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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,298

A new method developed by Disney Research for wirelessly transmitting power throughout a room enables users to charge electronic devices as seamlessly as they now connect to WiFi hotspots, eliminating the need for electrical cords or charging cradles.

The researchers demonstrated their method, called quasistatic cavity resonance (QSCR), inside a specially built 16-by-16-foot room at their lab. They safely generated near-field standing magnetic waves that filled the interior of the room, making it possible to power several cellphones, fans and lights simultaneously.

“This new innovative method will make it possible for electrical power to become as ubiquitous as WiFi,” said Alanson Sample, associate lab director & principal research scientist at Disney Research. “This in turn could enable new applications for robots and other small mobile devices by eliminating the need to replace batteries and wires for charging.”

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Luv this.

Australian entrepreneur reveals brain-controlled telepresence robot. Teleport utilizes brain controlling interface to follow the focal point of a user’s mind and serve various fields of life.

Australian Developer has released a telepresent robot that will let the users attend school or work distantly. People, with a limited mobility of upper limb, will remotely attend tasks through this off-the-shelf mind controlling interface costing 200 UDDs.

Melbourne-based firm Aubot has created the brain controlling robot that is telepresent for doing the user’s task. The dubbed Teleport makes in using the MindWave brain controlling system to track the user’s mind focus. It works on the thinking pattern of the user when he/she focus over a particular entrance, the telepresent assistant moves.

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[Brain implant experiments] like those that let a paralyzed person swig coffee using a robotic arm, or that let blind people “see” spots of light, have proven the huge potential of computers that interface with the brain. But the implanted electrodes used in such trials eventually become useless, as scar tissue forms that degrades their electrical connection to brain cells.

[However,] tests will begin in monkeys of a new implant for piping data into the brain that is designed to avoid that problem. [Led by Harvard researchers,] the project is intended to lead to devices that can restore vision to blind people long-term…[The device will] go beneath the skull but can rest on the surface of an animal’s brain, instead of penetrating inside the organ.

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Feb. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Wednesday indicated that President Donald Trump may want the United States to resurrect its pioneering spirit in outer space — much the same way another American leader did five decades ago.

Acting NASA Administrator Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr., sent a memo to employees Wednesday saying he had instructed the agency to work up a feasibility report on adding astronauts to its planned EM-1 flight late next year.

The mission, which is currently unmanned, will launch NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket with an Orion capsule. The spacecraft would orbit the moon and return to Earth. The agency’s EM-2 mission, scheduled for years later, was supposed to be the spaceflight to carry humans.

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Excellent article in Wired this morning. My novel “The Transhumanist Wager” quoted quite a bit to add context to some of Elon Musk’s statements: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elon-musk-humans-must-become-cyborgs #transhumanism

The Tesla and SpaceX founder warned that a future where AI is smarter than us will be ‘dangerous’ and we must all become cyborgs to survive.

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