Army Tests New Super-Soldier Exoskeleton
Posted: November 28, 2017 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Robotics, U.S. News, War Room | Tags: Exoskeleton, FORTIS, Lockheed Leave a comment
(Photo: lockheed)
The Army is testing an exoskeleton technology which uses AI to analyze and replicate individual walk patterns, provide additional torque, power and mobility.
Using independent actuators, motors and lightweight conformal structures, lithium ion battery powered FORTIS allows soldiers to carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs while expending less energy.
“We’ve had this on some of the Army’s elite forces, and they were able to run with high agility carrying full loads,” Keith Maxwell, senior program manager, exoskeleton technology, Lockheed Martin..said.
Lockheed engineers say FORTIS could prove particularly impactful in close-quarters urban combat because it enhances soldier mobility, speed and power.
Virtual Lip Reading is About to Take Counterfeit News to a New Level
Posted: July 22, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Counterfeit News, Digital, fake news, Lip Reading, media Leave a comment
Robots Will Be The New Illegal Immigrant, Economists Say
Posted: March 1, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Bank of England, Bank Underground, Robots, Unemployment, United Kingdom, Workforce 1 CommentThe U.S. stands to lose 80 million jobs to automation.
Thomas Phippen reports: The robotic labor revolution is coming quickly, and the workforce may not be able to adapt without long periods of unemployment, according to economists at the Bank of England.
“Economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted.”
“Economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted,” BOE economists Mauricio Armellini and Tim Pike wrote in a post on Bank Underground, a blog for bank employees, Wednesday.
Artificial intelligence (AI) “threatens to transform entire industries and sectors,” the authors write, arguing that with the speed of industries adopting technological developments won’t give the labor force time to adjust. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Advanced Robotic Bat Can Fly Like the Real Thing
Posted: February 1, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Bats, Robotic Bat, technology, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] iSpace: One Giant Leap for Japan
Posted: December 20, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Japan, Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation Leave a comment
Japan is leaping into space resources, agreeing to work with a robotic-exploration company to create a blueprint for an industry to extract resources from the moon that would enable more extensive space exploration.
[VIDEO] Scientists Work to Perfect Robotic Arm Controlled by Thought
Posted: December 20, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: media, news, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] JetPacks Are Finally Real
Posted: December 13, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation | Tags: Apple Inc, California, Elon Musk, Futurism, Jetpack, media, news, video Leave a comment
It can reach an altitude of over 6,500 feet and travel at over 65 miles per hour.
Japan: Novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) Returns in Robot Form
Posted: December 10, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Asia, Japan, Reading Room, Robotics | Tags: Culture of England, Culture of Japan, English literature, Japan, London, Museum of Brands, Natsume Sōseki, Open University, Packaging & Advertising, Picasa, The Japan Times Leave a commentNovelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) is back in Tokyo — as an android.
Nishogakusha University in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, and Osaka University Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro unveiled the final product of their joint project at a press conference on Thursday, a day before the 100th anniversary of the writer’s death.
The humanoid robot sits 130 centimeters high and was made based on pictures taken when the writer was 45 years old and his death mask, among other materials. Read the rest of this entry »
Forget Drones: Google Explores Robot Delivery
Posted: December 8, 2016 Filed under: Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: Advanced Micro Devices, Atlas Robot, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, iPhone, London, Marc Raibert, MIT Technology Review, Mustafa Suleyman, Robot Leave a commentLegged robots from Boston Dynamics can navigate a home, and even deliver a parcel, using advances in manipulation and vision.
Will Knight writes: The nimble-legged robots under development at a secretive Google subsidiary are getting ever more capable and clever.
At a conference in Barcelona this week, Marc Raibert, the CEO of Boston Dynamics, which specializes in dynamically balancing legged machines, demonstrated some of the progress his researchers have been making.
“Many people are talking about drone delivery. So why not just plain legged robots?”
