A hotel in China used a robot to deliver food to people in coronavirus quarantine ( XHN )
Robotics experts say AI and machines could save lives by performing the ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ jobs
The development of robots to save lives and reduce human exposure to the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak could lead to a new era of robotic human helpers, researchers have said.
Robotics professor Henrik Christensen from the University of California San Diego, was among a group of leading experts who outlined how robots could be used to combat the coronavirus pandemic by doing the “dull, dirty and dangerous” jobs.
“Already, we have seen robots being deployed for disinfection, delivering medications and food, measuring vital signs, and assisting border controls,” the scientists wrote in an editorial in the journal Science Robotics.
Even finance is being affected by the onslaught of human vs. machine with a recent Deloitte survey revealing some startling stats.
The finance function is experiencing rapid change, and a recent Deloitte survey found that 73% percent of respondents are planning to implement technology to replace humans in their workforce this year—up from 58% a year ago.
While the finance workforce will grow smaller, companies need to adjust existing staff and bring in new skills that typically aren’t found in the finance department, according to a new Deloitte report.
A new sensor for robots is designed to make our physical interactions with these machines a little smoother—and safer. The sensor, which is now being commercialized, allows robots to measure the distance and angle of approach of a human or object in close proximity.
Industrial robots often work autonomously to complete tasks. But increasingly, collaborative robots are working alongside humans. To avoid collisions in these circumstances, collaborative robots need highly accurate sensors to detect when someone (or something) is getting a little too close.
Many sensors have been developed for this purpose, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Those that rely on sound and light (for example, infrared or ultrasonic time-of-flight sensors) measure the reflections of those signals and must therefore be closely aligned with the approaching object, which limits their field of detection.
Recent data out of the World Economic Forum in Davos has shed new light on the role that AI and customer service are playing in shaping the future of work. Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy provides much-needed insights into emerging global employment opportunities and the skill sets needed to maximize those opportunities. Interestingly, the report, supported by data from LinkedIn, found that demand for both “digital” and “human” factors is fueling growth in the jobs of tomorrow, raising important considerations for a breadth of industries worldwide.
The report predicts that in the next three years, 37% of job openings in emerging professions will be in the care economy; 17% in sales, marketing and content; 16% in data and AI; 12% in engineering and cloud computing; and 8% in people and culture. Among the roles with fastest projected growth include specialists in both AI and customer success, underscoring the need for technology, yes, but technology that incorporates the human touch.
Google is creating AI-powered robots that navigate without human intervention—a prerequisite to being useful in the real world.
Within 10 minutes of its birth, a baby fawn is able to stand. Within seven hours, it is able to walk. Between those two milestones, it engages in a highly adorable, highly frenetic flailing of limbs to figure it all out.
That’s the idea behind AI-powered robotics. While autonomous robots, like self-driving cars, are already a familiar concept, autonomously learning robots are still just an aspiration. Existing reinforcement-learning algorithms that allow robots to learn movements through trial and error still rely heavily on human intervention. Every time the robot falls down or walks out of its training environment, it needs someone to pick it up and set it back to the right position.
Now a new study from researchers at Google has made an important advancement toward robots that can learn to navigate without this help. Within a few hours, relying purely on tweaks to current state-of-the-art algorithms, they successfully got a four-legged robot to learn to walk forward and backward, and turn left and right, completely on its own.
In warehouses, call centers, and other sectors, intelligent machines are managing humans, and they’re making work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous
On conference stages and at campaign rallies, tech executives and politicians warn of a looming automation crisis — one where workers are gradually, then all at once, replaced by intelligent machines. But their warnings mask the fact that an automation crisis has already arrived. The robots are here, they’re working in management, and they’re grinding workers into the ground.
The robots are watching over hotel housekeepers, telling them which room to clean and tracking how quickly they do it. They’re managing software developers, monitoring their clicks and scrolls and docking their pay if they work too slowly. They’re listening to call center workers, telling them what to say, how to say it, and keeping them constantly, maximally busy. While we’ve been watching the horizon for the self-driving trucks, perpetually five years away, the robots arrived in the form of the supervisor, the foreman, the middle manager.
