Robots are good at a number of automated tasks, but deboning meat isn’t one of them. This work has traditionally required human workers who are able to discern and work around bone placement and variations in size and shape of the meat. An easy task for humans, but not so for a robot. That said, [...]
Posts under ‘Robotics’
Japanese show off new flying surveillance drone
The Japanese Ministry of Defense recently unveiled this new flying surveillance drone, which it says will be deployed to disaster areas such as volcanic eruptions and landslides. While my Japanese is shaky (and by that, I mean non-existent), judging from the translation of the caption at YouTube, it looks like operators can program this robot [...]
iRobot’s 710 Warrior demonstrates impressive mobility
iRobot, a company perhaps best known for their line of Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, also produces several military robots that are used for activities ranging from simple surveillance to bomb disposal. The biggest and baddest military bot, the 710 Warrior, is not only rugged and strong (capable of carrying up to 150 pounds), but also [...]
Canadian hospital pioneers all-robot surgery
While physicians have been using robotics to assist with surgery for years, a Canadian man is the first in the world to undergo successful surgery in which the entire procedure was performed by robots – from administering anesthesia via a robot nicknamed “McSleepy” to operating with a DaVinci surgical robot: Specialists at the McGill University [...]
Transhumanist Week in Review: October 17, 2010
Here are a few items I wanted to cover here this week, but didn’t get around to because of work, travel or other priorities. If you’re interested in helping out on this blog, feel free to drop me a line. Why the Singularity isn’t going to happen (10/16/10) – “That is how Singularity-level technologies work [...]
What do you do when you lose your job to a robot?
While politicians may talk about outsourcing as the biggest threat to American middle-class jobs, MIT economist David Autor says there’s another serious threat to American jobs: robots. While the United States has continued to be a manufacturing leader in terms of output, manufacturing jobs have continued to dry up. This is due a great deal [...]
Michio Kaku on how to prevent hostile AI
Over at Big Think, physicist Michio Kaku appears in a video where he talks about the progression of Moore’s Law, the evolution of AI, and how to prevent robots from doing us harm: Right now our machines are as smart as insects. Eventually they’ll be smart as mice. After that they’ll be smart as dogs [...]
Will robotics be the next big growth industry for the United States?
Recently, tech and business luminary Peter Thiel publicly lamented the lack of innovation in Silicon Valley: “We need to ask ourselves more: How are we actually doing things to make the country and the world a better place in the next few decades?” he said. Thiel urged entrepreneurs to solve hard technology problems by embracing [...]
Raytheon’s XOS 2 “closest thing we have… to the ‘Iron Man’ suit”
Yesterday defense contractor Raytheon released the above video for the latest iteration of their XOS 2 exoskeleton, which coincides with the home release of Iron Man 2. The XOS 2 is designed to help military personnel personnel by lightening their loads and assisting with lifting heavy objects, like armaments. A Raytheon spokesman said he expects [...]
If iCub learns to use a rifle, we’re in trouble
This video of humanoid robot iCub learning to accurately shoot a bow and arrow is interesting – the robot is evaluating each missed shot, and then making adjustments to improve its aim. It takes it eight tries to finally hit the target. The learning algorithm, called ARCHER (Augmented Reward Chained Regression) algorithm, was developed and [...]