— Marc Raibert, the CEO of Boston Dynamics
Raibert demonstrated Spot Mini, the company’s latest four-legged robot, which is about the size of a large dog. Boston Dynamics has previously shown videos of Spot Mini operating in a mocked-up home—climbing stairs, opening doors, and even emptying a dishwasher using its gripper. The robot features a neck-like appendage and gripper that enables it to do simple, but potentially useful, manipulation tasks.
The robot is partially automated. A Boston Dynamics engineer steered a Spot Mini onto the stage during Raibert’s talk at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference. But the robot figured out for itself how to perceive and navigate the steps up to the stage, and then, once given the command, located and picked up a can from a table.
Legged robots could potentially be better than wheeled bots at navigating messy human environments, although the research robots under development at Boston Dynamics remain prohibitively expensive for now, some costing more than $1 million.
Boston Dynamics has built a reputation for developing robots capable of walking and running, even across treacherous ground using dynamic balance; that is, by constantly moving to maintain stability. The company has honed the technique over many decades to produce several stunning machines (see “The Robots Running This Way”). It makes a much larger quadruped, called Big Dog, which has been tested as a military pack mule, as well as a humanoid, Atlas, which took part in a robot rescue contest organized recently by the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (see “Why Robots and Humans Struggled with DARPA’s Challenge”).
As Boston Dynamics explores potential applications, it’s clear that manipulating objects while balancing this way will be a key focus. “Mobile manipulation is our next grand challenge,” Raibert said during his talk. Read the rest of this entry »
New journal Science Robotics is Established to Chronicle the Rise of the Robots
Posted: December 6, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Application programming interface, Artificial Intelligence, Asahi Shimbun, Asimov's Science Fiction, Atlas Robot, Boston Dynamics, Do it yourself, Kickstarter, Robot, Science fiction Leave a commentDevin Coldewey reports: Robots have been a major focus in the technology world for decades and decades, but they and basic science, and for that matter everyday life, have largely been non-overlapping magisteria. That’s changed over the last few years, as robotics and every other field have come to inform and improve each other, and robots have begun to infiltrate and affect our lives in countless ways. So the only surprise in the news that the prestigious journal group Science has established a discrete Robotics imprint is that they didn’t do it earlier.
Editor Guang-Zhong Yang and president of the National Academy of Sciences Marcia McNutt introduce the journal:
In a mere 50 years, robots have gone from being a topic of science fiction to becoming an integral part of modern society. They now are ubiquitous on factory floors, build complex deep-sea installations, explore icy worlds beyond the reach of humans, and assist in precision surgeries… Read the rest of this entry »
Rocket Men: Why Tech’s Biggest Billionaires Want their Place in Space
Posted: December 5, 2016 Filed under: Robotics, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, California, Earth, Elon Musk, Falcon 9, Federal Communications Commission, Interplanetary spaceflight, NASA, SpaceX, Stephen Hawking Leave a commentForget gilded mansions and super yachts. Among the tech elite, space exploration is now the ultimate status symbol.
On board was a $200m, 12,000lb communications satellite – part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project to deliver broadband access to sub-Saharan Africa.
Zuckerberg wrote, with a note of bitterness, on his Facebook page that he was “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite”. SpaceX founder Elon Musk told CNN it was the “most difficult and complex failure” the 14-year-old company had ever experienced.
It was also the second dramatic explosion in nine months for SpaceX, following a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of a booster rocket as it attempted to land after a successful mission to the International Space Station.
Later that day, Nasa’s official Twitter account responded: “Today’s @SpaceX incident – while not a Nasa launch – reminds us that spaceflight is challenging.”
Yet despite those challenges, a small band of billionaire technocrats have spent the past few years investing hundreds of millions of dollars into space ventures. Forget gilded mansions and super yachts; among the tech elite, space exploration is the ultimate status symbol.
Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, is arguably the most visible billionaire in the new space race. The apparent inspiration for Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark character in Iron Man, Musk has become a god-like figure for engineers, making his fortune at PayPal and then as CEO of luxury electric car firm Tesla and clean energy company Solar City. Yet it is his galactic ambitions, insiders say, that really motivate him. “His passion is settling Mars,” says one.
