Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):
Shimon—a four-armed marimba playing robot—has been around for years, but its developers at Georgia Tech have recently taken this futuristic musical machine to the next level. Using deep learning, the robot can now study large datasets from well-known musicians, and then produce and perform its own original compositions.
Shimon was originally developed by Gil Weinberg, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Music Technology. Under its original programming, the robot was capable of improvising music as it played alongside human performers, using an “interestingness” algorithm to make sure it wasn’t just copying its bandmates. But now, thanks to the efforts of Ph.D. student Mason Bretan, Shimon has become an accomplished composer, capable of autonomously generating the melodic and harmonic structure of a song. And you know what? Shimon’s songs are actually quite good!
I have had this theory for a while and it fits my simulation theory but now seems like the perfect time to discuss it, given the research and findings from the Blue Brain Project. Please send me an email after reading this and let me know what you think of it? Thanks.
My Theory
By: Mr Futurist
In: AI Artificial Intelligence, Multiverse, Parallel Universes
Posted in robotics/AI
The two academic authors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who became the pin-up boys of the Davos crowd for their previous book on The Second Machine Age (2014), do a neat job of scanning the technological horizon and highlighting significant landmarks. This is a clear and crisply written account of machine intelligence, big data and the sharing economy. But McAfee and Brynjolfsson also wisely acknowledge the limitations of their futurology and avoid over-simplification. No one can really have much idea how the business world is going to evolve or predict the precise interplay between all these fast-changing forces.
A new book by the authors of ‘The Second Machine Age’ suggests that digital disruption is coming to the corner office.
Just a quick heads up, high school students. You might want to save your job application efforts for retail gigs, because the fast food space is about to be invaded by robots.
We already showed you an autonomous grillmaster that can monitor and flip an entire grill full of patties. Today’s bot is even more versatile. Not only can it cook the patty, but it can also dice up fresh toppings like tomatoes, pickles, and onions… and it can even deftly stack everything on a toasted bun.
This autonomous marvel was designed and built by Momentum Machines, who just wrapped up a successful funding round to the tune of $18 million. It’s pretty clear why they attracted so much cash.
YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) — A Japanese industrial group unveiled Thursday a robot designed for underwater probes of damage from meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Remote controlled robots are key to the decades-long decommissioning process for the plant. But super-high radiation and structural damage inside the reactors hampered earlier attempts to inspect areas close to the reactors’ cores.
The developers say they plan to send the new “mini manbo,” or “little sunfish,” probe into the primary containment vessel of Unit 3 at Fukushima in July to study the extent of damage and locate parts of melted fuel thought to have fallen to the bottom of the chamber, submerged by highly radioactive water.
Drones. Drone is a word you see pretty often in today’s pop culture. But drones seem to be an extremely diverse species. Even flightless vehicles are occasionally referred to as drones. So what exactly is a drone?
In this video series, the Galactic Public Archives takes bite-sized looks at a variety of terms, technologies, and ideas that are likely to be prominent in the future. Terms are regularly changing and being redefined with the passing of time. With constant breakthroughs and the development of new technology and other resources, we seek to define what these things are and how they will impact our future.
