Lifeboat Foundation

Artificial intelligence in space exploration is gathering momentum. Over the coming years, new missions look likely to be turbo-charged by AI as we voyage to comets, moons, and planets and explore the possibilities of mining asteroids.

“AI is already a game-changer that has made scientific research and exploration much more efficient. We are not just talking about a doubling but about a multiple of ten,” Leopold Summerer, Head of the Advanced Concepts and Studies Office at ESA, said in an interview with Singularity Hub.

Under current US safety rules, a motor vehicle must have traditional controls, like a steering wheel, mirrors, and foot pedals, before it is allowed to operate on public roads. But that could all change under a new plan released on Thursday by the Department of Transportation that’s intended to open the floodgates for fully driverless cars.

The department, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “intends to reconsider the necessity and appropriateness of its current safety standards” as applied to autonomous vehicles, the 80-page document reads. In particular, regulators say they will look to change those safety standards “to accommodate automated vehicle technologies and the possibility of setting exceptions to certain standards — that are relevant only when human drivers are present.”

The funding, awarded by the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Regulators’ Pioneer Fund, will be used to pioneer new ways of regulating the autonomous and smart shipping industries to help them deliver innovative new technologies to the traditional maritime sector.

The global autonomous shipping industry is predicted to grow into a $136 billion behemoth by 2030, with UK businesses already playing a key role. The funding will see the creation of the Maritime Autonomy Regulation Lab, where regulators from the MCA and DfT can work with academia and support industry to promote on-water testing and flagship projects and help the UK grow its presence in the global marketplace.

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Here’s the self-driving, electric, body-swappable car of the future.

Self-driving pizza delivery!? The future is NOW! 😱🍕

Credit: ViralHog

Training a neural net to decode a person’s brain signals and send them to a robotic limb led to better, precise control over prosthetics.

Our smartphones are cold, passive devices that usually can’t move autonomously unless they’re falling onto our faces while we’re looking at them in bed. A research team in France is exploring ways to change that by giving our smartphones the ability to interact with us more (via New Scientist). MobiLimb is a robotic finger attachment that plugs in through a smartphone’s Micro USB port, moves using five servo motors, and is powered by an Arduino microcontroller. It can tap the user’s hand in response to phone notifications, be used as a joystick controller, or, with the addition of a little fuzzy sheath accessory, it can turn into a cat tail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Xqu3Hw4fk

AIST recently unveiled its HRP-5, the fifth iteration of a humanoid robot design at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots. The long-term vision for the robot is to assist, not replace, workers with certain repetitive tasks. HRP-4 weighed 39kg and stood 151 cm tall with a 0.5kg maximum payload (per hand), so most likely the newest version will at the least boast an increased payload and sensor technology.

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Continue reading “This Agile Robot Assists with Various Construction Tasks” »

This is not the end of the world but the end of competition as we know it.

Click investigates the rise of the robot butler, looking at whether voice-controlled personal assistants live up to the hype and at the potential dangers of living in a world where all electronics are controlled by voice.

Continue reading “Artifical intelligence and personal assistants put to the test — BBC Click” »