spaceport America's drone summit is open fore registration.

UPS is working with iRobot for its delivery drones.

Xcraft has a 100mph consumer drone.

Self Driving Cars:

The US government is releasing its guidelines on self driving cars.

Apple's Project Titan, the supposed self driving Apple car, is experiencing layoffs and may be hitting problems.

BMW is expanding its ride sharing service to Portland.

A Dutchman died in his Tesla.  Tesla says the Autopilot was not engaged.  However, a fatal crash in China might be tied to the software.  There is a new version of the Autopilot software (and more).  A Tesla in Germany on autopilot has run into a bus.

MobilEye ended the relationship with Tesla because they felt Tesla was being too reckless.  

Ford has acquired Chariot, a shuttle bus service in San Francisco.  We all know where this is going. 

George Hotz has a $999 kit for converting cars into self driving and expects to ship it before the end of the year.

Komatsu's mining trucks dump even the cabin for a driver.

Lyft's CEO predicts car ownership within dense metropolitan  areas will end in 5 years. I have my doubts on the timeline...

Lyft and Uber are planning on exiting the sharing economy.

Self driving cars may not save us any time actually.

Smiling self driving cars seem to reassure peds.

Autonomous Ubers in Pittsburgh!  And more! 

Volvo's self driving car is ready for public trials...and it does not have the egregious sensors the competitors do.

3d Printing:

3Dynamic Systems has created a high strength carbon fibre filament for 3d printing.

Robotics:

An Atlas v1.0 robot does a balancing act.

CCRV is another robo sub drone.

A garbage slurping drone has been tested on the water.

Microbots are not just for Big Hero 6 anymore.

There's a robot for eye surgery now.

Self driving shopping carts may come to Walmart.

And self driving chairs...

And self sailing boats in Amsterdam.

Software Bots:

Alexa can now control some GE appliances. She can do over 3000 different tasks, including changing the hue of your Phillips lights and your BMW.  She has also been integrated with the Onyx communications device.  Amazon has a prize so that up to $2.5 million can be won if you can make Alexa able to converse for 20 minutes.

An AI used to judge a beauty contest gave some problematic results.

Are we entering the 'bot economy?'

Facebooks softwarebots will soon be able to take payments.

Google's DeepMind AI has been used for WaveNet.  The ultimate end of the music industry.

Google's translation bot.

A huge number of companies are coming together for an AI partnership.

Microsoft has formed an AI research group.

Roboregulators?

When your boss is an algorithm...

Using video games to train AI.

META:

Bots will eliminate 6% of jobs in the next 5 years in the US.

The Brits have released their ethics guide for robotics.