Robotics – Page 21

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Future, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Technological Unemployment

Stephen Hawking calls for creation of world government to meet AI challenges

April 4, 2017

In a book that’s become the darling of many a Silicon Valley billionaire — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — the historian Yuval Harari paints a picture of humanity’s inexorable march towards ever greater forms of collectivization. From the tribal clans of pre-history, people gathered to create city-states, then nations, and finally empires. While certain recent political trends, namely Brexit and the nativism of Donald Trump would seem to belie this trend, now another luminary of academia has added his voice to the chorus calling for stronger forms of world government. Far from citing some ancient historical trends though, Stephen Hawking points to artificial intelligence as a defining reason for needing stronger forms of globally enforced cooperation.

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Automobiles, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Self-driving Cars

Roborace shows off its driverless race car at MWC

March 23, 2017

While most of the attention around autonomous vehicles has centered on “everyday drivers,” there is one effort that goes off in an entirely different direction. An offshoot of Formula E, Roborace aims to launch a parallel series of races conducted entirely without human drivers. The effort has taken longer than planned, but is getting closer to reality. At MWC in Barcelona this week, Roborace showed off the complete design of its first race car. Until now, it has been using awkward-looking “devbots” that have a seat for a driver to test its software and hardware designs.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Economy, Employment, Hot Issues, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots won’t just take our jobs – they’ll make the rich even richer

March 15, 2017

Should robots pay taxes?

It may sound strange, but a number of prominent people have been asking this question lately. As fears about the impact of automation grow, calls for a “robot tax” are gaining momentum. Earlier this month, the European parliament considered one for the EU. Benoît Hamon, the French Socialist party presidential candidate who is often described as his country’s Bernie Sanders, has put a robot tax in his platform. Even Bill Gates recently endorsed the idea.

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Business, Drone, drones, Future, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots and drones: Coming soon to a construction site near you

March 13, 2017

Advancements in the robotics field are helping to transform a number of industries, construction being one of them. Companies that build things can expect to see a host of new machines that perform a variety of tasks — adding efficiency to construction projects as well as reducing injuries to human workers.

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Biotech, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Science Fiction

Get ready for robots made with human flesh

March 13, 2017

Two University of Oxford biomedical researchers are calling for robots to be built with real human tissue, and they say the technology is there if we only choose to develop it. Writing in Science Robotics, Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy and Andrew Carr argue that humanoid robots could be the exact tool we need to create muscle and tendon grafts that actually work.

Right now, tissue engineering relies on bioreactors to grow sheets of cells. These machines often look like large fish tanks, filled with a rich soup of nutrients and chemicals that cells need to grow on a specialized trellis. The problem, explain Mouthuy and Carr, is that bioreactors currently “fail to mimic the real mechanical environment for cells.” In other words, human cells in muscles and tendons grow while being stretched and moved around on our skeletons. Without experiencing these natural stresses, the tissue grafts produced by researchers often have a broad range of structural problems and low cell counts.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Why we must teach morality to robots

March 13, 2017

Every week comes a new warning that robots are taking over our jobs. People have become troubled by the question of how robots will learn ethics, if they do take over our work and our planet.

As early on as the 1960s Isaac Asimov came up with the ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ outlining moral rules they should abide by. More recently there has been official guidance from the British Standards Institute advising designers how to create ethical robots, which is meant to avoid them taking over the world.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, Intelligence, Legal Issues, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Do Robots and AI Deserve Rights?

March 9, 2017

When it comes to robot-human relations, the conversation typically centers on the welfare of the sentient. Science fiction paints us as petrified by our own creations; fears of a bot planet have influenced everything from Asimov’s “Laws of Robotics” to HAL 9000’s homicidal impulses to Skynet’s global genocide.

These human-centric anxieties are understandable. However, as our assorted bots and bits gain skills and personalities, should they be afforded some form of protection from us? It’s a question people are starting to seriously ponder.

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Clothing, Economy, Employment, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Textiles

Sewbo is getting closer to disrupting the sweatshop

March 6, 2017

Jon Zornow, the founder of Sewbo, made waves in September after announcing that he had built the first robot to sew a t-shirt without human intervention. Using a robot arm and an automatic sewing machine, Zornow took some carefully prepared material and ran it through a pre-programmed series of moves.

It worked. Out popped a t-shirt.

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Future, Robotics, Robots, Tourism, Transportation, Travel

This futuristic suitcase moves itself and follows close behind you

March 4, 2017

The wheely suitcase changed the luggage industry in a big way, but now there’s something even more remarkable on the market.

Travelmate is a new robotic suitcase that moves as you walk and reaches speeds of up to 6.75mph.

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Driverless cars, Driverless vehicles, Drone, Ford Motor Company, Future, mobile technology, Robotics

The first self-driving Ford could be a delivery van and rolling hive for flying drones

March 1, 2017

Ford’s new “Autolivery” van concept has a terrible name, but is actually based on interesting core ideas. The van is yet another result of Ford’s fruitful “last mile mobility” internal employee challenge, and this one pairs an electric self-driving van with autonomous drones that nest within to help transport packages that last few feet to a customer’s door.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Business, City Planning, Current Events, Economy, Employment, Engineering, Future, Hot Issues, Latest News, Latest Trend, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Technological Unemployment

Robots will replace over 250,000 government jobs — and that’s just the beginning

February 24, 2017

Automation could replace 250,000 jobs in government over the next 10 to 15 years — with potentially one million more under threat. The UK’s public sector workforce stood at around 5.3 million in the middle of last year, and has been falling since 2009, when it stood at 6.4 million. But that could be slashed significantly if the public sector adopts a policy of automating predictable jobs, according to a report from thinktank Reform.

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cutting edge, Future, Great New Product, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Vespa just unveiled a personal cargo robot

February 16, 2017

The Vespa brand’s owner, the Piaggio Group, doesn’t have a reputation for cutting edge tech (it only just started making an electric scooter). However, it’s making up for that in style. It’s establishing a robot-focused company, Piaggio Fast Forward, and has unveiled that company’s first product: meet Gita, a personal cargo robot.

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