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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1745

The US Air Force (USAF) has launched a competition to design the artificially intelligent software, called Skyborg, that would control its planned fleet of loyal wingman unmanned air vehicles (UAV).

The service intends to grant indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts worth $400 million per awardee to develop the software and related hardware, it says in a request for proposals released on 15 May. The USAF is looking for technical and cost proposals from companies by 15 June 2020 and intends to award multiple companies contracts, though it may award just one contract or no contracts, based on proposals.

US Air Force Research Laboratory XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator

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Circa 2010 what someday we could use crispr to develop a biology singularity to find the epigenetics to evolve at lightning speed.

If you’re a sci-fi reader, you are probably familiar with the idea of the “technological singularity”. For the uninitiated, the Singularity is the idea that computational power is increasing so rapidly that soon there will be genuine artificial intelligence that will far surpass humans. Essentially, once you have smarter-than-human computers, they will drive their own advancement and we will no longer be able to comprehend the technology.

We can debate whether the singularity will or will not happen, and what the consequences might be, for a long time, but that’s not the point of this post. This post was inspired by the final chapter in Denialism by Michael Specter. In that chapter, Specter talks about the rapid advancement in biotechnology. Specifically, he points to the rapid increase in computational power and the resulting rapid increase in the speed of genome processing.

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You might like this interview I did with futurist writer Nikola Danaylov, who runs the Singularity Weblog and wrote ‘Conversations with the Future: 21 Visions for the 21st century’, on how advances in AI could utterly transform human society and the health of the global transhumanist movement.

I’m trying to grow my futurism YouTube channel (transhumanism, AI, space colonisation etr) so if this is of interest to you I’d be very grateful for any subscribers.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVLqMgLDwO-aSk5YcYo1dA…

Continue reading “Has the transhumanist movement lost its way? Nikola Danaylov interview” | >

Sony is bringing machine intelligence to its image sensors. The electronics and entertainment giant announced this week a sensor that applies artificial intelligence while processing imagery without the need for extrema hardware or assistance.

Players in the photography industry have been focusing on increasingly greater numbers of pixels for ever-sharper enlargement and reproduction capabilities and on increasingly compressed devices for lighter weight and greater portability.

But Sony’s new IMX500 sensor is the first to improve efficiency though AI implementation.

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Researchers at Zhejiang University of Technology, Tianjin University, Nanjing Institute of Technology and Ritsumeikan University have recently created a soft robotic finger that integrates a self-powered curvature sensor using multi-material 3D printing technology. The new robotic finger, presented in a paper published in Elsevier’s Nano Energy journal, is made of several materials, including a stretchable electrode, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), AgilusBlack, VeroWhite and FLX9060.

“Soft robots have the potential to bridge the gap between machines and humans, but it is important for them to ensure a safe interaction between humans, objects and the environment,” Mengying Xie, co-author of the paper, told TechXplore. “Embedded soft are critical for the development of controllable that can fulfill their full potential in practical applications.”

In their previous research, part of the research team working at Ritsumeikan University developed a fully multi-material 3D printed gripper with variable stiffness that could achieve robust grasping of objects. In this new study, Xie, Zhu and their colleagues drew inspiration from this previous work and set out to create a 3D-printed soft finger with sensing capabilities that could monitor its bending movements.

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UCSC researchers developed a deep-learning framework called Morpheus to perform pixel-level morphological classifications of objects in astronomical images.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a powerful new computer program called Morpheus that can analyze astronomical image data pixel by pixel to identify and classify all of the galaxies and stars in large data sets from astronomy surveys.

Morpheus is a deep-learning framework that incorporates a variety of artificial intelligence technologies developed for applications such as image and speech recognition. Brant Robertson, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics who leads the Computational Astrophysics Research Group at UC Santa Cruz, said the rapidly increasing size of astronomy data sets has made it essential to automate some of the tasks traditionally done by astronomers.

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CloudWalk has raised RMB 1.8 billion (US$254 million) in funding from a group of provincial and municipal funds in China to become the fourth most well-funded biometric facial recognition company in the country, according to a report in Chinese-language publication 36Kr covered by its English-language affiliate KrAsia.

CloudWalk intends to launch an IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market by the end of 2020, according to the report. The company has raised a total of RMB 2.8 billion ($400 million) so far.

CloudWalk provides facial recognition for numerous public agencies, including the Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Airport, and China Mobile’s brick and mortar stores.

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NVIDIA announced the Jetson Nano Developer Kit at the 2019 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC), a $99 computer available now for embedded designers, researchers, and DIY makers, delivering the power of modern AI in a compact, easy-to-use platform with full software programmability. Jetson Nano delivers 472 GFLOPS of compute performance with a quad-core 64-bit ARM CPU and a 128-core integrated NVIDIA GPU. It also includes 4GB LPDDR4 memory in an efficient, low-power package with 5W/10W power modes and 5V DC input, as shown in figure 1.

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CrumplePop RustleRemover AI and Levelmatic Audio Plugins, two plugins for audio cleanup we have a look at how they can clean up audio from anything to unwanted mic noises, to fixing levels in podcasts and interview audio.

CrumplePop makes some very clever and useful plugins for Mac-based editors. These include audio tools to fix and enhance sound and video tools for grading and stabilizing. The company has now announced two new audio plugins, RustleRemover AI and Levelmatic the former aimed at fixing a specific issue, and the latter leveling audio.

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