Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 2366
Oct 2, 2015
Incident of drunk man kicking humanoid robot raises legal questions
Posted by Phillipe Bojorquez in categories: computing, law, robotics/AI
A few weeks ago, a drunk man in Japan was arrested for kicking a humanoid robot that was stationed as a greeter at a SoftBank, Corp., store, which develops the robots. According to the police report, the man said he was angry at the attitude of one of the store clerks. The “Pepper robot” now moves more slowly, and its internal computer system may have been damaged.
Under current Japanese law, the man can be charged with damage to property, but not injury, since injury is a charge reserved for humans. Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, who is cofounder of the ROBOLAW.ASIA Initiative at Peking University in China, and former researcher of the Humanoid Robotics Institute at Waseda University in Japan, thinks a better charge lies somewhere in between.
Weng is advocating for special robot laws to address the unique nature of human-robot interactions. He argues that humans perceive highly intelligent, social robots like Pepper (which can read human emotions) differently than normal machines—maybe more like pets—and so the inappropriate treatment of robots by humans should be handled with this in mind.
Oct 2, 2015
These 4 Robots Can Move Like Real Animals
Posted by Albert Sanchez in category: robotics/AI
Oct 2, 2015
Google, NASA using quantum computing to push A.I., machine learning
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: computing, quantum physics, robotics/AI, space
Google and NASA are continuing to test quantum computers and this week entered into a new agreement to work with a series of updated systems.
D-Wave Systems, a quantum computing company based in Burnaby, British Columbia, announced this week that it had signed a deal to install a succession of D-Wave systems at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. NASA and Google on Wednesday also confirmed the deal.
NASA and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) are collaborating on the project, which is focused on advancing artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Oct 1, 2015
Skype now has real-time translation built in
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: robotics/AI
Microsoft first released Skype Translator almost a year ago as a standalone app designed for Windows 8. The software giant is now integrating its impressive translation feature directly into the desktop version of Skype, opening it up to Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 users. Six voice languages will be supported at launch, including English, French, German, Italian, Madarin, and Spanish. Skype will now let you hold a conversation in any of them, without ever needing to learn a language.
“It has been a long-time dream at Skype to break down language barriers and bring everyone across the globe closer together,” explains Microsoft’s Skype team. “Researchers, engineers, and many others across Microsoft have been working hard to make this dream a reality and we are looking forward to bringing this preview technology to more devices.”
Oct 1, 2015
Ray Kurzweil: Tiny Robots In Our Brains Will Make Us ‘Godlike’
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: cyborgs, neuroscience, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI
Oct 1, 2015
Machine learning used to predict crimes before they happen — Memory Report style
Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in categories: biotech/medical, information science, robotics/AI
The word on every tech executive’s mouth today is data. Curse or blessing, there’s so much data lying around – with about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data added each day – that it’s become increasingly difficult to make sense of it in a meaningful way. There’s a solution to the big data problem, though: machine learning algorithms that get fed countless variables and spot patterns otherwise oblivious to humans. Researchers have already made use of machine learning to solve challenges in medicine, cosmology and, most recently, crime. Tech giant Hitachi, for instance, developed a machine learning interface reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report that can predict when, where and possibly who might commit a crime before it happens.
Oct 1, 2015
RoboCab: Driverless Taxi Experiment to Start in Japan
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
Japan’s cabinet office, Kanagawa prefecture and Robot Taxi Inc. on Thursday said they will start experimenting with unmanned taxi service beginning in 2016. The service will be offered for approximately 50 people in Kanagawa prefecture, just south of Tokyo, with the auto-driving car carrying them from their homes to local grocery stores.
According to the project organizers, the cabs will drive a distance of about three kilometers (two miles), and part of the course will be on major avenues in the city. Crew members will be aboard the car during the experiment in case there is a need to avoid accidents.
Robot Taxi Inc., a joint venture between mobile Internet company DeNA Co. and vehicle technology developer ZMP Inc., is aiming to commercialize its driverless transportation service by 2020. The company says it will seek to offer unmanned cabs to users including travelers from overseas and locals in areas where buses and trains are not available.
Sep 30, 2015
To Make Robot Hands More Like Ours, MIT Built These Softer, Smarter Fingers
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: computing, electronics, robotics/AI
It’s easy to forget how amazing the dexterity and anatomy of our own hands are–until you learn how difficult they are to replicate for machines. MIT has made big strides in robotic hands this year, and now it’s published a new one.
This week at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Bianca Homberg, Daniela Rus (the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) and their colleagues are showing off the latest advance in robotic digits: Modular fingers made of silicone and embedded with sensors, dexterous enough to pick up everything from soft toys to single pieces of paper without needing to be programmed to understand what it’s gripping.
Sep 30, 2015
Self-driving cars could reduce accidents
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: health, robotics/AI, transportation
We all know that self-driving cars are cute and tend to be safer — at least according to Google’s self-released reports to date — but this new report has the self-driving revolution holding massive potential as one of the greatest things to happen to public health in the 21st century.
As The Atlantic reports, automated cars could save up to 300,000 lives per decade in the United States. Their reporting is based on this research paper by consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which is filled with fascinating ways that self-driving cars will help us accident-prone humans by midcentury.
From the McKinsey report (bold added by us to highlight the mind-blowing data):
