Robots like the Pointman Tactical Robot and the iRobot Negotiator are already capable of entering buildings, climbing stairs and moving over obstacles to search buildings. Future versions are more likely to be armed, have more advanced sensors, hold greater autonomy, and be classified.
More agile humanoid (or animal-like) versions of these robots could be used to clear buildings of booby traps and enemy fighters seeking to ambush troops.
Posted in robotics/AI, transportation
Robot armies could soon account for up to one third of all vehicles currently in service. Learn about robot armies and robot army development.
Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, a group of Virginia Tech engineers hopes to redefine these search and rescue protocols by teaming up human searchers with unmanned aerial robots, or drones.
In efforts led by Ryan Williams, an assistant professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the College of Engineering, these drones will use autonomous algorithms and machine learning to complement search and rescue efforts from the air. The drones will also suggest tasks and send updated information to human searchers on the ground.
Using mathematical models based on historical data that reflect what lost people actually do combined with typical searcher behavior, the researchers hope this novel approach of balancing autonomy with human collaboration can make searches more effective. The team has received support from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and will work closely with the local Black Diamond Search and Rescue Council throughout the project.
For many, it’s the material of nightmares: machines capable of continuously refining themselves. What if they turn malevolent? Will they enslave humanity? Fortunately, given the current status of machine learning research, we will not have to worry about such a scenario for quite some time.
Oil spill cleanup technology is a surprisingly innovative field—we learned as much in the wake of the BP Gulf disaster, when everyone from conservation biologists to barbers to Kevin Costner rushed to sell the government on their wild, sometimes literally hairy oil-sucking solutions. We had rubber goop that turned oil solid, massive bags of hair, and MIT’s previous entry into the cleanup fray, robotic oil-eating submarines.
But now the renowned science lab has a better idea: nano-magnets.
MIT researchers have developed a new technique for magnetically separating oil and water that could be used to clean up oil spills. They believe that, with their technique, the oil could be recovered for use, offsetting much of the cost of cleanup.
For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create complex, three-dimensional simulations of the Universe. It’s called the Deep Density Displacement Model, or DM, and it’s so fast and so accurate that the astrophysicists who designed it don’t even know how it does what it does.
What it does is accurately simulate the way gravity shapes the Universe over billions of years. Each simulation takes just 30 milliseconds — compared to the minutes it takes other simulations.
And, even more fascinatingly, DM learnt from the 8,000 training simulations the team fed it — vastly extrapolating from and outperforming them, able to adjust parameters in which it had not even been trained.
If you want to control a robot with your mind — and really, who doesn’t? — you currently have two options.
You can get a brain implant, in which case your control over the robot will be smooth and continuous. Or you can skip the risky, expensive surgery in favor of a device that senses your brainwaves from outside your skull — but your control over the bot will be jerky and not nearly as precise.
Now, a team from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is narrowing the gap between those two options, creating the first noninvasive mind-controlled robot arm that exhibits the kind of smooth, continuous motion previously reserved only for systems involving brain implants — putting us one step closer to a future in which we can all use our minds to control the tech around us.
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* Google’s robots.txt Parser is Now Open Source * Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending * 4 Ways to Debug your Deep Neural Network
* How 3D printing allows scientists to grow new human hairs * NASA is testing how its new deep-space crew capsule handles a rocket emergency * Fake noise will be added to new electric cars starting today in the EU .
Some languages that have never been deciphered could be the next ones to get the machine translation treatment.
Algorithmic Intelligence Has Gotten So Good, It’s Easy To Forget It’s Artificial Artificial intelligence becomes hard to ignore when it starts taking over tasks that used to require human judgment — such as winnowing job applications or prioritizing stories in a news feed.