[Read the full story here, at The Guardian]
SpaceX has completed 32 successful launches since 2006, delivered cargo to the International Space Station and secured more than $10bn in contracts with Nasa and other clients. Musk has much grander ambitions, though, saying he plans to create a “plan B” for humanity in case Earth ultimately fails. He once famously joked that he hoped to die on Mars – just not on impact. Read the rest of this entry »
Rise of the Robot Music Industry
Posted: December 3, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Amazon Echo, Amazon Music, Amazoncom, Apple Music, Commonwealth of Independent States, Comparison of on-demand streaming music services, Drake (musician), Spotify, Streaming media, United States 1 CommentAI is transforming music streaming, talent spotting, promotion and even composition.
Robotic is not an adjective that many musicians would want applied to their songs but the industry has been fast to embrace data analytics and artificial intelligence to help tailor its services to the increasingly fickle listener.
Algorithms are seeping into the music business to help with talent spotting, promotion and even composition in an industry that has been historically resistant to change and was one of the first to feel the effects of “disruption” through piracy and music sharing.
Streaming services have already ushered in an era of “hyper personalisation” for music lovers. Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, launched in July 2015, had racked up 40m listeners around the world and 5bn track streams by May this year, according to a report from the BPI prepared by Music Ally. These playlists monitor what a person is listening to, and cross-references that data with other users with similar tastes to recommend new songs and artists.
Apple Music has opted to use human curators such as Zane Lowe, the radio DJ, for its playlists, but Spotify has doubled down on its robotic recommenders with new services such as Release Radar and the Daily Mix to tempt its subscribers down different paths.
Yet discovery is only the equivalent of a debut album for streaming services, and can be a blunt tool. Users of Spotify Discover complain that it is hit and miss — often suggesting the same artists and songs repeatedly, and failing to adapt to the often random whims of the listener.
The industry is now hoping that the use of artificial intelligence will bring better analytics, and even predictive technology.
A listener’s location, mood and even the weather conditions are now being built into some recommendation engines. Google Play is, for example, working on such adaptive functions.
“A bot will be able to recognise guilty pleasures . . . see that I’ve been to the pub and serve me a Little Mix record when I’m on the way home,” says Luke Ferrar, head of digital at Polydor, pointing to the use of algorithms to understand how people listen to music. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] The Atlas Robot is Getting Better at Chasing You Down
Posted: December 2, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Atlas Robot, Endgaget, Partial Footholds, video Leave a comment
How VR Has the Power To Make You Care
Posted: November 24, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: Abraham Maslow, Academy Awards, Across the Line, Blade Runner, Carrie Fisher, Chris Milk, Clouds Over Sidra, Emblematic Group, Harrison Ford, Planned Parenthood, Radar Online, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Tribeca Film Festival, Virtual reality, VR Leave a commentThanksgiving Weekend Primatologist Browser Tabocalpyse
‘Across The Line‘ is the latest example of VR attempting to evoke empathy.
Alice Bonasio writes: There’s an iconic scene in Blade Runner where Harrison Ford’s character Deckard meets the replicant Rachel for the first time, but he doesn’t know she’s not human. He then uses a test called Voight-Kampff to determine whether or not she’s a real person. The test consists of a series of questions designed to elicit emotion. The idea – which is beautifully challenged later on in the film – is that machines are incapable of such empathetic responses.
Empathy, in other words, is what makes us human.
With an emerging consensus that the immersive nature of VR is particularly effective in triggering those empathetic responses, we’re seeing artists throughout the creative industries exploring new possibilities for storytelling – with a purpose. Chris Milk’s UN-Commissioned Clouds Over Sidra showed the plight of refugees through the eyes of a 12-year old Syrian girl, while the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio production HOME/AAMIR transported viewers to the infamous Calais ‘Jungle’ camp.
VR can even make people feel more empathetic toward more abstract things like the environment, as was recently shown with the Crystal Reef project – showcased this year at the Tribeca Film Festival by researchers from the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) at Stanford. The simulation, where you watched the devastating effects of ocean acidification caused by man, served to connect people to the consequences of their own actions in a much more tangible way.
