This developing branch of synthetic media technology has commercial applications—but also has the potential to disrupt elections and spread disinformation.
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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,143
Wearable brain-machine interface could control a wheelchair, vehicle or computer
Combining new classes of nanomembrane electrodes with flexible electronics and a deep learning algorithm could help disabled people wirelessly control an electric wheelchair, interact with a computer or operate a small robotic vehicle without donning a bulky hair-electrode cap or contending with wires.
By providing a fully portable, wireless brain-machine interface (BMI), the wearable system could offer an improvement over conventional electroencephalography (EEG) for measuring signals from visually evoked potentials in the human brain. The system’s ability to measure EEG signals for BMI has been evaluated with six human subjects, but has not been studied with disabled individuals.
The project, conducted by researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Kent and Wichita State University, was reported on September 11 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.
MIT Future of Work Report: We Shouldn’t Worry About Quantity of Jobs, But Quality
Robots aren’t going to take everyone’s jobs, but technology has already reshaped the world of work in ways that are creating clear winners and losers. And it will continue to do so without intervention, says the first report of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future.
Widespread press reports of a looming “employment apocalypse” brought on by AI and automation are probably wide of the mark, according to the authors. Shrinking workforces as developed countries age and outstanding limitations in what machines can do mean we’re unlikely to have a shortage of jobs.
But while unemployment is historically low, recent decades have seen a polarization of the workforce as the number of both high- and low-skilled jobs have grown at the expense of the middle-skilled ones, driving growing income inequality and depriving the non-college-educated of viable careers.
This is at least partly attributable to the growth of digital technology and automation, the report notes, which are rendering obsolete many middle-skilled jobs based around routine work like assembly lines and administrative support.
Houston Mechatronics unveils underwater transforming robot ‘Aquanaut’
Houston Mechatronics (HMI) unveiled Aquanaut at the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, one year after the announcement of the platform concept.
Aquanaut is a revolutionary multi-mode transforming all-electric undersea vehicle. The vehicle is capable of efficient long-distance transit and data collection in ‘AUV’ (autonomous underwater vehicle) mode.
After transforming into ‘ROV’ (remotely operated vehicle) mode the head of the vehicle pitches up, the hull separates, and two arms are activated so that Aquanaut may manipulate its environment.
These AI-generated people are coming to kill stock photography
None of these people are real—but their images are free to download and use in any way you choose.
[Images: generated.photos]
Researchers build a quantum dot energy harvester
Over the past few years, thermoelectric generators have become the focus of a growing number of studies, due to their ability to convert waste heat into electrical energy. Quantum dots, semiconductor crystals with distinctive conductive properties, could be good candidates for thermoelectric generation, as their discrete resonant levels provide excellent energy filters.
In a recent study, researchers at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with colleagues in Madrid, Rochester, Duisburg and Sheffield, have experimentally demonstrated the potential of an autonomous nanoscale energy harvester based on resonant tunneling quantum dots. This harvester is based on previous research carried out by part of their team, who had proposed a three-terminal energy harvester based on two resonant-tunneling quantum dots with different energy levels.
The energy harvester device was realized at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge by a researcher called Gulzat Jaliel. The original theoretical proposal for the device, however, was introduced by Andrew Jordan in 2013, and the theoretical work behind the harvester was carried out by him in collaboration with renowned semiconductor physicist Markus Büttiker and a team of post-doctoral students in Geneva.