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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,472

Spider-legged WAM-V suspension boats float over the waves

California’s Marine Advanced Robotics has made considerable progress on its remarkable Wave-Adaptive Modular Vessel (WAM-V) since we first saw these wild spider-boats 16 years ago on a list of urban legends. Legends and photoshops they were not – indeed, the giant 100-ft Proteus laid the foundations for the smaller, smarter machines the company is making today.

In a nutshell, a WAM-V is an ultra-light catamaran with hulls mounted on clever suspension legs that use springs, shocks and ball joints to move with the waves, helping to stabilize them for pitch and roll, and making these boats suitable for sea conditions where others of the same size simply can’t operate. With props always in the water, they’re highly maneuverable, and capable of spinning 360 degrees almost in their own footprint.

That’s the wave-adaptive part; they’re also modular, with quick-connect interfaces allowing operators to quickly swap out propulsion systems, payloads and sensor/instrument packages for different missions. And transportable as well, they’re built for rapid assembly and disassembly, and they break down so small that four 16-foot WAM-Vs can fit in a standard shipping container. You’d need to deflate a conventional 18-foot RIB to get even one of those in.

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A theory of consciousness from a theoretical computer science perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing Machine

This paper provides evidence that a theoretical computer science (TCS) perspective can add to our understanding of consciousness by providing a simple framework for employing tools from computational complexity theory and machine learning. Just as the Turing machine is a simple model to define and explore computation, the Conscious Turing Machine (CTM) is a simple model to define and explore consciousness (and related concepts). The CTM is not a model of the brain or cognition, nor is it intended to be, but a simple substrate-independent computational model of (the admittedly complex concept of) consciousness. This paper is intended to introduce this approach, show its possibilities, and stimulate research in consciousness from a TCS perspective.

Elon Musk: If You Don’t Think AI Could Outsmart You, You’re an Idiot

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“I’ve been banging this AI drum for a decade,” Musk told Business Insider.

Musk’s latest warning is that smart people who assume they could never be fooled by a machine are in effect lowering their guard to any AI trickery coming their way.

“We should be concerned about where AI is going,” Musk told Business Insider. “The people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart, because they can’t imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them. That’s the flaw in their logic. They’re just way dumber than they think they are.”

UMN research shows people can control robotic arm with their minds

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have made a major breakthrough that allows people to control a robotic arm using only their minds. The research has the potential to help millions of people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases.

The study is published online today in Scientific Reports, a Nature research journal.

To read the full research paper, entitled “Noninvasive Electroencephalogram Based Control of a Robotic Arm for Reach and Grasp Tasks,” visit the Nature Scientific Reports website.

Groundbreaking study demonstrates potential to help millions of people with disabilities.

UK’s National Grid launches drone trial to fully automate asset inspections

UK’s National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) is launching trials to fully automate the corrosion inspection of electricity transmission pylons with the help of autonomous drones.

NGET owns 21,900 steel lattice pylons that carry overhead transmission conductor wires in England and Wales. Transmission pylon steelwork conditions can deteriorate through corrosion, so periodic assessments are made to understand the health of the network. NGET inspects around 3,650 steel lattice pylons each year, capturing high definition still color images of steelwork using helicopters and manually-operated drones.

New Evidence of Underground Water on Mars — Or Something Much Stranger

Alan DeRossettElon holds a grudge after nearly 20 years of Putin bots and fossil fuel cater calling him and Tesla owners losers stay tuned to the next episode as Elons lawyers prove Twitter has millions of bots and fake users More than it legally said in Elons contr… See more.

Steven PostrelThe incompetence of this bad cut-and-paste article is notable. The S&P 500 is not new, not ESG related, and not dropping Tesla.

There is a separate “S&P 500 ESG” product that is relatively new and that dropped Tesla, but it isn’t the benchmark that a… See more.

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Is DeepMind’s Gato AI really a human-level intelligence breakthrough?

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DeepMind has released what it calls a “generalist” AI called Gato, which can play Atari games, accurately caption images, chat naturally with a human and stack coloured blocks with a robot arm, among 600 other tasks. But is Gato truly intelligent – having artificial general intelligence – or is it just an AI model with a few extra tricks up its sleeve?

What is artificial general intelligence (AGI)?

Outside science fiction, AI is limited to niche tasks. It has seen plenty of success recently in solving a huge range of problems, from writing software to protein folding and even creating beer recipes, but individual AI models have limited, specific abilities. A model trained for one task is of little use for another.