Money will be used to ramp up the rollout of battery-free sensor tags and novel, AI-based sensing as a service business model.
Wiliot — the IoT startup that has developed a new kind of processor that is ultra thin and light and runs on ambient power but possesses all the power of a “computer” — has picked up a huge round of growth funding on the back of strong interest in its technology, and a strategy aimed squarely at scale.
The company has raised $200 million, a Series C that it will use toward its next steps as a business. In the coming months, it will make a move into a SaaS model — which Wiliot likes to say refers not to “software as a service,” but “sensing as a service,” using its AI to read and translate different signals on the object attached to the chip — to run and sell its software. This will be combined with a shift to a licensing model for its chip hardware, so that they can be produced by multiple third parties. Wiliot says that it already has several agreements in place for the chip licensing part. The plan is for this, in turn, to lead to a new range of sizes and form factors for the chips down the line.
Softbank’s Vision Fund 2 led the financing, with previous backers — it’s a pretty illustrious list that speaks of the opportunities ahead — including 83North, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), Avery Dennison, Grove Ventures, M Ventures, the corporate VC of Merck KGaA, Maersk Growth, Norwest Venture Partners, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Vintage Investment Partners and Verizon Ventures.
And it did so on its own without a tether.
Cassie, a bipedal robot that’s all legs, has successfully run five kilometers on a single charge, all without having a tether. The machine serves as the basis for Agility Robotics’ delivery robot Digit, as TechCrunch notes, though you may also remember it for “blindly” navigating a set of stairs. Oregon State University engineers were able to train Cassie in a simulator to enable it to go up and down a flight of stairs without the use of cameras or LIDAR. Now, engineers from the same team were able to train Cassie to run using a deep reinforcement learning algorithm.
Continue reading “Watch Cassie the bipedal robot run a 5K” »
Researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently announced that it is using artificial intelligence to calibrate images of the Sun.
NASA launched its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) back in early 2010 to conduct research and capture high-definition images of the Sun.
The new artificial intelligence-powered technology is now helping scientists to precisely calibrate captured images at a quick pace in order to generate accurate, usable data. NASA uses the Atmospheric Imagery Assembly (AIA) present at the SDO to capture the Sun’s images across various wavelengths of ultraviolet light every 12 seconds.
A trio of researchers at Cornell University has found that it is possible to hide malware code inside of AI neural networks. Zhi Wang, Chaoge Liu and Xiang Cui have posted a paper describing their experiments with injecting code into neural networks on the arXiv preprint server.
As computer technology grows ever more complex, so do attempts by criminals to break into machines running new technology for their own purposes, such as destroying data or encrypting it and demanding payment from users for its return. In this new study, the team has found a new way to infect certain kinds of computer systems running artificial intelligence applications.
AI systems do their work by processing data in ways similar to the human brain. But such networks, the research trio found, are vulnerable to infiltration by foreign code.
Today, we’ll explore the role of AI in the future of healthcare by focusing on two areas: precision and personalized medicine and medical procedures.
Cigarette butts are a common type of litter for marine environments but AI-powered robot litter pickers could be the solution.
It seems many people leave behind more than just sandcastles when they go home after a trip to the beach. Beach litter is a recurring issue, and it is damaging our coastal environments and wildlife.
And there is one small item that is causing a big problem: cigarette butts. They may only be a few centimetres long, but they are full of microplastics and toxic chemicals that harm the marine environment. They don’t easily decompose, and when they come into contact with the water, harmful substances can leach out.
Continue reading “This little robot is cleaning up our beaches, one cigarette butt at a time” »
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Cassie the robot, invented at Oregon State University and produced by OSU spinout company Agility Robotics, has made history by traversing 5 kilometers, completing the route in just over 53 minutes.
Cassie was developed under the direction of robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Sanctuary GPR-1 is a general purpose robot designed for tasks requiring human level intelligence and manual dexterity.
