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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,415

Futuristic Warfare

Tracked Combat Vehicles

Multi-Utility Tactical Transport (MUTT)

MUTT is designed to be a rugged, reliable small unit force multiplier providing increased persistence, protection and projection. As a controller-less small unit robotic follower, it “Lightens the Load” throughout the full gamut of combat operations with expeditionary power. As a remote-controlled or tele-operated teammate, it provides stand-off from threats or increased projection of combat power. The MUTT is engineered to easily evolve to accommodate new payloads, new controllers and increased levels of autonomy. MUTT provides MUM-T 1.0 capability.

A New “Tube Transport” System Could Get You From New York to Beijing in 2 Hours

Instead of just being regional, why not go international? That’s the idea behind ET3’s tube transportation concept, which it calls the “mag-lev limo.” It would be capable of traveling from New York to Beijing in 2 hours.

Transportation of the future is being developed today: autonomous electric vehicles, flying cars, and the futuristic pods that make up the Hyperloop are just a few notable examples. There’s another idea vying to be the next generation of public transportation, and while it might look something like the Hyperloop, this tube transport company’s CEO Daryl Oster explains why it’s different:

This guy designed a hologram virtual assistant that actually works — just watch

Many of us have already come to know the disembodied voices of personal assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, but now a software engineer has finally put a face to a name.

Jarem Archer, who works as a consultant through his business, unt1tled, created a hologram device to match Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistant from Windows 10. She’s just like Cortana the Halo character, which Microsoft based its own on — she’s a slightly translucent, blue-light babe with a hip-waist-bust ratio that exposes her origins in the world of gaming. But Archer’s Cortana is 3D and paces around inside a pyramid prism that rests on a table. In his demo video, he asks Cortana if he’ll need an umbrella, and she then pulls up a graphic with the temperature and assures him that it’s “probably not necessary.”

“I’m just kind of seeing where this goes,” Archer, 33, said in a phone interview.

How to create the ‘perfect’ AI-driven bot

Imagine the perfect personal assistant.

This partner would understand your needs — often before you’ve even expressed them — and know exactly how to deliver what you’re asking for. They would make helpful suggestions without becoming intrusive, and keep you from missing appointments and opportunities. Most importantly, this personal assistant would be someone you can trust implicitly.

Now, how do you embody those traits in an artificial intelligence-powered service? Our experience creating our travel assistant app, Mezi, illustrates key principles of AI regarding the ongoing role of human involvement and how to draw the dividing line between valued assistance and unwelcome intrusion. Here’s what we’ve learned recently.

Why Tesla Could Become the Next Apple

See also: Elon Musk Says Robots Will Help Tesla Catch Up to Apple in Value

So why won’t other auto manufacturers follow suit and overtake Tesla? First, their products, as well as their factories, are bogged down by legacy. Tesla’s electric cars are significantly easier to manufacture than internal combustion (IC) vehicles. Tesla’s Model S has fewer than 20 moving parts, compared with almost 1,500 moving parts in an IC-engine car. This means that there are fewer steps in the assembly process, fewer suppliers to deal with, and lower inventory of components and parts. Further, Tesla doesn’t have to deal with a unionized workforce, a complex supply chain, or a legacy dealer network. Free from this legacy, Tesla can embrace disruptive innovation without worrying about the backlash from workers, suppliers, and dealers.

To become as big as Apple one day, Tesla will need more than the “Henry Ford” approach to manufacturing. It will also need the “Steve Jobs” approach to marketing by creating a vast global appetite for its products. The Apple iPhone is a global product that can be sold from New York to Mumbai to Beijing with very little incremental investment. However, Tesla’s cars require the creation of infrastructure for charging and a distribution network from scratch—a very expensive and time-consuming process. Tesla will need to build out its charging network and distribution reach, country by country. China is an important overseas market for Tesla, as is Scandinavia; it also has a rollout plan for India with its Model 3.

Best of MOOGFEST 2017

I’m speaking at Moogfest at 4:30PM a week from today. Can’t Wait! KurzweilAI doing a write-up on the festival below (including a bit on my talk):

The Moogfest four-day festival in Durham, North Carolina next weekend (May 18 — 21) explores the future of technology, art, and music. Here are some of the sessions that may be especially interesting to KurzweilAI readers. Full #Moogfest2017 Program Lineup.

(credit: Google)

The Magenta by Google Brain team will bring its work to life through an interactive demo plus workshops on the creation of art and music through artificial intelligence.

Magenta is a Google Brain project to ask and answer the questions, “Can we use machine learning to create compelling art and music? If so, how? If not, why not?” It’s first a research project to advance the state-of-the art and creativity in music, video, image and text generation and secondly, Magenta is building a community of artists, coders, and machine learning researchers.

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