Lifeboat Foundation

Israel’s National Drone Initiative has launched the fourth phase of its pilot program, which this time will include night operations as well as flights in which cargo will be delivered directly via winches to the end customer.

NDI began flights over urban areas in January 2021, resumed trial flights on Sunday, involving several companies that manage and operate autonomous drone networks.

For the next two weeks, flights will take place day and night above Gush Dan and Yerucham, in order to integrate the use of drones in routine activities such as transportation of basic products, first aid; deploying a drone attached to a vehicle for real-time monitoring of traffic movement with AI-based elements that can provide forecasts, and much more.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RLdt3wgnuDs

AI chips, which are semiconductors designed to accelerate machine learning, have many applications. One of the promising use cases, according to Albert Liu, is using AI chips in autonomous driving vehicles.

That’s why Liu’s AI chipmaking startup Kneron has been quietly racking up investments to march into smart transportation. It recently closed a new round of $25 million funding led by Lite-On Technology, a Taiwanese optoelectronic pioneer, which was a strategic investor in the round. Other investors included Alltek, PalPilot, Sand Hill Angels and Gaingels.

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More precise, faster, cheaper: Researchers all over the world have been working for years on producing electrical circuits using additive processes such as robotic 3D-printing (so-called robocasting) with great success, but this is now becoming a problem. The metal particles that make such 3D substrates electrically conductive are exacerbating the problem of electronic waste, especially since the waste generated is likely to increase in the future in view of new types of disposable sensors, some of which are only used for a few days.

This constitutes unnecessary waste, according to Gustav Nyström, head of Empa’s Cellulose & Wood Materials lab: “There is an urgent need for materials that balance electronic performance, cost and sustainability.” To develop an environmentally friendly ink, Nyström’s team therefore set ambitious goals: metal-free, non-toxic, biodegradable. And with practical applications in mind: easily formable and stable to moisture and moderate heat.

And they’re faster than AI.

Researchers at Cortical Labs, a biotechnology startup, have successfully taught human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the 2D table tennis simulation video game “Pong”.

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And they could soon help explore the deep sea.

New York-based firm Pliant Energy Systems is building a marine system reminiscent of the cuttlefish with its rippling underwater motion, a report from The Economist reveals.

Continue reading “Cuttlefish-Like Robots Are Far More Efficient Than Propeller-Powered Machines” »

Tesla has started to release a new Full Self-Driving Beta software update (10.7) that improves the situation with “phantom braking” and even helps the FSD beta be more energy efficient.

For more than a year now, Tesla has been slowly rolling out what it is calling “Full Self-Driving Beta” (FSD Beta), which is an early version of its self-driving software that is currently being tested by a fleet of Tesla owners selected by the company and through its “safety test score.”

The software enables the vehicle to drive autonomously to a destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but the driver needs to remain vigilant and ready to take control at all times.

Lightelligence, the global optical computing innovator, revealed its Photonic Arithmetic Computing Engine (PACE), the company’s latest platform to fully integrate photonics and electronics in a small form factor.

As Lightelligence’s first demonstration of optical computing for use cases beyond AI and deep learning, PACE efficiently searches for solutions to several of the hardest computational math problems, including the Ising problem, and the graph Max-Cut and Min-Cut problems, illustrating the real-world potential of integrated photonics in advanced computation.

Continue reading “Lightelligence PACE Announcement Video” »

The end of the year is a time not just for predictions of top trends but also to watch for the biggest hype and most misleading recommendations that get dished out to business leaders. There’s no scarcity of these in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

As AI evolves, its influence on humanity continues to rise. People often focus on AI’s ability to automate and amplify tasks but underestimate its more profound impact on society. “Very few human creations have had the kind of impact as AI,” says Loomis. He compares it with the invention of language—a “tool” that has changed the trajectory of humans and helped birth civilizations. Today, we are still taking baby steps with AI. However, unlike early humans, we are waking up to the fact that AI is not just a tool but will weave deeper into our society.

“I hope 2022 will be the start of this realization, where we don’t just create new technical practices for AI but also understand how it shapes us. This should alert us to the fact that this is the time to lay the guardrails—the checks and balances needed to guide this change into something greater and not dystopian,” concludes Loomis.

Advancing Veterinary Care With Predictive Diagnostics, AI & One Health Principles — Dr. Jennifer Ogeer, DVM, Antech Diagnostics, Mars Petcare, Mars Inc.

Dr. Jennifer Ogeer, DVM, MSC, MBA is Vice President of Medical Science & Innovation at Antech Diagnostics (https://www.antechdiagnostics.com/), one of the world’s largest reference laboratory networks, and a unit of Mars Veterinary Health (https://www.marsveterinary.com/).

Continue reading “Dr. Jennifer Ogeer — Advancing Veterinary Care With Predictive Diagnostics And One Health Principles” »