Lifeboat Foundation

Whenever we lose someone close to us, there’s an inclination, a need even, to sort through our memories of that person. Memories not just in our minds, but our digital memories too—emails, texts, photos, videos, social media posts.

But eventually, we have to stop looking through those texts and photos, because after a while, it’s like listening to a song on repeat for too long. The memories are static, they will never change, shift, and grow like the real person, and you just have to move on.

When Eugenia Kuyda lost her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, she wanted to memorialize him in a different way. As the cofounder of Luka, an artificial intelligence startup which recommends books and restaurants through a chat interface, Kuyda worked with her engineering team to collect thousands of Mazurenko’s texts and create a chatbot based on his personality.

Continue reading “What Happens When You Create a Chatbot to Memorialize a Friend” »

In Brief.

• A task that would take one robot years to complete could be done in just a few weeks if multiple robots are allowed to communicate with one another.
• As algorithms and technology advances, a robot cloud could help us best utilize bots within our daily lives.

Robots, for all their helpfulness in performing tasks that we would rather not do (usually because those tasks are dangerous or boring), first need to be coded in order to do the work. These specific sets of commands tell the machines what exactly they need to do and define how to do it.

Continue reading “Robots Have Learned to Pool Their Experience to Acquire Basic Motor Skills” »

Self-driving car testing in California is becoming a badge of progress for companies working in the space. Only 17 companies in total have the honor, including two just added to the list: Wheego Electric Cars, and Valeo North America.

The Wall Street Journal reports that both these new companies now have approval to run tests with a single vehicle each, and four drivers per team. That might not sound like much, but it’s a foot in the door, and membership in the club is itself somewhat testament to how much the companies have already accomplished, since the other members include major carmakers like Tesla, Cruise (which got its license before being acquired by GM), promising startup Drive.ai, and Baidu, to name a few.

The new members are interesting additions: Wheego is an electric carmaker which got its start taking Chinese-Built cars, outfitting them with battery’s and electric motors in the U.S. and putting them on the road. The company now says it builds electric vehicles designed “for a global market,” and focuses on the benefits of connected tech in making vehicles aware of their surroundings.

Continue reading “Wheego and Valeo get California road driverless testing permits” »

“Augmented reality offers designers and engineers new tools and artists a new palette, but there’s a dark side to reality-plus.”

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Neural Nanonics here we come: “Could lead to future autonomous, fully implantable neuroprosthetic devices”

Continue reading “Synapse-like memristor-based electronic device detects brain spikes in real time” »

A scientific breakthrough can unlock long-standing problems and have the potential to have a long-term impact on human wellbeing. But which UK project thrilled and amazed us in 2016?

Two years ago, Studio Roosegaarde created a glow-in-the-dark bike path in Eindhoven, Netherlands, helping to light the route in a exciting way. Inspired by that, a materials technology center in Lidzbark Warminski, Poland, has followed suit, with equally dazzling results.

The materials tech center, TPA Gesellschaft für Qualitätssicherung und Innovation (TPAQI), tells New Atlas that it first drew attention to the Eindhoven bike path at a local road forum event. The underlying concept was floated as a potential option for creating something that would reflect the beauty of the surrounding landscape.

Work began about a year ago, with lab tests into how the glowing effect would be created. A variety of different materials and colors were tested, with the aim of creating something that would both look great and that would increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians.

Continue reading “Glow-in-the-dark bike path lights the way in Poland” »

Verizon has joined the likes of Facebook, Google and fellow telecommunications giant AT&T in exploring the potential of internet-connected unmanned aircraft. While its vision involves expanding 4G coverage across the US, it has an immediate focus on shoring up communications for first responders in emergency situations, and recently carried out trials to that effect.

Verizon has dubbed the initiative Airborne LTE Operations (ALO) and says it has actually been in the pipeline for around two years. The company has been working to integrate internet connectivity into unmanned aerial vehicles and hook them up to its 4G network, daisy chaining coverage and beaming it down to unconnected areas in the process. This is similar to how Facebook hopes its Aquila drones will work.

Verizon recently teamed up with company American Aerospace Technologies to see how using drones as gliding cell towers could have an impact in disaster relief scenarios. In a simulated mission in New Jersey, the team set a drone with a 17-foot (5.2 m) wingspan in flight to put the onboard technologies through their paces.

Since the arrival of flat-screen TVs, there’s not been a whole lot to get excited about in the world of televisions — how many ways can you improve on a big slab of glass, after all? Well, how about by making it almost invisible when you’re not using it?

That’s the thinking behind a new prototype from Panasonic that’s just been shown off at the CEATEC electronics expo in Japan this week. When switched on, it’s just like a normal TV. When switched off, it’s as transparent as glass, meaning you can see the wall or shelving behind.

Continue reading “Panasonic just unveiled a new invisible television” »