Why the Future of Robotics Lies in the Code
While the exterior mechanics of a robot may be fascinating, it is their programming and software that has the most utility for future workforces.
Artificial Intelligence Produces Realistic Sounds That Fool Humans
From MIT News: Video-trained system from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab could help robots understand how objects interact with the world. Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have demonstrated an algorithm that has effectively learned how to predict sound: When shown a silent video clip of an object being hit, the algorithm can produce a sound for the hit that is realistic enough to fool human viewers.
This “Turing Test for sound” represents much more than just a clever computer trick: Researchers envision future versions of similar algorithms being used to automatically produce sound effects for movies and TV shows, as well as to help robots better understand objects’ properties... (full article)(full paper)
Wal-Mart Experimenting With Robotic Shopping Cart for Stores
Spencer Soper & Shannon Pettypiece for Bloomberg:  Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is working with a robotics company to develop a shopping cart that helps customers find items on their lists and saves them from pushing a heavy cart through a sprawling store and parking lot, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Such carts are an emerging opportunity for robotics companies as brick-and-mortar stores look for innovative ways to match the convenience of Amazon.com Inc. and other online retailers, said Wendy Roberts, founder and chief executive officer of Five Elements Robotics.
Roberts, who spoke Tuesday on a robotics panel at the Bloomberg Technology Conference 2016, said her company was working with the "worlds largest retailer" on such a shopping cart.
That retailer is Wal-Mart, which is evaluating a prototype in its lab and giving feedback to the New Jersey robotics company, a person familiar said. Wal-Mart spokesman Ravi Jariwala said he couldnt immediately comment on the robotic shopping cart. Â Cont'd...
The ABC of RPA, Part 2: What are the opportunities to automate?
Robotic process automation can be applied across departments, from HR and Customer Service to Finance and Operations. 70-80 per cent of rules-based processes can be automated,
Google's developing its own version of the Laws of Robotics
Graham Templeton for ExtremeTech: Google’s artificial intelligence researchers are starting to have to code around their own code, writing patches that limit a robot’s abilities so that it continues to develop down the path desired by the researchers — not by the robot itself. It’s the beginning of a long-term trend in robotics and AI in general: once we’ve put in all this work to increase the insight of an artificial intelligence, how can we make sure that insight will only be applied in the ways we would like?
That’s why researchers from Google’s DeepMind and the Future of Humanity Institute have published a paper outlining a software “killswitch” they claim can stop those instances of learning that could make an AI less useful — or, in the future, less safe. It’s really less a killswitch than a blind spot, removing from the AI the ability to learn the wrong lessons. Cont'd...
The ABC of RPA: What is robotics and automation in the office?
Robotics and automation in the office is actually much more subtle, and typically works behind the scenes.
Robotic Pickers and Forklifts
The new robotic movers no longer need to travel fixed routes, as they can be programmed while on the move. Focusing on automated materials handling processes, and the underlying robot perception technology, companies will be employing this sophisticated, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence now and in the future.
OpenAI Gym Beta
From the OpenAI team:
We're releasing the public beta of OpenAI Gym, a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning(RL) algorithms. It consists of a growing suite ofenvironments (from simulated robots to Atari games), and a site for comparing and reproducing results.
OpenAI Gym is compatible with algorithms written in any framework, such asTensorflow and Theano. The environments are written in Python, but we'll soon make them easy to use from any language. We originally built OpenAI Gym as a tool to accelerate our own RL research. We hope it will be just as useful for the broader community. Getting started: If you'd like to dive in right away, you can work through our tutorial... (full intro post)
"‹Forget self-driving cars: What about self-flying drones?
Tina Amirtha for Benelux: In 2014, three software engineers decided to create a drone company in Wavre, Belgium, just outside Brussels. All were licensed pilots and trained in NATO security techniques.
But rather than build drones themselves, they decided they would upgrade existing radio-controlled civilian drones with an ultra-secure software layer to allow the devices to fly autonomously.
Their company, EagleEye Systems, would manufacture the onboard computer and design the software, while existing manufacturers would provide the drone body and sensors.
Fast-forward to the end of March this year, when the company received a Section 333 exemption from the US Federal Aviation Administration to operate and sell its brand of autonomous drones in the US. The decision came amid expectations that the FAA will loosen its restrictions on legal drone operations and issue new rules to allow drones to fly above crowds. Cont'd...