[Read the full story here, at uploadvr.com]
Journalist and Filmmaker Nonny de la Peña – Co-Founder of the Emblematic Group and affectionately known as the “Godmother of VR” – has long explored the power of Virtual Reality experiences to break through viewer apathy. Her pioneering work often transports viewers into uncomfortable situations – such as a line for food handouts outside a shelter in LA, where you see a man collapsing from hunger next to you – and makes them re-think their outlook on often controversial issues.
The latest of those projects is Across The Line, an experience which tells the story of a young woman going to an abortion clinic. I viewed it recently at London’s Raindance Film Festival – where it was selected for this year’s VR showcase Arcade – and spoke to la Peña and their partners at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) to find out more about how the project developed and what the reaction to it has been like so far. Read the rest of this entry »
COMPUTOPIA Magazine: ‘School Without Teachers, Humanless Factories, Digital Calculation is the Future of Humanity’
Posted: November 23, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Asia, Comics, Japan, Robotics, Russia | Tags: Magazines, Pop Culture, Science fiction, SciFi, vintage Leave a comment[VIDEO] An AR-15 in Every Home: 3D Gun Printer Cody Wilson on Resistance, Trump, the Media, & More
Posted: November 23, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Guns and Gadgets, Law & Justice, Robotics, Science & Technology, Self Defense | Tags: Antonin Scalia, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Political campaign, Republican Party (United States), Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, Supreme Court of the United States Leave a comment
“It doesn’t matter what the origins of the Second Amendment were,” says Cody Wilson, creator of the first 3D-printed gun and author of the new book, Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free. “With the internet, we can transform this thing into right to resistance on a global scale. If it’s just a fact that the government serves guns now, this is just a point of political life.”
CORRECTION: The Ghost Gunner sells for $1,500 not $250. The deposit is $250.
[Order Cody’s book “Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free” from Amazon.com]
The full transcript of this interview is available here.
Reason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines. Read the rest of this entry »
Science & Fiction: 10 Technologies That Are Changing the Game
Posted: November 21, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Global, Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: 3-D printing, Avionics, NASA, Spacecraft, technology, Wearable technology Leave a comment‘Mars’: National Geographic Network’s Moonshot
Posted: November 15, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation | Tags: Aviation safety, Federal Aviation Administration, Lee Hawkins, Mars, National Geographic, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Note series, The Wall Street Journal, video Leave a comment
National Geographic is releasing “Mars,” a six-part series that follows a dramatized mission to Mars while real scientists and thinkers discuss the challenges of such a journey.
WSJ‘s Lee Hawkins and John Jurgensen discuss “Mars” and the rise of the “premium nonfiction” genre on television. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Watch Hillary Clinton and Her Staff Do the ‘Mannequin Challenge’
Posted: November 8, 2016 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, Robotics | Tags: 2016 Presidential Campaign, Clowns, Democrats, Dolls, Fortune (magazine), Hillary Clinton, Mannequins, media, news, toys, video Leave a comment
Charlie Rose Interviews a Robot
Posted: October 10, 2016 Filed under: China, Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: 3D computer graphics, Application programming interface, Arizona State University, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial neural network, Stanford University Leave a commentCharlie Rose attempts to interview a robot named “Sophia” for his 60 Minutes report on artificial intelligence.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Sophia tells 60 Minutes correspondent Charlie Rose. They’re mid-interview, and Rose reacts with surprise.
“Waiting for me?” he asks.
“Not really,” she responds. “But it makes a good pickup line.”
Sophia managed to get a laugh out of Charlie Rose. Not bad for a robot.
Rose interviewed the human-like machine for this week’s two-part 60 Minutes piece on artificial intelligence, or A.I. In their exchange, excerpted in the clip above, Rose seems to approach the conversation with the same seriousness and curiosity he would bring to any interview.
[Read the full story here, at CBSnews]
“You put your head where you want to test the possibility,” Rose tells 60 Minutes Overtime. “You’re not simply saying, ‘Why am I going through this exercise of talking to a machine?’ You’re saying, ‘I want to talk to this machine as if it was a human to see how it comprehends.’”
