Lifeboat Foundation

If and when self-driving cars become a practical reality, you’ll probably want something to do during your journeys besides chatting with passengers or checking your phone. Thankfully, Ford might have an answer. It recently obtained a patent for an “autonomous vehicle entertainment system” that would let you watch videos when you’re hands-free. Kick your vehicle into self-driving mode and a projector system could swing into action, complete with its own screen — yes, you could watch a movie while you’re on the way to visit family. Think of it as in-flight entertainment, just grounded.

As with most patents, there’s no certainty that Ford will ever use this. While the car maker is serious about autonomous vehicles, it could just as easily resort to flat-panel displays and other less dramatic hardware. There are some safety concerns, too. Do you really want the driver to be completely oblivious to road hazards? For this to work, driverless car tech will have to advance to the point where it’s truly reliable — where you can watch a 2-hour flick without worrying that your car might plow into a bus.

BMW Concept

BMW believes this is the future of innovation and mobility. Autonomous, shape-shifting and augmented-reality guides you.

Virtual and augmented reality is taking giant leaps every day, both in the mainstream and in research labs. In a recent TechEmergence interview, Biomedical Engineer and Founder of g.tec Medical Engineering Christopher Guger said the next big steps will be in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and embodiment.

Image credit: HCI International

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, embodiment is the moment when a person truly “feels” at one with a device controlled by their thoughts, while sensing that device as a part of, or an extension, of themselves. While researchers are taking big strides toward that concept, Guger believes those are only baby steps toward what is to come.

While augmented or virtual reality can take us away for a brief period, Guger said true embodiment will require far more BCI development. There has been a lot of work recently in robotic embodiment using BCI.

Continue reading “When Will Virtual Embodiment Take Shape in Mainstream Society?” »

This looks fascinating.

This remarkable shape-shifting car is autonomous, and it comes with artificial intelligence.

MiniBots manufacturing.

These tiny robots can reconfigure themselves in a custom tool shop that’s just a few square inches in size.

Continue reading “SRI’s Micro Robots Can Now Manufacture Their Own Tools” »

At Camp Pendleton, Marines are testing a new, cutting edge form of live-fire training using robotic targets.

Stationary and on-rails targets are all well and good, but enemy combatants haven’t behaved like that since the formal battle lines of the Revolutionary War. It’s long past time for a training program that provides a more accurate simulation of today’s combat situations, and the Marines of Camp Pendleton are taking steps toward just that.

Continue reading “Marines Adapting Live-Fire Training Using Robots” »

I find this all amusing. However, wide spread adoption is a hurdle that has to be addressed first around AI; and at it’s core is the lack of trust by consumers & businesses around technology that still has not eradicated and blocked cyber hacking and attacks.

Martine Rothblatt takes on the notion that AI is dangerous to humanity.

Don’t let the title mislead you — Quantum is not going to require AI to operate or develop it’s computing capabilities. However, what is well known across Quantum communities is that AI will greatly benefit from the processing capabilities & performance of Quantum Computing. There has been a strong interest in marrying the 2 together. However, Quantum maturity gap and timing has not made that possible until recently resulting from the various discoveries in microchip development, programming language (Quipper) development, Q-Dots Silicon wafers, etc.

Researchers at the University of Vienna have created an algorithm that helps plan experiments in this mind-boggling field.

“Watch DeepMind’s program AlphaGo take on the legendary Lee Sedol (9-dan pro), the top Go player of the past decade, in a $1M 5-game challenge match in Seoul.”