Lifeboat Foundation

I’ll be on a panel and also doing an author’s roundtable (The Transhumanist Wager) at FreedomFest in Las Vegas on July 21. It’s one of the largest gatherings of free minds in the world and this year is the 10th anniversary. If you’re there, please say hello! Others are speaking on life extension and AI. Here’s my speaker’s page:

Check out what Zoltan Istvan will be attending at FreedomFest 2017.

We are incredibly excited to announce that Firmamentum, a division of Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI), has signed a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a system that will use in-space manufacturing and robotic assembly technologies to construct on orbit a small satellite able to provide high-bandwidth satellite communications (SATCOM) services to mobile receivers on the ground.

Under the OrbWeaver Direct-to-Phase-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) effort, Firmamentum aims to combine its technologies for in-space recycling, in-space manufacturing, and robotic assembly to create a system that could launch as a secondary payload on an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). This system would recycle a structural element of that rocket, known as an EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) ring, by converting the ring’s aluminum material into a very large, high-precision antenna reflector. The OrbWeaver™ payload would then attach this large antenna to an array of TUI’s SWIFT® software defined radios launched with the OrbWeaver payload to create a small satellite capable of delivering up to 12 gigabits per second of data to K-band very small aperture terminals (VSAT) on the ground.

Developers of driverless systems can apply now for permits to test cars.

Nice jibe at Boston Dynamics, they are only uhh the best legged robot lab in the world. Google didnt have a clue what they were doing when they bought Boston Dynamics, and thankfully getting sold now before they did anymore damage to it.

I Have a brilliant idea, lets force them to work on wheeled robots LOL 😛.

Alphabet’s sale of a robotics business to Japan’s Softbank shows that CFO Ruth Porat is taking aim even at the company’s most advanced technologies.

Continue reading “In the Ruth Porat era at Alphabet, even robot video stars have to find some paying customers” »

Robot arms have come a long way since the 1960’s when George C. Devol and Joseph Engelberger created the earliest industrial models. Those had two-finger grippers that, in retrospect, look fit to pluck a rubber ducky out of a bin in a carnival game, but nothing too sophisticated.

By now, robots in factories and warehouses can adjust their grip like human hands, or use suction and pliable materials to move objects wherever they need to go. Problems arise, however, when objects are porous, tiny, or need to be placed with great precision, as with materials handling in textiles, food, automotive and electronics manufacturing.

A startup called Grabit Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., gets around problems with robot dexterity and grip by employing “electroadhesion” to move different materials. Yes, that’s the force that lifts strands of your hair away from your scalp when you rub a balloon on your head.

Continue reading “Nike-backed Grabit has quietly raised $25 million for robots that handle what others can’t grasp” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fo46CQr3stw

Project Dragonfly is a feasibility study for a space mission to another star. It is conducted by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies I4IS. The goal is to send a robotic spacecraft to another star, in order to explore exoplanets, other star systems, the interstellar medium and discover potential life.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=amwyBmWxESA

When people post their emotional responses to social media and through their free email account(s), they are loading their human personal emotional responses, judgments, and biases into a large computer and cloud database? Everything we post and respond to is data somewhere. The truth is, hundreds of millions of people around the planet do this every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Are we uploading our brains to a cloud on a supercomputer and evolving into an artificially intelligent machine? This question and more…

Continue reading “Are We Building Artificial Brains And Uploading Minds To The Cloud Right Now?” »

There’s been a few thousand comments between the various releases of the video too. It’s great to see so many people considering a Federal Land Dividend as a way to live and thrive in a challenging future tied to widespread automation, transhumanism, and AI: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisFuture/videos/1600120853362422/?fref=mentions

Should of gone to an American defense contractor, but at least it gets out from under the mismanagement of the silicon valley lunatics.

Here’s a surprise turn of events: Softbank — maker of the friendly Pepper robot and a major M&A player in the tech world — has just announced that it is acquiring two more robotics companies from Google owner Alphabet as part of its own deeper move into the field: it is buying Big Dog developer Boston Dynamics and the secretive bipedal robotics firm Schaft.

A spokesperson for Softbank has confirmed to us that the terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but we will try to find out.

Continue reading “Softbank is buying robotics firms Boston Dynamics and Schaft from Alphabet” »