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Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 2244

Oct 5, 2015

This Startup Wants To Plant One Billion Trees a Year Using Drones

Posted by in categories: drones, engineering, food, information science, robotics/AI

The future of Eco conservation?


Deforestation downs 10 billion trees around the globe annually. Replanting trees by hand is slow, expensive, and barely puts a dent in reversing the damage. But one startup wants to use drones that can reforest our increasingly tree-strapped Earth, on a big enough scale to replace slow and expensive hired humans.

The small company, called BioCarbon Engineering, says unmanned aerial vehicles are a great way of covering ravaged woodlands with seedlings that can repopulate the area’s tree population. Around the world, forests and jungles are still being leveled due to lumber overproduction, strip surface mining, urban expansion, and land use for agriculture.

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Oct 5, 2015

Flying Robot Bees Can Now Swim, Too

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

And sink!

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Oct 5, 2015

Ray Kurzweil on Artificial Intelligence: Don’t Listen to Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI

There’s a rift emerging among the members of the tech super-geniuses club. It’s not about matters of human intelligence, though. Physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla /SpaceX founder Elon Musk have both recently warned that our sci-fi nightmares about artificial intelligence could actually come true in our lifetimes.

Here’s what Musk, for instance, said during a recent stop at MIT:

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. Our biggest existential threat is probably that … There should be some regulatory oversight at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like, he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.

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Oct 5, 2015

“I feel like I’m driving into the future right now” — Bill Whitaker reports on self-driving cars

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Mercedes F 015 Self Driving Car.

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Oct 4, 2015

IBM Watson powered Robot

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Oct 4, 2015

WOW. This robot can learn like a human child

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

http://bloom.bg/1JyMYOg

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Oct 4, 2015

How Should We Prepare for the AI Revolution? Ray Kurzweil Responds in This Q&A [Video]

Posted by in categories: computing, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI

On the cusp of a far-reaching revolution thanks to the advances in artificial intelligence and computing, it’s easy to feel a bit…concerned. Well, maybe more than just a bit, especially if you consider societal attitudes about technology.

Truth is that the way we perceive the world around us is conditioned to a degree by the environment we grow up within. There’s also little doubt that certain cultures are more open and adaptive to technology than others. But one could argue that the potential enhancements that AI could usher in are so dramatically advanced that even the earliest adopters within Silicon Valley aren’t really prepared for what’s coming.

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Oct 3, 2015

Daimler tests self-driving truck on German highway

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation

The truck has smart systems including radars, cameras and active speed regulators and works without a human driver — although one has to be in the driver’s seat and take the wheel if necessary.

The standard Mercedes-Benz Actros, fitted with the intelligent “Highway Pilot” system, travelled 14 kilometres (about nine miles) on the A8 motorway, with a driver in the cabin but his hands off the wheel.

“Today’s premiere is a further important step towards the market maturity of autonomously driving trucks -– and towards the safe, sustainable road freight transport of the future,” said Wolfgang Bernhard, board member responsible for Daimler Trucks and Buses.

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Oct 3, 2015

Introducing the world’s first robotic kitchen

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI

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Oct 2, 2015

Incident of drunk man kicking humanoid robot raises legal questions

Posted by 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.

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