These automated systems can detect inefficiencies that a human manager never would — a moment’s downtime between calls, a habit of lingering at the coffee machine after finishing a task, a new route that, if all goes perfectly, could get a few more packages delivered in a day. But for workers, what look like inefficiencies to an algorithm were their last reserves of respite and autonomy, and as these little breaks and minor freedoms get optimized out, their jobs are becoming more intense, stressful, and dangerous. Over the last several months, I’ve spoken with more than 20 workers in six countries. For many of them, their greatest fear isn’t that robots might come for their jobs: it’s that robots have already become their boss.
In few sectors are the perils of automated management more apparent than at Amazon. Almost every aspect of management at the company’s warehouses is directed by software, from when people work to how fast they work to when they get fired for falling behind. Every worker has a “rate,” a certain number of items they have to process per hour, and if they fail to meet it, they can be automatically fired.
A prototype of an automated blood drawing and testing device. Credit: Unnati Chauhan
In the future, robots could take blood samples, benefiting patients and healthcare workers alike.
A Rutgers-led team has created a blood-sampling robot that performed as well or better than people, according to the first human clinical trial of an automated blood drawing and testing device.
The device provides quick results and would allow healthcare professionals to spend more time treating patients in hospitals and other settings.
The results, published in the journal Technology, were comparable to or exceeded clinical standards, with an overall success rate of 87% for the 31 participants whose blood was drawn. For the 25 people whose veins were easy to access, the success rate was 97%.
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.
Researchers foresee myriad benefits for humanity, but also acknowledge ethical issues
Be warned. If the rise of the robots comes to pass, the apocalypse may be a more squelchy affair than science fiction writers have prepared us for.
Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by assembling cells from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move around under their own steam.
One of the most successful creations has two stumpy legs that propel it along on its “chest”. Another has a hole in the middle that researchers turned into a pouch so it could shimmy around with miniature payloads.
“These are entirely new lifeforms. They have never before existed on Earth,” said Michael Levin, the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “They are living, programmable organisms.”
While Elon Musk and Waymo get all the attention — and regulations — autonomous vehicles for farming face fewer tech barriers and could be just as important
Between 2009 and 2015, Google spent $1.1 billion on autonomous vehicles for its Waymo subsidiary, which have so far roamed more than 10 million miles of city streets — though none of those miles have yet involved a paying customer. Tesla, which builds the data collection it uses to improve its autonomous technology into every vehicle it sells, lost more than $1 billion as a company last year alone. In pursuit of viable self-driving cars, the companies have had to navigate a web of regulation that varies from state to state, apply for permits, and risk getting banned from roads if they fail to follow the rules. Neither of their self-driving technologies is ready to be set loose on public streets without a human safety driver behind the wheel or navigating previously approved routes.
But Zack James faced few barriers when he started his autonomous tractor company in 2017. His roughly 200-pound tractors are closer in size to a riding lawn mower (and about half the weight) than they are to traditional combines and sprayers, and the open metal frame vehicles work together in a swarm. After coming up with the concept while in law school at the University of Michigan, it took James about a month to fabricate the first prototype, which he soon tested on a family field in Crown Point, Indiana, standing by in case the tractor encountered an obstacle it couldn’t yet navigate.
Instead of sleek Teslas or robot Ubers, the first truly driverless vehicles are more likely to look like James’ tractors: rolling placidly over a cornfield at a max speed of 7 mph.
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.
The ITT works continuously day and night without any interruption or supervision
The Intelligent Tow Tank conducts experiments and changes experimental values to seek out new and useful results, conducting 100,000 experiments a year
Scientists are always warning us that our jobs are under threat from artificial intelligence. Self-driving technology will replace van drivers . Humanoid robots could replace builders, shelf stackers, even waitresses .
Even sex workers are under threat from automation.
But the latest, and perhaps most surprising, job that’s under threat from AI is…scientists.