Sophia’s creator, David Hanson, believes that if A.I. technology looks and sounds human, people will be more willing to engage with it in meaningful ways.
“I think it’s essential that at least some robots be very human-like in appearance in order to inspire humans to relate to them the way that humans relate to each other,” Hanson says. “Then the A.I. can zero in on what it means to be human.”
“Through his company Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong, Hanson has created twenty human-like robots, even developing artificial skin that simulates the physics of facial flesh. Sophia is his latest design, modeled after Audrey Hepburn and Hanson’s wife.”
He envisions robots as companions for people who would otherwise be socially isolated, such as the elderly. “If you have a robot that can communicate in a very human-like way and help somebody who otherwise doesn’t know how to use a computer, put them in touch with their relatives,” Hanson explains, “put them in touch with their healthcare provider in a way that is natural for them, then that could provide a critical difference of connectivity for that person with the world.”
Through his company Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong, Hanson has created twenty human-like robots, even developing artificial skin that simulates the physics of facial flesh. Sophia is his latest design, modeled after Audrey Hepburn and Hanson’s wife.

CBS News
“I think it’s essential that at least some robots be very human-like in appearance in order to inspire humans to relate to them the way that humans relate to each other. Then the A.I. can zero in on what it means to be human.”
“Sophia means wisdom,” Hanson explains, “and she is intended to evolve eventually to human-level wisdom and beyond.”
She still has a long way to go. Read the rest of this entry »
[PHOTOS] NASA 1965 Space Suit Test Robot
Posted: September 3, 2016 Filed under: Robotics, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation | Tags: NASA, Robot, Space Exploration, Space suit Leave a comment[VIDEO] ‘Sex, Drugs, & Robots’: Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward on the Future of the Magazine
Posted: September 1, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Mediasphere, Reading Room, Robotics, Think Tank | Tags: Carbon tax, Donald Trump, Editor-in-chief, Gary Johnson, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Libertarian Party (United States), Magazines, media, Nick Gillespie, Reason (magazine), Reason.tv, United States, Virginia Postrel, William Weld Leave a comment
Reason‘s new editor in chief Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with former Reason editor and author Virginia Postrel (now a columnist at Bloomberg View) at Reason’s Los Angeles headquarters to talk about the future of the magazine as it nears its 50th anniversary.
“Nick Gillespie—and to some extent Matt Welch—their version of Reason was sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Mine is more like sex, drugs, and robots,” says Mangu-Ward.
You may know Mangu-Ward’s work already as Reason’s managing editor or from her insightful cover stories covering everything from defending plastic bags to why your vote doesn’t count.
Approximately 48 minutes.
Japanese Robot Makes Sushi in Seconds
Posted: August 17, 2016 Filed under: Food & Drink, Japan, Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Business Insider, Human Brain, Infosys, Japan, Narayana, Osaka University, Robot, Robotics, Tokyo Leave a commentThe Japanese robotics manufacturer Kawasaki has created a bot that can prepare nigiri sushi in under a minute.
As robots get more advanced, they will likely take over many jobs in the future — including those of sushi chefs.
For a sneak peak at this impending automation, look no further than a new creation from robotics manufacturer Kawasaki. The robot can make sushi in under a minute.
First spotted by Gizmodo, the video shows a miraculous bot that assembles nigiri, the traditional type of sushi in which a piece of raw fish sits on a little ball of rice.
Meet The Army’s New Pocket-Sized Drone
Posted: August 10, 2016 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, War Room | Tags: 1st Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division (United States), Artificial Intelligence, Future, Heavy machine gun, iPhone, Robot, United States Army, Zero–sum game 1 CommentJennings Brown reports: A recent glimpse at the future of robotic warfare proves tank robots aren’t ready for the battlefield just yet—but soldiers are enthusiastic about tiny drones that can be mistaken for birds.
“We need to be making sure we’re fielding new technology as quickly as we can. It doesn’t do any good if we’re just investing in great technology if we don’t actually get it into the field for soldiers.”
— Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning
Unites States soldiers based in Hawaii spent half of last month testing out cutting-edge robotic prototypes in exercises as a part of Pacific Manned-Unmanned Initiative (PACMAN-I). Members of the 25th Infantry Division controlled air and land drones to determine what technology could actually benefit soldiers. It was the third time in history human that soldiers have collaborated with robot counterparts in a simulated war zone.
Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning visited the exercise on July 26, a sign of the interest the Army is taking in the battlefield applications of unmanned vehicles. “We need to be making sure we’re fielding new technology as quickly as we can,” Fanning said, in a statement. “It doesn’t do any good if we’re just investing in great technology if we don’t actually get it into the field for soldiers.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] SwagBot: First Robot Cowboy
Posted: July 15, 2016 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Australia, Cattle Leave a comment
SwagBot can herd cattle, pull heavy loads and traverse rough terrain. Soon it could be monitoring cattle in remote farms in the Australian outback. Read more
Military Robotics Makers See a Future for Armed Police Robots
Posted: July 11, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Law & Justice, Robotics, Self Defense | Tags: Dallas Police Department, National Defense Industrial Association, RE2 robotics, Sean Bielat Leave a commentAs military-grade robotics get cheaper and more capable, someone will arm them and put them on American streets.
Patrick Tucker reports: Robot-maker Sean Bielat says he’s fine with the Dallas Police Department’s apparently unprecedented use of a police bomb-disposal robot to kill a gunman on Thursday. “A robot was used to keep people out of harm’s way in an extreme situation,” said Bielat, the CEO of Endeavor Robotics, a spinoff of iRobot’s military division. “That’s how robots are intended to be used.”
“The chief had two options and he went with this one. I supported him completely because it was the safest way to approach it”
Joergen Pedersen, the CEO of RE2 robotics and the chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association’s robotics division concurred. “If these robots are used in manners for which they were unintended, we would expect that the officers who are there to keep citizens and themselves safe would use good judgment where the application of lethal force is a last resort,” he said.
On Sunday, speaking to Face the Nation, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings blessed the operation. “The chief had two options and he went with this one. I supported him completely because it was the safest way to approach it,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »
Knock Knock: Dallas Police Used Robot With Bomb to Kill Ambush Suspect
Posted: July 8, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Robotics | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Computer program, Georgia Institute of Technology, Mike Rawlings, Police officer, Robot, Robotics Leave a commentErik Ortiz reports: Police in Dallas used a robot with an explosive device to kill a suspect involved in a coordinated ambush against officers.
“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed our officers in grave danger.”
— Mayor Mike Rawlings
The suspect was holed up inside the El Centro College parking garage for several hours overnight Thursday before police moved to “blast him out,” Mayor Mike Rawlings said Friday. The negotiations with the unidentified suspect had stalled.
“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was,” Rawlings told reporters. “Other options would have exposed our officers in grave danger.”
The mayor said the suspect was killed by the device, and disputed earlier reports that he might have shot himself.
At least three other suspects were involved in the attack on officers during a protest Thursday night about police-involved shootings elsewhere in the country. Five officers were killed and seven others were injured, as well as two civilians.
Typically, police forces have bomb squads that employ remote-controlled robots for dismantling explosive devices.
But using robots with explosives or munitions to root out or even kill suspects appears far less routine…(more)
Source: NBC News
The first suspect in the Dallas police shooting was identified as Micah X. Johnson, 25, the Los Angeles Times reported. Johnson was a resident of the Dallas area who had no ties to terror groups or a criminal history. Law enforcement said he has relatives in Mesquite, Texas.
Five police officers were killed late Thursday by shooters during a peaceful protest over the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile earlier this week. Dallas Police Chief David Brown said negotiations with one suspect broke down early Friday and a bomb robot was used to kill the suspect. Read the rest of this entry »
A.I. Downs Expert Human Fighter Pilot In Dogfight Simulation
Posted: June 28, 2016 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Self Defense, War Room Leave a commentIn the military world, fighter pilots have long been described as the best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote, only those with the “right stuff” can handle the job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer be the sole purview of human pilots.
