Lifeboat Foundation

Reaching the highest levels of safety for self-driving cars will depend on how well the cars are engineered to know when communications are needed, and to be able to communicate with other cars, with bikes, with people on foot. Where to go? When to walk?

Uber Technologies has filed a patent toward that end, with a discussion on how self-driving cars might communicate with pedestrians.

The patent title is “Light output system for a self-driving vehicle.” The patent applicant is Uber Technologies.

Continue reading “Uber patent application discusses intention signaling system” »

Scientists have mapped 6,000 new craters on the Moon with the help of a newly developed technique based on artificial intelligence (AI).

“When it comes to counting craters on the Moon, it’s a pretty archaic method,” said Mohamad Ali-Dib from the University of Toronto, Scarborough in Canada.

“Basically we need to manually look at an image, locate and count the craters and then calculate how large they are based off the size of the image. Here we’ve developed a technique from artificial intelligence that can automate this entire process that saves significant time and effort,” Ali-Dib said.

Continue reading “New technique based on AI finds 6,000 new craters on Moon” »

Alphabet and J&J have a company called Verb Surgical that is aiming to bring its surgical robots to the market by 2020.

Raising the bar for AI

The Chinese game of Go is considered one of the most complex games of strategy in human history. In 2016, AlphaGo, a computer programme created by London-based engineers, beat Lee Sedol, a top player of the game. AlphaGo went on to beat several of the world’s best players before it was retired from the game to focus on even more challenging global problems.

AI spots nearly 7,000 undiscovered craters on the moon within a matter of hours — and one could some day host a lunar colony…

The finding was made by a team of researchers led by Ari Silburt at Penn State University and Mohamad Ali-Dib at the University of Toronto.

They fed 90,000 images of the moon’s surface into an artificial neural network (ANN).

Continue reading “AI spots craters on the moon which could host future colony” »

The future arrived, and it’s a minivan. Waymo’s fleet of totally driverless cars in Phoenix, Arizona, now lets members of the public hail a ride around the suburbs.

The news: Waymo’s CEO, John Krafick, announced at SXSW in Austin, Texas, that the firm is offering trips to so-called “early riders”—the first people to have signed up to use its robotic Chrysler Pacifica taxis. The minivans don’t have a safety driver behind the wheel, but someone can take control remotely if necessary.

Why it matters: The cars have been in testing without a safety driver for a few months. But this long-awaited advance is the first time people have been able to simply hail a totally driver-free ride using an app, as they would an Uber. It’s a big moment for a firm that hopes to turn its autonomy tech into a viable business by offering driverless rides.

Continue reading “Real people are now hailing Waymo’s robotic taxis, without a driver in sight” »

There are several ways we can deal with the troubles that lie ahead during the transition to full automation. Some experts and companies are exploring basic income, the centuries-old idea of giving unconditional money to all citizens, enough for them to live their lives. Other thought leaders such as Bill Gates are proposing robot taxes, where companies that use automation pay certain fees for the jobs they take away from humans. Other solutions might emerge.

Automation will continue to move forward at an accelerating pace. We don’t need to fear about the destination. Instead, we must prepare ourselves for the rocky road ahead. I’m not worried about the robots taking all the jobs. I’m worried about them leaving some to the humans.

Hundreds of millions of jobs affected. Trillions of dollars of wealth created. These are the potential impacts of a coming wave of automation. In this episode of Moving Upstream, we travelled to Asia to see the next generation of industrial robots, what they’re capable of, and whether they’re friend or foe to low-skilled workers.

Watch more episodes: wsj.com/upstream

Hey, remember that dog-like robot, SpotMini, that Boston Dynamics showed off last week, the one that opened a door for its robot friend? Well, the company just dropped a new video starring the canine contraption. In this week’s episode, a human with a hockey stick does everything in his power to stop the robot from opening the door, including tugging on the machine, which struggles in an … unsettling manner. But the ambush doesn’t work. The dogbot wins and gets through the door anyway.

The most subtle detail here is also the most impressive: The robot is doing almost all of this autonomously, at least according to the video’s description. Boston Dynamics is a notoriously tight-lipped company, so just the few sentences it provided with this clip is a relative gold mine. That information describes how a human handler drove the bot up to the door, then commanded it to proceed. The rest you can see for yourself. As SpotMini grips the handle and the human tries to shut the door, it braces itself and tugs harder—all on its own. As the human grabs a tether on its back and pulls it back violently, the robot stammers and wobbles and breaks free—still, of its own algorithmic volition.

Continue reading “Watch a Human Try to Fight Off That Door-Opening Robot Dog” »