I almost snickered at this article because many of us have been highlighting many of the issues with AI. I am glad to see someone else also speaking up with the bigger issue with AI which is poor security due to the existing net infrastructure.
Facebook and others are all working on simplifying users’ lives with bots, but these novel interactive programs change the game in terms of security.
Good luck convincing business and consumers to buy your autonomous spider-bot.
There are a number of major tech-driven companies that are researching 3D printing technology at a rapid rate, but very few invest as much as time and money into additive manufacturing as Siemens does. Whether they’re building their own €21.4 million metal 3D printing facility or helping 3D printing startups with their endeavors, the global engineering company is betting big within the 3D printing industry. Now, a research team from Siemens Corporate Technology’s Princeton campus has just revealed their latest innovation, the development of autonomous mobile 3D printing devices, which are being called spider-bots.
These unique printing devices, which look like spider-like robots, were almost entirely designed and manufactured by the Siemens Corporate Technology research team. They’re engineered with an extruder similar to the type used with FDM printing, and are able to print in polylactic acid (PLA). The spider-bots are equipped with an onboard camera and a laser scanner as well, which enables them to become aware of the surrounding environment during the print job. Software-wise, they’re all programmed with a modified version of Siemens’ NX PLM software, which is their product development, engineering, and manufacturing software solution. In the near-future, the Siemens research team hopes to utilize these spider-bots within the automotive and aerospace industries.
Every year, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program puts out the call to the general public, hoping to find better or entirely new aerospace architectures, systems, or mission ideas. As part of the Space Technology Mission Directorate, this program has been in operation since 1998, serving as a high-level entry point to entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers who want to contribute to human space exploration.
This year, thirteen concepts were chosen for Phase I of the NIAC program, ranging from reprogrammed microorganisms for Mars, a two-dimensional spacecraft that could de-orbit space debris, an analog rover for extreme environments, a robot that turn asteroids into spacecraft, and a next-generation exoplanet hunter. These proposals were awarded $100,000 each for a nine month period to assess the feasibility of their concept.
Of the thirteen proposals, four came from NASA’s own Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with the remainder coming either from other NASA bodies, private research institutions, universities and aerospace companies from around the country. Taken as a whole, these ideas serve to illustrate of the kinds of missions NASA intends to purse in the coming years, as well as the cutting-edge technology they hope to leverage to make them happen.
It may sound like sci-fi. But millions and millions of dollars are pouring into projects to mine asteroids and the moon. And with a space gold rush comes space pirates.
With trillions of dollars worth of minerals lying just under the moon’s surface or spinning around the solar system inside asteroids, space mining is big business.
Well, big potential business. No one has dug nickel out of an asteroid or scooped any tantalum from the lunar dust—at least not for profit. Before space miners can get drilling, they need to invent specialized industrial robots, set up orbital outposts and—arguably most importantly—convince investors, workers, and prospective buyers that space minerals are worth the cost and effort of mining them.
Posted in business, robotics/AI
Bots are only as good as their under pinning legacy infrastructure/ networks. Glad to see this article and someone speaking again for investors outside SV.
Bots hit the mark on every pattern Silicon Valley loves. But for investors and entrepreneurs — and executives outside of San Francisco trying to figure out what this bot business is all about — it’s worth taking a step back and looking at this frenzy with fresh eyes and a bigger picture.
Simple interactions between people — making a connection, following and messaging — when captured in a digital network of people who know each other already personally, professionally or by reputation, have created a handful of extremely valuable networks where three billion people today spend the majority of their time.
Facebook pages are like the once-vibrant amusement park that got knocked down for condos.
Again; many problems with AI & IoT all ties back to the infrastructure of things. Focus on fast tracking QC and an interim solution (pre-QC) such as a mix of Nvidia’s GPU, blockchain for financial transactions, etc. to improve the infrastructure and Net then investors will begin to pay more attention to AI, etc.
After more than 60 years since its conceptual inception — and after too many hype-generating moments — AI is yet again making its presence felt in mainstream media.
Following a recent WEF report, many perceive AI as a threat to our jobs, while others even go so far to assert that it poses a real threat to humanity itself.
What is clear for the time being is that there are many questions that still remain unanswered: Can we actually create conscious machines that have the ability to think and feel? What we do we mean by the word conscious in the first place? What is the accurate definition of intelligence? And what are the implications of combining the Internet of Things (IoT) with intelligence?
Swarms of graphene-coated nanobots could be our best hope yet of cleaning up the murky oceans, with scientists demonstrating that new microscopic underwater warriors can remove up to 95 percent of lead in wastewater in just 1 hour.
The invention couldn’t have come at a better time, with ocean pollution at an all-time high, much of it stemming from industrial activities such as electronics manufacturing. By 2050, it’s estimated that there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans, and waste metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and chromium are affecting the delicate ecological balance that will make things very difficult for any animal that relies on it for food — including humans — in the near future.
Developed by an international team of researchers, the newly developed nanobots have three key components: a graphene oxide exterior to absorb lead (or another heavy metal); a nickel core that enables researchers to control the nanobots’ movement via a magnetic field; and an inner platinum coating that functions as an engine and propels the bots forward via a chemical reaction with hydrogen peroxide.
More broadly, there’s a paradox in all this, that reflects the overarching direction of contemporary robotics. As machines become more and more general-purpose, they’re also going to become much better at tailoring their behavior to different kinds of people—and even eventually to different individuals. Already, SoftBank’s Pepper robot, a humanoid designed to interactive with people, is billed as the first machine able to read human emotions. For people to accept robots as they increasingly work their way into various areas of our lives, robots will have to develop fairly sophisticated understanding of individual human needs.
“If an assistive robot tries to help you, how much help you want really depends on your personality and the situation,” Dragan says. That’s also why robots are in some cases changing form—some of the machines designed to care for humans, for example, will have soft, cuddly bodies rather than just hard metal exoskeletons.
“We’re going to have more and more capable robots,” Dragan told me. Which means when machines interact with people, we’ll be able to customize them depending on who’s around; or if humans are around at all.
