Robotics – Page 12

Engineering, Robotics, Science & Technology News, Stem cells

Scientists build “first living robots” from frog stem cells

January 29, 2020

“It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

A team of researchers have built what they claim to be the first living robots. The “xenobots,” they say, can move, pick up objects, and even heal themselves after being cut.

The team is hoping the biological machines could one day be used to clean up microplastics in the ocean or even deliver drugs inside the human body, The Guardian reports.

To build the robots, the team used living cells from frog embryos and assembled them into primitive beings.

“These are novel living machines,” research co-lead Joshua Bongard, robotics expert at the University of Vermont, said in a statement. “They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

Continue reading… “Scientists build “first living robots” from frog stem cells”

Healthcare, Latest Trend, Medicine, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Will robots make doctors obsolete? Nothing could be further from the truth

January 28, 2020

“Doctor, will they replace you with a robot?”

The question takes me by surprise but I suppress my instinct to laugh.

His life has been marked by mental illness and cancer. The first diagnosis presented after a series of missed opportunities as he cycled through woeful visits that ignored his symptoms. Finally, one doctor listened and his life changed.

In retrospect, his cancer was just waiting to be found by the first person to seriously entertain the notion that mental illness often coexists with physical illness. Fortunately, the cancer was amenable to a cure.

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CES 2020, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Samsung’s ‘artificial human’ project definitely looks like a digital avatar

January 16, 2020

It’s realistic, but can it walk and talk like a human?

On Friday we wrote about Samsung’s mysterious “artificial human” project Neon, speculating that the company was building realistic human avatars that could be used for entertainment and business purposes, acting as guides, receptionists, and more.

Continue reading… “Samsung’s ‘artificial human’ project definitely looks like a digital avatar”

brain-computer interfaces, Future, New Viewpoints, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Would you want immortal life as a cyborg?

December 19, 2019

Transhumanism can mean uploading one’s mind into cyberspace. But some transhumanists hope to slowly morph into “immortal cyborgs” with endlessly replaceable parts.

Five years ago, we were told, we were all turning into cyborgs:

Did you recently welcome a child into the world? Congratulations! An upstanding responsible parent such as yourself is surely doing all you can to prepare your little one for all the pitfalls life has in store. However, thanks to technology, children born in 2014 may face a far different set of issues than you ever had to. And we’re not talking about simply learning to master a new generation of digital doohickeys, we’re talking about living in a world in which the very definition of “human” becomes blurred.

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Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Wearables

Guardian XO: A powered exoskeleton that makes you 20 times stronger

December 18, 2019

Imagine lifting 100 pounds as though it were only five. That’s the promise of the Guardian XO, a wearable robot that helps you lift heavy objects without straining or injuring your body. Bonus? It looks like a super cool powered exoskeleton from science fiction.

Designed for military applications and industries like construction that require a lot of manual labor, the Guardian XO from Sarcos Robotics has been in development for 20 years. The first alpha models will roll out in January to the US military and some industry customers, with commercial units shipping in late 2020. The XO can run for up to eight hours at a time, thanks to hot-swappable batteries. With 24 degrees of freedom, you can move normally while wearing the suit. It doesn’t get in the way when you’re walking, lifting your arms above your head or crouching down.

Sarcos Robotics says this is the world’s first battery-powered robot that can help you safely lift up to 200 pounds (90 kg). I got the chance to see it in action at the company’s headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, where walking robots, powered prosthetics and exoskeletons line the hallways. Watch the video to see what it’s like to wear the Guardian XO.

Via CNet.com

Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

The artificial skin that allows robots to feel

December 2, 2019

This artificial skin lets robots ‘feel’ like humans can

London (CNN Business)Robots are one step closer to gaining a human sense that has so far eluded them: Touch.

Scientists last month unveiled an artificial skin that enables robots to feel and respond to physical contact, a skill that will be needed as they come in increasingly close contact with people.

In 2017, manufacturers worldwide used roughly 85 industrial robots per 10,000 employees, according to a report by the International Federation of Robotics. The same report predicts the global supply of industrial robots to grow 14% per year until 2021.

But if robots end up working more closely with their fleshy colleagues, one concern is how they will interact safely.

“Currently, robots do not have any sense of touch,” Professor Gordon Cheng, who developed the special skin with his team at the Technical University of Munich, tells CNN Business.

Continue reading… “The artificial skin that allows robots to feel”

Artificial Intelligence, Google, Machine Learning, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Google’s parent company Alphabet introduced a new project aimed at developing A.I-enabled robots that learn on their own

November 29, 2019

The new project is focused on building robots capable of useful, everyday tasks, like sorting recycling.

Alphabet’s X group, the R&D lab formerly known as Google X, introduced the Everyday Robot Project on Thursday.

The project comes out of Alphabet’s string of robotics acquisitions several years ago, which had been put on hold.

The new project is focused on building robots capable of useful, everyday tasks, like sorting recycling.

