Lifeboat Foundation

ETH researchers are developing tiny, sophisticated technological and biological machines enabling non-invasive, selective therapies. Their creations include genetically modified cells that can be activated via brain waves, and swarms of microrobots that facilitate highly precise application of drugs.

Richard Fleischner, who directed the 1966 cult film Fantastic Voyage, would have been delighted with Bradley Nelson’s research: similar to the story in Fleischner’s film, Nelson wants to load tiny robots with drugs and manoeuvre them to the precise location in the human body where treatment is needed, for instance to the site of a cancer tumour. Alternatively, the tiny creatures could also be fitted with instruments, allowing operations to be performed without surgical intervention. The advantages compared with conventional treatments with drugs are clear: far more targeted therapy, and as a result, fewer side effects.

What is good for the simulation and the machine learning is, as it turns out, also good for the database. The performance and thermal limits of traditional CPUs have made GPUs the go-to accelerator for these workloads at extreme scale, and now databases, which are thread monsters in their own right, are also turning to GPUs to get a performance and scale boost.

Commercializing GPU databases takes time, and Kinetica, formerly known as GPUdb, is making a bit of a splash ahead of the Strata+Hadoop World conference next week as it brags about the performance and scale of the parallel database management system that it initially created for the US Army and has commercialized with the US Postal Service.

Kinetica joins MapD, which we profiled recently, and Sqream Technologies, which you can find out more about here, in using GPUs to execute the parallel functions of SQL queries to massively speed up the processing of queries against databases. Each of these GPU databases has come into being through a unique path, just like the pillars of the relational database world – Oracle’s eponymous database, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server (and its Sybase forbear), MySQL, and PostgreSQL – did decades ago. And as these GPU databases mature and develop, the race will be on to scale them up and out to handle ever larger datasets and perform queries faster and faster at the same time.

Continue reading “Pushing Database Scalability Up And Out With GPUs” »

The song, “Daddy’s Car,” sounds like The Beatles and is eminently hummable.

University of Houston researchers aim to leverage a new, noninvasive brain-machine interface system that taps into human brainwaves to control and command a wearable exoskeleton—a technology that could enable paraplegic kids to walk.

Kristopher Sturgis

Continue reading “Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton Could Help Paraplegic Children” »

Interacting with people through brainwaves either via technology or a telepathic six sense has been long explored in the genre of science-fiction: in Hollywood blockbuster X-Men the character Professor X is telepathic and has the ability to tap into and read other people’s minds.

While the concept of telepathy or thought-controlled communication was once thought to be a futuristic concept or a concept reserved only for the realm of science-fiction, technology today is advancing fast, with the world soon to expect the commercialisation of holograms as explored in The Time Machine, autonomous cars as seen in iRobot and now brainwave communication like in X-Men.

While science-fiction explores the dark side of these technologies, the real world is exploring a multitude of applications to enhance and improve people’s everyday lives.

My new story for VentureBeat on the coming of robot bodyguards. I’ll be speaking about this next week at RoboBusiness 2016, a major robotics conference in San Jose:

I recently consulted with the US Navy on all things “transhuman.” In those conversations about how science and technology can help the human race evolve beyond its natural limits, it was clear that military is keen on replacing human soldiers with both fighting and peacekeeping machines so American military lives never have to come under fire or be in harm’s way.

However, it’s the peacekeeping technology that is particularly interesting for many civilians. While you wouldn’t want an armed Terminator in your home, you might like a robot that travels with you and offers personal protection, like a bodyguard. In a survey by Travelzoo of 6,000 participants, nearly 80 percent of people said they expect robots to be a significant part of their lives by 2020 — and that those robots might even join them on holidays.

Continue reading “The robot bodyguard is coming — and you’ll want one” »

TAIPEI — Leading graphics chip designer Nvidia said on Wednesday that it had formed a partnership with Foxconn Technology Group and Quanta Computer to develop servers that offer artificial intelligence capabilities.

“In the long term, artificial intelligence computing has the largest market potential, as every data center in the future will have artificial intelligence,” Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang told an audience at a tech forum in Taipei on Wednesday.

The development of next-generation technologies including connected devices, driverless cars and smart cities require servers that can handle massive amounts of data, images and videos.

Continue reading “Nvidia links up with Foxconn, Quanta on AI servers” »

Google DeepMind is working on progressive neural networks to bring us closer to a multi-functional ‘general’ artificial intelligence (AI), but we are still some distance away.

One of the world’s largest package delivery companies is stepping up efforts to integrate drones into its system.

UPS has partnered with robot-maker CyPhy Works to test the use of drones to make commercial deliveries to remote or difficult-to-access locations.

The companies began testing the drones on Thursday, when they launched one from the seaside town of Marblehead. The drone flew on a programmed route for 3 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver an inhaler at Children’s Island.

Continue reading “UPS testing drones for use in its package delivery system” »