Lifeboat Foundation

Fun stuff.

Johnny Matheny’s handshake is friendly, confident and firm — though not in the bone-crushing manner favoured by some of the alpha types here in the Pentagon.

What is remarkable is that Matheny’s proffered hand is not actually his. It is part of a robotic prosthesis researchers hope one day could help transform the lives of countless amputees.

Continue reading “From robotic hands to ‘gecko feet’, Pentagon’s DARPA research agency showcases future tech” »

It’s clear that bots are having a moment. Even before Facebook’s Bots for Messenger announcement at their developer conference, there had already been a flood of investments, controversies, and critiques. So I wanted to learn how to make my own bot — and put it to work!

On the one hand, chat bots are nothing new. They have been around since the 1960s and the days of ELIZA. But suddenly the tools to create meaningful, personalised conversations are easy enough to deploy at scale. We have APIs, the ability to continuously monitor and parse messages for relevance and enormous messaging platforms for distribution — which is where people are spending the majority of time these days.

To get a sense for the bot world I decided to try my hand at making one.

Continue reading “How I Turned My Resume Into A Chat Bot” »

I am so happy to see others seeing the value because Quantum is changing everything; not just computing, raw material enrichment, medical technology and treatments, etc. Once more and more folks start seeing the various capabilities around Quantum and just how wide that range is; we will begin to see an explosion of demand for Quantum. We’re still in that mode of discovery, and wait and see state by some. However, the Quantum Revolution will exceed even the industrial revolution with the span of change that it brings across so many areas & industries.

Quantum physics research that could enhance self-driving vehicles and spearheaded by a Dalhousie University team is now a $6-million commercial venture that counts U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin among its partners.

What started as a theoretical research project backed by Lockheed Martin hit paydirt when physics professor Jordan Kyriakidis realized quantum software could be used to perfect the design and operation of self-driving cars and new aircraft.

Continue reading “Quantum research that could enhance self-driving vehicles now a $6M commercial venture” »

NEW YORK: A team of US researchers has come up with a rough map of part of the brain that controls vision and leaves things out even when they are plainly in sight.

The frontal cortex is often seen as our “thinking cap,” associated with thinking and making decisions. But it’s not commonly connected with vision.

At a time when the global technology giants are set to leverage the benefits of AI for your daily lives, India seems to be reluctant to get on to this bus.

Continue reading “Here is how your brain selects and controls vision” »

If you’ve ever tried to learn how to spin a pencil in your hand, you’ll know it takes some concerted effort—but it’s even harder for a robot. Now, though, researchers have finally built a ‘bot that can learn to do it.

The reason that tasks like spinning a stick are hard is that a lot happens in a very short time. As the stick moves, the forces exerted by the hand can easily send it flying out of control if they’re not perfectly co-ordinated. Sensing where the stick is and varying the hand’s motion is an awful lot for even the smartest algorithms to handle based on a list of rules.

Continue reading “This Robot’s Teaching Itself to Twirl a Stick” »

If you’ve been staying on top of artificial intelligence news lately, you may know that the games of chess and Go were two of the grand challenges for AI. But do you know what the equivalent is for robotics? It’s table tennis. Just think about how the game requires razor sharp perception and movement, a tall order for a machine.

As entertaining as human vs. robot games can be, what they actually demonstrate is much more important. They test the technology’s readiness for practical applications in the real world—like self-driving cars that can navigate around unexpected people in a street.

Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for a world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill humans.

Huawei is best known as one of the world’s largest producers of broadband network equipment and smartphones. But Kevin Ho, president of its handset product line, told the CES Asia conference in Shanghai on Wednesday the company used science fiction movies like “The Matrix” to envision future trends and new business ideas.

“Hunger, poverty, disease or even death may not be a problem by 2035, or 25 years from now,” he said. “In the future you may be able to purchase computing capacity to serve as a surrogate, to pass the baton from the physical world to the digital world.”

Continue reading “Huawei Prepares for Robot Overlords and Communication with the Dead” »

These automaker knuckleheads were planning to try and hide self driving cars into the 2030’s:

Head of GM’s foresight and trends unit says timetable for autonomous vehicles likely moved from 2035 to 2020, if not sooner.

A General Motors Co. executive credited Silicon Valley companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google car division and Tesla Motors Inc., for accelerating the development of autonomous vehicle technology and shortening the timetable for when safer self-driving cars hit the road.

Continue reading “GM Executive Credits Silicon Valley for Accelerating Development of Self-Driving Cars” »

Now, that’s a robot!