A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene “Geno” Lee, and shot him down every time. In a statement, Lee called it “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I’ve seen to date.”
And “Geno” is no slouch. He’s a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He’s controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he’s doing. Plus he’s been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades.
[read the full story here, at Popular Science]
But he says this one is different. “I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] This Lady Robot Speaks Her Mind
Posted: June 5, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Hanson Robitics, media, Sophia, video, WSJ Leave a comment
The WSJ quizzed Hanson Robotics’s lifelike creation Sophia on topics from U.S.presidential candidates to a robot’s place in the bedroom. Photo/Video: Menglin Huang/The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Mercury Box Art, 1950s
Posted: May 10, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Comics, Entertainment, Robotics | Tags: 1950s, design, Illustration, novelty, toys, typography, vintage Leave a commentSource: humungus
Meet ‘Jia Jia’: China Develops Home-Grown Human-Like Robot
Posted: April 15, 2016 Filed under: China, Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, China, David Hanson (robotics designer), Emotion, Facial expression, Google Chrome, Human, Intel, Robot Leave a commentChina’s University of Science and Technology released a human-like robot that is comparable to Japanese models seen in the past on Friday. Not only does it have the face of a beautiful woman, it also capable of interacting with people next to “her.”
Named “Jia Jia,” the face of the life-sized robot is drawn from five attractive female students from the university. Equipped with basic functions, such as making conversation, facial expressions, as well as gestures, it’s apparently more than Siri with a pretty face.
The University also added the robot is “the first of its kind in China”.
When Is the Singularity?
Posted: April 7, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, David Hanson (robotics designer), Elon Musk, Joaquin Phoenix, Joel Garreau, New York, Nicholas West, Ray Kurzweil, United States Leave a commentThis is New York Times’ idea of a ‘misconception’.
Most artificial intelligence researchers still discount the idea of an “intelligence explosion” that will outstrip human capabilities.
John Markoff writes: In March when Alphago, the Go-playing software program designed by Google’s DeepMind subsidiary defeated Lee Se-dol, the human Go champion, some in Silicon Valley proclaimed the event as a precursor of the imminent arrival of genuine thinking machines.
The achievement was rooted in recent advances in pattern recognition technologies that have also yielded impressive results in speech recognition, computer vision and machine learning. The progress in artificial intelligence has become a flash point for converging fears that we feel about the smart machines that are increasingly surrounding us.
However, most artificial intelligence researchers still discount the idea of an “intelligence explosion.”
The idea was formally described as the “Singularity” in 1993 by Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science fiction writer, who posited that accelerating technological change would inevitably lead to machine intelligence that would match and then surpass human intelligence. In his original essay, Dr. Vinge suggested that the point in time at which machines attained superhuman intelligence would happen sometime between 2005 and 2030.
Ray Kurzweil, an artificial intelligence researcher, extended the idea in his 2006 book “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” where he argues that machines will outstrip human capabilities in 2045. The idea was popularized in movies such as “Transcendence” and “Her.”
Recently several well-known technologists and scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, have issued warnings about runaway technological progress leading to superintelligent machines that might not be favorably disposed to humanity. Read the rest of this entry »
These Disposable, 3-D Printed Robots Are The Revolution We’ve Been Waiting For
Posted: April 6, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: 3D printing, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andreessen Horowitz, Artificial Intelligence, Computer science, Machine learning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Leave a commentA team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory just published their technique on simultaneously printing both rigid and soft materials in hydraulic robotic parts. What can we do with this? If you’re thinking about soft, flexible robots, the possibilities are endless…
Source: Applied Technotopia
[VIDEO] Atlas the Humanoid Robot in Action
Posted: February 29, 2016 Filed under: Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Android (robot), Boston, Boston Dynamics, Center of mass, Chumbawamba, Google, Humanoid robot, LIDAR, Robot, video Leave a comment
Atlas the humanoid robot can trudge through snow and overcome physical challenges from its developers at Boston Dynamics, a unit of Alphabet Inc.