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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2233

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles released its annual autonomous vehicle disengagement report today, in which all the companies that are actively testing self-driving cars on public roads in the Golden State disclose the number of times that human drivers were forced to take control of their driverless vehicles. The biggest news to come out of this report is from Waymo, Google’s new self-driving car company, which reported a huge drop in disengagements in 2016 despite an almost equally huge increase in the number of miles driven.

In other words, Waymo’s self-driving cars are failing at a much lower rate, even as they are driving a whole lot more miles. The company says that since 2015, its rate of safety-related disengages has fallen from 0.8 per thousand miles to 0.2 per thousand miles in 2016. So while Waymo increased its driving by 50 percent in the state — racking up a total of 635,868 miles — the company’s total number of reportable disengages fell from 341 in 2015 to 124.

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In Brief

  • A new report predicts that nearly 50% of all work could be automated by the year 2055, with machines already capable of taking over 30% of human tasks in about 60% of occupations.
  • Though this shift could take longer due to politics and public sentiment, we need to start preparing now for a future in which many workers are displaced by machines.

According to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute, nearly half of all the work we do will be able to be automated by the year 2055. However, a variety of factors, including politics and public sentiment toward the technology, could push that back by as many as 20 years. An author of the report, Michael Chui, stressed that this doesn’t mean we will be inundated with mass unemployment over the next decades. “What we ought to be doing is trying to solve the problem of ‘mass redeployment,’” Chui tells Public Radio International (PRI). “How can we continue to have people working alongside the machines as we go forward?”

The report suggests that the move toward automation will also bring with it a global boost in productivity: “Based on our scenario modeling, we estimate automation could raise productivity growth globally by 0.8 to 1.4 percent annually.” Removing the capacity for human error and dips in speed due to illness, fatigue, or general malaise can help boost productivity in any task capable of being automated.

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A new technology for cleaning and maintaining your aquarium as well as useful for zoos, public aquariums, etc.

A new technology for fishing industry and hobbyists.1092647.htm

Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball underwater, and grabbing and releasing a live fish.

The robots are made entirely of hydrogel — a tough, rubbery, nearly transparent material that’s composed mostly of water. Each robot is an assemblage of hollow, precisely designed hydrogel structures, connected to rubbery tubes. When the researchers pump water into the hydrogel robots, the structures quickly inflate in orientations that enable the bots to curl up or stretch out.

Continue reading “Transparent gel-based robots can catch and release live fish” | >

I was just telling someone today this very message. Of course they believe borders keep things from happening. Maybe physically; but not in an online retail and consumer world. Who are the most advance and real time responsive in meeting the interests and demands of consumers; will be the winners.

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It’s usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published October 7, 2015. We hope you enjoy it!

You’ve heard the chatter: Robots and AI want your job. One famous study predicted 47% of today’s jobs may be automated by 2034. And if you want to know how likely it is you’ll be replaced by a robot, check out this BBC tool. (Writer = 33%. Yay?)

But nowhere is automation as immediately evident as it is in manufacturing. It’s been going on for decades, most obviously in automotive assembly and heavy machinery. Increasingly, however, more advanced robot factory workers are branching out.

Continue reading “Who Has the Manufacturing Edge? May Countries With the Best Robots Win” | >

Highly sophisticated robotics and ‘bio-printing’ are rapidly changing the face of modern surgery, significantly eliminating the risk of human error and in some cases even allowing doctors to perform procedures remotely, according to experts at Arab Health.

Dr Peter C.W. Kim, vice-president and associate surgeon-in-chief of the Joseph E. Roberts Jr. Centre for Surgical Care at Washington DC’s Children’s National — which has received millions of dollars in donations from the UAE’s government — noted that doctors will soon be able to 3D-print using bio-tissue, such as for an eardrum.

“What our engineers and researchers have done is not only design the plastic with it, but also graft cells onto it,” he said. “This is where we are going. You will (in the future) be able to have organs on the shelf. Instead of harvesting it, you can print it.”

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Could we see Humanoid robots with wings someday?

Bat Bot, a lightweight flier with thin silicone wings stretched over a carbon fiber skeleton, can cruise, dive and bank turn just like its namesake, researchers report February 1 in Science Robotics, Joinfo.com reports with reference to Science News.

Such a maneuverable machine could one day soar up the towering structures of a construction site, flying in and out of steel beams to help keep track of a building’s progress, study coauthor Seth Hutchinson, a roboticist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a news briefing January 31.

Continue reading “Meet Bat Bot: The First Flying Robot” | >

A little delayed in sharing this.

Threats posed by to systems are a colossal challenge for the U.S. Navy, but a combo of advanced , intelligent algorithms, and are being developed to help warfighters detect and counter them.

Electronic warfare (EW) systems – whether on land or aboard U.S. military ships and aircraft – tap the to sense, protect, and communicate. But, when necessary, these same systems can be turned against adversaries to deny their ability to disrupt or use radio, infrared, or signals.

Today’s EW systems tend to rely on databases of known threats with predefined countermeasures, which can limit their ability to quickly adapt and respond to new advanced threats. Soon, these systems may increasingly be tasked with isolating unknown hostile radar signals within dense electromagnetic environments and responding quickly with effective electronic countermeasures.

Continue reading “Cognitive electronic warfare: Countering threats posed by adaptive radars” | >

WASHINGTON (AP) — Holy drone, Batman! Mechanical masterminds have spawned the Bat Bot, a soaring, sweeping and diving robot that may eventually fly circles around other drones.

Because it mimics the unique and more flexible way bats fly, this 3-ounce prototype could do a better and safer job getting into disaster sites and scoping out construction zones than bulky drones with spinning rotors, said the three authors of a study released Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics. For example, it would have been ideal for going inside the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, said study co-author Seth Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois.

The bat robot flaps its wings for better aerial maneuvers, glides to save energy and dive bombs when needed. Eventually, the researchers hope to have it perch upside down like the real thing, but that will have to wait for the robot’s sequel.

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Will we finally solve world peace though with AI on QC? Hmmm.

I work in computational quantum condensed-matter physics: the study of matter, materials, and artificial quantum systems. Complex problems are our thing.

Researchers in our field are working on hyper-powerful batteries, perfectly efficient power transmission, and ultra-strong materials—all important stuff to making the future a better place. To create these concepts, condensed-matter physics deals with the most complex concept in nature: the quantum wavefunction of a many-particle system. Think of the most complex thing you know, and this blows it out of the water: A computer that models the electron wavefunction of a nanometer-size chunk of dust would require a hard drive containing more magnetic bits than there are atoms in the universe.

I started thinking about how machine learning and artificial intelligence could help our field when Google DeepMind defeated world champion Lee Sedol in the ancient game of Go.

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