Lifeboat Foundation

Continue reading “A robot with human-like grace and precision” »

The use of cryogenics, for now, borders on science fiction—but that hasn’t stopped scientists and wealthy enthusiasts from trying to make it a reality.

Humai, an L.A.-based robotics company, hopes to freeze human brains after death with the expectation that technology will soon catch up—allowing the brain to be resurrected in an artificial body. Neuroscientists have excessively cautioned about lending cryogenics credence, but scientific research has blurred the definition of death and the consensus on when it occurs.

For centuries, death was called at the moment the heart stopped beating. However, medicine has evolved to the point that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is now a common life-saving technique incorporated in basic first aid training, along with more advanced forms of resuscitation—like defibrillators—that can restart the heart. Several cases have been cited where a person under cardiac arrest has been brought back to life hours after they’ve technically died, when cooling processes and correct resuscitation procedures are implemented. According to a 2012 study published in Nature, skeletal muscle stem cells can retain their ability to regenerate for up to 17 days after death, redefining death as occurring in steps rather than at one single moment.

Continue reading “We’re Closer Than Ever to Bringing the Dead Back to Life” »

Thinking about a change of career? Google’s got a heck of a job offer for you. They’ll potentially pay up to $40,000 a year for you to not drive one of their autonomous cars. That’s based on base pay for $20 per hour working full time hours (40 hours a week).

There has to be some kind of catch, you say? Of course there is. Google isn’t just planning on throwing money at people to ride around with an AI chauffeur while sucking on slurpees and binge-watching Netflix from the non-driver’s seat.

No, you’ll actually have to pay attention. Google’s cars have logged plenty of hours on real roads, but there are still going to be times when the car doesn’t know how to handle a situation — say, sharing a narrow section of road with an oncoming bus. Since there’s no way of knowing when you’ll need to lend a helping hand (or foot), you need to be ever vigilant behind the wheel.

Continue reading “Google will pay people $40,000 a year not to drive their self driving cars” »

Definitely.

Google owns some of the most advanced robotics firms in the world. Two patents shed light on what Google has planned for these bots.

In the US we have an old saying “fight fire with fire” and in this case “fight bots with bot/s” It should be noted, having a bot or any type of AI on your network is not necessarily going to prevent 100% of the hacking and Cyber threats today due to the weak connected infrastructure across the net, etc. However, to counter attack the pesky bots that we’re seeing around online ads, click monitoring can be limited by AI.

Roughly half of all Web traffic comes from bots and crawlers, and that’s costing companies a boatload of money.

That’s one finding from a report released Thursday by DeviceAtlas, which makes software to help companies detect the devices being used by visitors to their websites.

Continue reading “Half the Web’s traffic comes from bots, and that’s costing you more than you think” »

Imagine this: you accidentally swallowed a battery (!), and to get it out, you need to take a pill that turns into a robot. Researchers from MIT, the University of Sheffield and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new kind of origami robot that transforms into a microsurgeon inside your stomach. They squished the accordion-like robot made of dried pig intestine inside a pill, which the stomach acid dissolves. A magnet embedded in the middle allows you or a medical practitioner to control the microsurgeon from the outside using another magnet. It also picks up the battery or other objects stuck inside your stomach.

This new design is a follow up to an older origami robot also developed by a team headed by MIT CSAIL director Daniela Rus. It has a completely different design and propels itself by using its corners that can stick to the stomach’s surface. The team decided to focus on battery retrieval, because people swallow 3,500 button batteries in the US alone. While they can be digested normally, they sometimes burn people’s stomach and esophagus linings. This robot can easily fish them out of one’s organs before that happens. Besides origami surgeons, Rus-led teams created a plethora of other cool stuff in the past, including robots that can assemble themselves in the oven.

Continue reading “MIT’s tiny robot operates on your stomach from the inside” »

While CRISPR, nanobots and head transplants are making headlines as medical breakthroughs, a number of new technologies are also making progress tackling some of the toughest age-old diseases still plaguing millions of people in the poorest parts of the world.

In low income countries, over 75% of the population dies before the age of 70 due to infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, lung infections, tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, malaria, and increasingly, cardiovascular diseases. Over a third of deaths in low income countries are among children under age 14 primarily due to pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, malaria and neonatal complications. In the developed world, those living in extreme poverty, such as homeless populations, also die on average at age 48.

Over the last year, artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology have all generated a number of new solutions that have the potential to dramatically reduce these problems.

Continue reading “Fighting Developing World Disease With AI, Robotics, and Biotech” »

Good article and perfect timing for me too because I plan to see what “good” bots are available and how I can use it to eradicate troll activity around my online content.

To some unfortunate users, the internet is a minefield of harassment and hatred. But there are steps we can take to make it a lot friendlier.

Robotics with grace — hmmm.

A new type of hydrostatic transmission that combines hydraulic and pneumatic lines can safely and precisely drive robot arms, giving them the delicacy necessary to pick up an egg without breaking it.

Continue reading “Hybrid hydrostatic transmission enables robots with human-like grace and precision” »