Microscopic spaceships powered by Earth-based lasers are being developed to hunt for extra-terrestrial life in Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours.
The £70m Breakthrough Starshot concept involves creating a tiny robotic spacecraft, no larger than a mobile phone chip, which would carry cameras, thrusters, a power supply and navigation and communication equipment.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner have all joined the project’s board giving it major backing.
Hmmm; I want to see a real humanoid truly interact and move seamlessly like folks rushing to catch the tram, or BART/ Marta and hustle in rushing to meetings and multi-tasking in a high pressure office or trading floor. Until we see this level of fluid responsiveness; humanoid is only a pale imitation at best.
You might to do a double take when you see this new interactive robot, as it ‘looks very much like a real woman’.
Dubbed ‘robot goddess’, Jia Jia has the long flowing locks and rosy red cheeks as a human, but is being taught deep learning abilities.
This humanoid is designed with natural eye movement, speech that is syncs with its lip movements and refers to its male creators as ‘lords’.
An autonomous DNA molecular machine has been created that can be programmed to assemble a variety of natural and synthetic molecular building blocks into longer chains.
DNA machine can be programmed to produce a wide range of polymers and even keeps a record of each one it makes.
Like Us Now On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CarjamTV For The World’s Best Car Videos. Website: http://www.carjamtv.com Mercedes S Class Driverless Car Is Here 2015 Commercial Self Driving Mercedes S Class W222. As the inventor of the automobile, Mercedes-Benz natural assumes a pioneering role where autonomous driving is concerned. The declared aim is to develop the automobile further, from a self-moving (“automobile”) vehicle to an independent (“autonomous”) vehicle. In its research and development activities, Mercedes-Benz goes well beyond purely technical realisation of automated driving and anticipates various scenarios.
Semi-autonomous driving is already a fact on public roads today – for example with the Mercedes-Benz models in the S-, E-, C- and CLS-Class. One such feature is Stop-and-Go Assist, which automatically follows tailback traffic and provides steering assistance. When parking with the aid of Active Park Assist, the technology chooses a suitable parking space and takes over the steering. The driver only needs to accelerate and brake. Mercedes-Benz is continuing its “Intelligent Drive” strategy with numerous assistance systems and substantially expanded functions with the aim of systematically enhancing comfort and safety. CARJAM TV. An autonomous car, also known as a driverless car, self-driving car or robot car, is an autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the human transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input.
Autonomous vehicles sense their surroundings with such techniques as radar, lidar, GPS, and computer vision. Advanced control systems interpret sensory information to identify appropriate navigation paths, as well as obstacles and relevant signage.[6] Some autonomous vehicles update their maps based on sensory input, allowing the vehicles to keep track of their position even when conditions change or when they enter uncharted environments.
Some quasi-autonomous demonstration systems date back to the 1920s and the 1930s.[7] Since the 1980s, when Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich built a driverless car through the EUREKA Prometheus Project,[8] significant advances have been made in both technology and legislation relevant to autonomous cars. Numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles, including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google. In 2010, four electric autonomous vans successfully drove 8000 miles from Italy to China. The vehicles were developed in a research project backed by European Union funding, by Vislab of the University of Parma, Italy. As of 2013, four U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars.
Many major automotive manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Audi, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, and Volvo, are testing driverless car systems as of 2013. BMW has been testing driverless systems since around 2005,[67][68] while in 2010, Audi sent a driverless Audi TTS to the top of Pike’s Peak at close to race speeds.[10] In 2011, GM created the EN-V (short for Electric Networked Vehicle), an autonomous electric urban vehicle.[69] In 2012, Volkswagen began testing a “Temporary Auto Pilot” (TAP) system that will allow a car to drive itself at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour (130 km/h) on the highway.[70] Ford has conducted extensive research into driverless systems and vehicular communication systems.[71] In January 2013, Toyota demonstrated a partially self-driving car with numerous sensors and communication systems. The Google driverless car project maintains a test fleet of autonomous vehicles that has driven 300,000 miles (480,000 km) with no machine-caused accidents as of August 2012.
“Advanced cyber-learning environments that involve virtual reality and artificial intelligence innovations are becoming powerful tools that can facilitate the explorations and conversations needed to solve society’s challenges,” said NYU engineer Dr Winslow Burleson. “Cyber-learning is an essential tool for envisioning, refining, and creating a utopian world in which we are actively ‘elearning to be’ — deeply engaged in intrinsically motivating experiences that empower each of us to reach our full potential.”
DARPA’s newest invention is the Gremlin: a drone that be deployed from a bomber while in flight, execute its mission, and then return to an extraction point where a cargo plane yanks it out of the sky and brings it safely home.
The drones are capable of flying unmanned, but being able to retrieve them makes them reusable, which is both cost-effective and convenient. But drone retrieval also protects U.S. military technology and secrets. Sending fleets of tiny Gremlins on intelligence-gathering missions is one thing, but being able to recapture them instead of leaving them in the hands of hostiles is a huge boon to the military. Gremlin drones have up to three hours to accomplish reconnaissance missions, at which time they automatically fly back to a retrieval area to be collected by a C-130 cargo plane.
The last time I wrote about RoboHon I expressed hope that Sharp can “get this weird little guy onto the market for a reasonable price.” That, uh, appears to have been difficult; RoboHon is selling for 198,000 yen, or about $1,800, before you get into service fees. But hey, you can’t put a price on true friendship — I hope to evaluate RoboHon’s conversational skills, punctuality, and Myers-Briggs personality type in the near future.
Newswise — The saying of philosopher René Descartes of what makes humans unique is beginning to sound hollow. ‘I think — therefore soon I am obsolete’ seems more appropriate. When a computer routinely beats us at chess and we can barely navigate without the help of a GPS, have we outlived our place in the world? Not quite. Welcome to the front line of research in cognitive skills, quantum computers and gaming.
Today there is an on-going battle between man and machine. While genuine machine consciousness is still years into the future, we are beginning to see computers make choices that previously demanded a human’s input. Recently, the world held its breath as Google’s algorithm AlphaGo beat a professional player in the game Go—an achievement demonstrating the explosive speed of development in machine capabilities.
But we are not beaten yet — human skills are still superior in some areas. This is one of the conclusions of a recent study by Danish physicist Jacob Sherson, published in the prestigious science journal Nature.
