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Advances in low power technology are making it easier to create wireless sensor networks in a wide range of applications, from remote sensing to HVAC monitoring, asset tracking and industrial automation. The problem is that even wireless sensors require batteries that must be regularly replaced—a costly and cumbersome maintenance project. A better wireless power solution would be to harvest ambient mechanical, thermal or electromagnetic energy from the sensor’s local environment.

Typically, harvestable ambient power is on the order of tens of microwatts, so energy harvesting requires careful power management in order to successfully capture microwatts of ambient power and store it in a useable energy reservoir. One common form of ambient energy is mechanical vibration energy, which can be caused by motors running in a factory, airflow across a fan blade or even by a moving vehicle. A piezoelectric transducer can be used to convert these forms of vibration energy into electrical energy, which in turn can be used to power circuitry.

Else Labs, the company behind the countertop home cooking robot called Oliver, announced today the launch of Oliver Fleet, a commercial kitchen reimagining of its original core product.

The new Fleet solution is a respin of its original standalone Oliver home cooking robot into a solution that allows multiple units to be used and managed simultaneously in professional kitchen environments to automate cooking tasks. According to company CEO Khalid Aboujassoum, while the Oliver Fleet units look the same from the outside as the original consumer unit, they’ve been built to withstand the more rugged requirements of the professional kitchen.

Continue reading “Else Labs Announces Pro Kitchen Focused Oliver Fleet As It Pauses Rollout of Home Cooking Robot” »

The high-flying unmanned aerial vehicle has been above Arizona for more than a month, living on batteries, solar power and a prayer.

In asking whether social robots can help social isolation among the elderly, we first need to know what older people think, say University of Melbourne experts.

Last month, there were a lot of waves in the AI community when a senior Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, alleged that the company’s AI has become sentient. The claim was made about Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) that can engage in a free-flowing way about a seemingly endless number of topics, an ability that unlocks more natural ways of interacting with technology.

Initially, Lemoine was put on paid administrative leave, but it appears that Google has now fired him.

Robots have always found it a challenge to work with people and vice versa. Two people on the cutting edge of improving that relationship joined us for TC Sessions: Robotics to talk about the present and future of human-robot interaction: Veo Robotics co-founder Clara Vu and Robust.ai founder Rod Brooks (formerly of iRobot and Rethink Robotics).

Part of the HRI challenge is that although we already have robotic systems that are highly capable, the worlds they operate in are still very narrowly defined. Clara said that as we move from “automation to autonomy” (a phrase she stressed she didn’t invent) we’re adding both capabilities and new levels of complexity.

“We’re moving … from robotic systems that do exactly what they were told to do or can perceive a very specific very low-level thing, to systems that have a little bit more autonomy and understanding,” she said. “The system that my company builds would not have been possible five years ago, because the sensors that we’re using and the processors that we’re using to crunch that data just didn’t exist. So as we do have better sensors and more processing capabilities, we’re able to, as you said, understand a little bit more about the world that we’re in and sort of move the level of robotic performance up a notch.”

A tech company in Hong Kong says it has developed the world’s first artificially intelligent laser skin treatment, which scans and detects the heat, sensitivity and shape of a customer’s face. Rods Technology spent over five years developing the technology to help reduce the number of injuries caused by manual treatments conducted by “blind” dermatologists. Over 100 laser facial injuries were reported in Hong Kong between January and July 1, 2022. With a human operator only needing to turn on the machine, the robot dermatologist is able to customise a treatment to help reduce acne scarring, wrinkles and even remove tattoos. The first commercial facial was sold in July 2022.

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The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China is likely one of the leading forces in AI development as far as investment is concerned. An October 2021 report published by the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University estimated that the PLA was spending between $1.6bn and $2.7bn on AI research and procurement per year, which is approximately equivalent to that of the US military.

The report, titled Harnessed Lightning, identified seven areas of interest for the PLA and its AI development that are detailed here in order of the quantity of contracts awarded as found by CSET:

Continue reading “The role of AI in the People’s Liberation Army” »