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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2496

Interesting…but I’d rather it was ME that was immortal, not some virtual copy.

By learning everything there is to know about you and your online habits, social network ETER9 promises a kind of digital immortality wherein an artificially intelligent agent continues to post on your behalf long after you’re dead. The future is creepier than we ever imagined.

ETER9, a startup launched by Portuguese developer Henrique Jorge, is still in the beta phase, but 5,000 people have already signed up for the service. It currently features a Facebook-like newsfeed, and a “cortex” that works much like a Facebook wall. But that’s where the similarities end.

This Social Network Turns Your Personality Into an Immortal Artificial Intelligence

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The Curiosity rover has snapped a brand new self-portrait and, like any good newbie selfie-taker, it’s figuring out its best angles—not only to show itself off, but also to show us something new about the Martian landscape it lives on.

This newest selfie was made, like the others, by stitching together panoramic shots from the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager. But by dropping to a low-camera angle and not an overhand shot like before, we’re suddenly able to see the full surrounding horizon. Essentially, we’re seeing not just Curiosity in this selfie; we’re also seeing what Curiosity sees. That view becomes even more pronounced in this second version of the selfie, this one with the horizon wrapped entirely around the robot:

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Videos of creepy robots trying their best to walk like humans (with absolutely no help from their abusive owners) are nothing new, but this new footage of the Atlas humanoid walking robot, developed by Google-owned company Boston Dynamics, is a game changer.

Usually these videos are shot in a lab, or on a treadmill — an artificial environment where the terrain that the robot is walking on can be controlled and maintained.

However, the latest video from the Boston Dynamics team, which gets funding from the US Defence budget, shows the Atlas robot running through a real forest.

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Possible cause of the singularity Boston Dynamics is secretive about upcoming projects, but new footage shows their robots in action—and the results are highly unsettling.

First you can see Spot, an agile autonomous quadruped ripped directly from Isaac Asimov’s nightmares, opening a door with the arm it sports instead of a face. Spot would almost be adorable the way it trots around on four legs except for the protruding face-arm that will turn the handle on your front door with its superstrength. Sleep well tonight.

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August 17, 2015 Boston Dynamics, which Google bought in 2013, has begun testing one of its humanoid robots — those that are designed to function like humans — out in the wild. Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, talked about the research and showed footage of the project during a talk on Aug. 3 at the 11th Fab Lab Conference and Symposium in Cambridge, Mass.

“Out in the world is just a totally different challenge than in the lab,” Raibert said at the conference, which was organized by the Fab Foundation, a division of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Bits and Atoms. “You can’t predict what it’s going to be like.”

Boston Dynamics has tested its LS3 quadruped (four-legged) robot out in natural settings in the past. But humanoid robots are different — they can be much taller and have a higher center of gravity. Keeping them moving on paved asphalt is one thing, but maneuvering them through rugged terrain, which is what Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robots dealt with recently during the DARPA Robotics Challenge, can be trickier.

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