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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,345

Neural Nanonics here we come: “Could lead to future autonomous, fully implantable neuroprosthetic devices”

Memristor chip (credit: University of Southampton)

A bio-inspired electronic device called a memristor could allow for real-time processing of neuronal signals (spiking events), new research led by the University of Southampton has demonstrated.

The research could lead to using multi-electrode array implants for detecting spikes in the brain’s electrical signals from more than 1,000 recording channels to help treat neurological conditions, without requiring expensive, high-bandwidth, bulky systems for processing data. The research could lead to future autonomous, fully implantable neuroprosthetic devices.

Continue reading “Synapse-like memristor-based electronic device detects brain spikes in real time” | >

Verizon has joined the likes of Facebook, Google and fellow telecommunications giant AT&T in exploring the potential of internet-connected unmanned aircraft. While its vision involves expanding 4G coverage across the US, it has an immediate focus on shoring up communications for first responders in emergency situations, and recently carried out trials to that effect.

Verizon has dubbed the initiative Airborne LTE Operations (ALO) and says it has actually been in the pipeline for around two years. The company has been working to integrate internet connectivity into unmanned aerial vehicles and hook them up to its 4G network, daisy chaining coverage and beaming it down to unconnected areas in the process. This is similar to how Facebook hopes its Aquila drones will work.

Verizon recently teamed up with company American Aerospace Technologies to see how using drones as gliding cell towers could have an impact in disaster relief scenarios. In a simulated mission in New Jersey, the team set a drone with a 17-foot (5.2 m) wingspan in flight to put the onboard technologies through their paces.

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You often hear people say we’re in the early days of artificial intelligence, probably the most important tech theme of the next century. It’s important to put real measurements on improvements to the technology. Google tried to do just that at a press event in San Francisco this morning. Here are the top lines:

• Image recognition has improved to 93.9% accuracy from 89.6% in 2014. It’s also more detailed; it can detect colors and analyze the content in images with more than one subject.

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Amazing Stories has resumed publishing original science fiction, and they just happened to have led with a story of mine. Amazing Stories was the first SF magazine, dating to 1926, and was edited by Hugo Gernsback (as in “Hugo Awards”). My story contains speculation about human-AI interaction, and the future of user interfaces (disguised as comedy).

Posting this with Eric Klien’s permission, as it’s self-promotional.

Never trust an app in the form of a woman you don’t know, even if you are a hipster knight. A Gernsback Contest winning short story.

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Got a bee shortage? No problem, DARPA has you covered.

Following the news that the honeybee is now officially an endangered species as “colony collapse disorder” accelerates, it seems that a Harvard research team has the solution – robotic honeybees. Instead of attempting to save the bees by reducing the use of pesticides or revising safety standards for cell phone radiation, the focus has shifted to replacing the bees altogether. Harvard University researchers, led by engineering professor Robert Wood have been tweaking “RoboBees” since their initial introduction in 2009. The bee-sized robots made of titanium and plastic represent a breakthrough in the field of micro-aerial vehicles. The size of the components needed to create flying robots were previously too heavy to make a such a small structure lightweight enough to achieve flight. Current models weigh only 80 mg and have been fitted with sensors that detect light and wind velocity.

Researchers claim that the bees could artificially pollinate entire fields of crops and will soon be able to be programmed to live in an artificial hive, coordinate algorithms and communicate among themselves about methods of pollination and the locations of particular crops. In addition, RoboBees have been suggested for other uses including searching disaster sites for survivors, monitoring traffic, and “military and police applications.” These applications could include using RoboBees to “scout for insurgents” on battlefields abroad or allowing police and SWAT teams to use the micro-robots to gather footage inside buildings.

The RoboBees project originally began at the University of California at Berkeley in 1998 when neurobiologist Michael Dickinson, electrical engineer Ron Fearing, and then-grad student Rob Wood received a $2.5 million grant from DARPA to create an insect drone. Dickinson now continues his work at the University of Washington while Wood heads the principal RoboBee micro-robotics lab at Harvard. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US military, is best known for its role in helping create the internet, but a vast majority of their taxpayer-funded projects paint a decidedly dystopian picture of humanity’s future. Most of DARPA’s projects involve transhumanism, the merging of humans and machines to create a technologically governed populace.

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Some of the world’s richest and most powerful people are convinced that we are living in a computer simulation. And now they’re trying to do something about it.

At least two of Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires are pouring money into efforts to break humans out of the simulation that they believe that it is living in, according to a new report.

Philosophers have long been concerned about how we can know that our world isn’t just a very believable simulation of a real one. But concern about that has become ever more active in recent years, as computers and artificial intelligence have advanced.

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When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type.

“Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.”

It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko’s death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him.

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Lee Teschler

Executive Editor

@dw_LeeTeschler

The days of launching complete satellites and similar extraterrestrial objects into orbit may be numbered. Instead, orbiting robots will construct them in space. The basic principles of this concept are being perfected by a company called Tethers Unlimited Inc. in Bothell Wash. under a NASA contract. Tethers’ SpiderFab: Architecture for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures, will enable on-orbit fabrication of super-large objects such as antennas, solar panels, trusses, and other multifunctional structures. In ten years, Tethers expects to perfect the technology to a degree that will make possible self-fabricating, self-assembling satellites.

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