SUNSPRING by 32 Tesla K80 GPUs
From Ross Goodwin on Medium:
To call the film above surreal would be a dramatic understatement. Watching it for the first time, I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing—actors taking something without any objective meaning, and breathing semantic life into it with their emotion, inflection, and movement.
After further consideration, I realized that actors do this all the time. Take any obscure line of Shakespearean dialogue and consider that 99.5% of the audience who hears that line in 2016 would not understand its meaning if they read it in on paper. However, in a play, they do understand it based on its context and the actor’s delivery.
As Modern English speakers, when we watch Shakespeare, we rely on actors to imbue the dialogue with meaning. And that’s exactly what happened inSunspring, because the script itself has no objective meaning.
On watching the film, many of my friends did not realize that the action descriptions as well as the dialogue were computer generated. After examining the output from the computer, the production team made an effort to choose only action descriptions that realistically could be filmed, although the sequences themselves remained bizarre and surreal... (medium article with technical details)
Here is the stage direction that led to Middleditch’s character vomiting an eyeball early in the film:
C
(smiles)
I don’t know anything about any of this.
H
(to Hauk, taking his eyes from his mouth)
Then what?
H2
There’s no answer.
Employing Drones to Solve Business' Most Complex Issues
A true system doesnt only take the technology into account, but also the processes and human aspects.
5D Robotics + Aerial MOB = Autonomy and Reliability
The marrying of Aerial MOBs robust operational experience and IP portfolio with 5Ds robust autonomy and behavioral technology really bridges many of the gaps for delivering valuable products to many industrial type clients, such as those in oil and gas, utilities, and construction among others.
Scientists develop bee model that will impact the development of aerial robotics
Phys.org: Scientists have built a computer model that shows how bees use vision to detect the movement of the world around them and avoid crashing. This research, published in PLOS Computational Biology, is an important step in understanding how the bee brain processes the visual world and will aid the development of robotics.
The study led by Alexander Cope and his coauthors at the University of Sheffield shows how bees estimate the speed of motion, or optic flow, of the visual world around them and use this to control their flight. The model is based on Honeybees as they are excellent navigators and explorers, and use vision extensively in these tasks, despite having a brain of only one million neurons (in comparison to the human brain's 100 billion).
The model shows how bees are capable of navigating complex environments by using a simple extension to the known neural circuits, within the environment of a virtual world. The model then reproduces the detailed behaviour of real bees by using optic flow to fly down a corridor, and also matches up with how their neurons respond. Cont'd...
Billions Are Being Invested in a Robot That Americans Don't Want
Keith Naughton for Bloomberg Technology: Brian Lesko and Dan Sherman hate the idea of driverless cars, but for very different reasons. Lesko, 46, a business-development executive in Atlanta, doesn’t trust a robot to keep him out of harm’s way. “It scares the bejeebers out of me,” he says.
Sherman, 21, a mechanical-engineering student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, trusts the technology and sees these vehicles eventually taking over the road. But he dreads the change because his passion is working on cars to make them faster.
“It’s something I’ve loved to do my entire life and it’s kind of on its way out,” he says. “That’s the sad truth.”
The driverless revolution is racing forward, as inventors overcome technical challenges such as navigating at night and regulators craft new rules. Yet the rush to robot cars faces a big roadblock: People aren’t ready to give up the wheel. Recent surveys by J.D. Power, consulting company EY, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Canadian Automobile Association, researcher Kelley Blue Book and auto supplier Robert Bosch LLC all show that half to three-quarters of respondents don’t want anything to do with these models. Cont'd...
Zero Zero Hover Camera drone uses face tracking tech to follow you
Lee Mathews for Geek: Camera-toting drones that can follow a subject while they’re recording aren’t a new thing, but a company called Zero Zero is putting a very different spin on them. It’s all about how they track what’s being filmed.
Zero Zero’s new Hover Camera doesn’t require you to wear a special wristband like AirDog. There’s no “pod” to stuff in your pocket like the one that comes with Lily, and it doesn’t rely on GPS either. Instead, the Hover Camera uses its “eyes” to follow along.
Unlike some drones that use visual sensors to lock on to a moving subject, the Hover Camera uses them in conjunction with face and body recognition algorithms to ensure that it’s actually following the person you want it to follow.
For now, it can only track the person you initially select. By the time the Hover Camera goes up for sale, however, Zero Zero says it will be able to scan the entire surrounding area for faces. Cont'd...
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