Friday, November 11, 2016

Robpocalypse Report #93

Drones:

Commercial drones can be easily hacked and stolen.

Drones are being used extensively for ecological work. 

More money than sense: a gold plated drone


Police shot down a drone at the Dakota access pipeline protest.

Taser is considering making a drone armed with a stun gun for American police.


How many drones does it take to replace a light bulb?

Self Driving Cars:

Audi has dropped the WEC endurance race in favor of the new self driving car race, Formula E.

In Britain, self driving test cars will be unmarked to avoid problems with Luddites.

comma.ai just dropped its self driving device when the NHTSA asked for information.  He really ought to have seen this coming.

DMCA restrictions on modifying your car's firmware have been lifted.  This has implications for self driving cars.

Fisker's Emotion electric car will have a 400 mile range and be self driving (in the future)

 Intel has developed a new chip for your car.

Google/Alphabet will be spinning off its self driving car business soon. 

Kia has a concept car that will supposedly self drive. 

Lucid Motors, a Silicon Valley startup, promises a self driving competitor to Tesla in 2018.

Lyft was never for sale.

In New York, self driving cars will face massive roadblocks.

Tesla's overstatements of its capabilities are causing harm.

Toyota's plans for self driving car sharing are beginning to take form.

Uber has a problem.  It lacks an Airmail Act of 1934 and its dreams for 2026 may get smashed by the automakers.  Or even smaller players.

3d Printing:

3d printers can now print magnets.

3dprint.com will be offering online 3d printing classes.
 
Aston Martin will be using 3d printing for its next gen engine.

Dubai has acknowledged the need for standards in 3d concrete printing for construction. 

MIT has come up with a new 3d printable material that shrinks when heated. 

Ultra sound can be controlled by 3d printed devices.

Robotics:

Automated cleaning techniques could help in neuroscience research.

Complete sanitation of robotic instruments for surgery is being called impossible.

MIT is working on NASA"s humanoid robot.

The robopocalypse will entertain you: see the giant robot that was supposed to fight the Japanese test out its new treads. 

Stanford and MIT have developed bots that crawl, yes, crawl! on your clothes.

Cyborgism:

Its perfectly possible to wire adult brains with new sensesIncluding touch, sight and more.

Exoskeletons:

There is a new exoskeleton for therapeutic use.

Software Bots:

AI run body scanners may speed up airport security lines.

Amazon's Alexa is now running on its Fire tablets.

Alexa can now take physical form.

Autonomous search agents may be useful for researchers. 

GM is integrating IBM's Watson with Onstar.

Two Google AIs worked out their own form of encryption.

Honda is touting Tokyo over Silicon Valley for AI research.

Joey, from the sitcom Friends, has been made into an avatar.  ugh.

A Liverpool (UK) hospital will be using IBM's Watson to diagnose patients.

Mayayoshi Son of Softbank is betting on AI.

Is Microsoft mainstreaming machine learning?

Should we use robotic tutors for kids?

Software bots have IDed Shakespeare's collaborators on his famous works. 

A new software bot can predict the outcome of human rights trials with a 79% accuracy.  You have to wonder if something like this might be used for litigation.  

A software bot assessed Clinton and Trump's emotional intelligence.

A new technique reveals how machine learning makes its decisions.

META:

Bloomberg has stated people are petrified of losing jobs to the robopocalypse.  Um.  I'm not sure this is even on the radar of most people.  Even tech people!  At least based on the literally thousands of conversations I've had lately.

The Robopocalypse will eliminate 50% of mining jobs over the next ten years.

Is the Robopocalypse exaggerated?

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