Alphabet’s X group said it will focus on AI-enabled robots that can be learn tasks on their own, rather than being programmed to do specific things.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is getting back into robotics after a first attempt several years ago fizzled. But this time the company wants to create robots with minds of their own.

Continue reading… “Google’s parent company Alphabet introduced a new project aimed at developing A.I-enabled robots that learn on their own”

Machine Learning, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Using imitation and reinforcement learning to tackle long-horizon robotic tasks

November 22, 2019

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a widely used machine-learning technique that entails training AI agents or robots using a system of reward and punishment. So far, researchers in the field of robotics have primarily applied RL techniques in tasks that are completed over relatively short periods of time, such as moving forward or grasping objects.

A team of researchers at Google and Berkeley AI Research has recently developed a new approach that combines RL with learning by imitation, a process called relay policy learning. This approach, introduced in a paper prepublished on arXiv and presented at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2019 in Osaka, can be used to train artificial agents to tackle multi-stage and long-horizon tasks, such as object manipulation tasks that span over longer periods of time.

Continue reading… “Using imitation and reinforcement learning to tackle long-horizon robotic tasks”

Healthcare, new technology, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robot overlords? More like co-verlords. The future is human-robot collaboration

November 22, 2019

Davinci surgical system at Magdeburg University Hospital

It’s the classic trope of buddy cop movies: you introduce two characters with little in common aside from the job that they do. Maybe one’s old and the other’s young. Maybe one’s black and the other’s white. Maybe one’s a maverick and the other is a stickler for doing things by the book. At first they don’t get along. Perhaps one is new to the precinct and the other fears that they’re being phased out as a result. But, wouldn’t you know it, they turn out to be a great team. The strengths of one are the weaknesses of the other. The police chief might get pissed at their zany antics, but they’re much better friends than they are enemies. Could the same be true of humans and their relationship with robots?

The typical narrative, as cliché as any Lethal Weapon buddy cop movie ripoff, is that robots are here to steal our jobs. Unless you’re one of the people lucky enough to be building or selling the robots, you should view robots as the flashy new rival in town, hovering in the wings to replace you. But while there are certainly jobs that robots will take from humans (hopefully the dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs humans don’t really want), there are plenty of other jobs in which robots working alongside humans could greatly increase human productivity.

In doing so, they won’t just augment our abilities; they’ll make it possible to scale jobs in a way that was unimaginable in the pre-robot age.

Continue reading… “Robot overlords? More like co-verlords. The future is human-robot collaboration”

Automation, Healthcare, Medicine, Robotics, Science & Technology News

The pharmacy of the future will see robots come to the rescue of humans

November 14, 2019

High technology is changing the way pharmacies operate – and how customers get served

It looks like a normal pharmacy in a normal Johannesburg shopping mall. But behind the scenes at the Morningside Dispensary, a revolution is underway

It may not be getting the attention that politicians get when they talk of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but it is a real and practical example of what emerging technologies make possible in everyday life.

For the customers of this pharmacy are being served by a robot. Even when they don’t realise it, and are talking to a human pharmacist, the efficiency with which they are being served is made possible by a robot.

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Automation, Employment, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots aren’t coming to steal your job. They’re coming to improve it

October 31, 2019

For many people, the word “automation” conjures up dystopian scenes of humans versus machines. A future in which people set aside our differences to oppose the sleek, metallic products of our own engineering. Few but growth-minded business types get a warm-and-fuzzy feeling of optimism when the word “automation” comes up. And for good reason.

There’s virtually no job that won’t be touched by artificial intelligence (A.I.) and robotics. According to a recent Ball State study, robots and A.I. accounted for around 87 percent of job loss in the United States between 2000 and 2010. PricewaterhouseCoopers recently estimated that 38 percent of American jobs may be at risk by the 2030s. And in 2016, a 55-page report titled from the Executive Office of the President painted a similarly dire picture, warning that millions of workers may be displaced.

Continue reading… “Robots aren’t coming to steal your job. They’re coming to improve it”

Drone, drones, new technology, Programming, Robotics, Science & Technology News

SwarmTouch: A tactile interaction strategy for human-swarm communication

October 11, 2019

A user manipulating the formation of a swarm of drones using SwarmTouch. Credit: Tsykunov et al.

SwarmTouch: a tactile interaction strategy for human-swarm communication

Researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia have recently introduced a new strategy to enhance interactions between humans and robotic swarms, called SwarmTouch. This strategy, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, allows a human operator to communicate with a swarm of nano-quadrotor drones and guide their formation, while receiving tactile feedback in the form of vibrations.

“We are working in the field of swarm of drones and my previous research in the field of haptics was very helpful in introducing a new frontier of tactile human-swarm interactions,” Dzmitry Tsetserukou, Professor at Skoltech and head of Intelligent Space Robotics laboratory, told TechXplore. “During our experiments with the swarm, however, we understood that current interfaces are too unfriendly and difficult to operate.”

Continue reading… “SwarmTouch: A tactile interaction strategy for human-swarm communication”