Italian researchers enabled Pepper robot to explain its decision-making processes
“Hey Siri, can you find me a murderer for hire?”
Ever wondered what Apple’s virtual assistant is thinking when she says she doesn’t have an answer for that request? Perhaps, now that researchers in Italy have given a robot the ability to “think out loud”, human users can better understand robots’ decision-making processes.
Continue reading...The MIT researcher says that for humans to flourish we must move beyond thinking of robots as potential future competitors
Dr Kate Darling is a research specialist in human-robot interaction, robot ethics and intellectual property theory and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. In her new book, The New Breed, she argues that we would be better prepared for the future if we started thinking about robots and artificial intelligence (AI) like animals.
What is wrong with the way we think about robots?
So often we subconsciously compare robots to humans and AI to human intelligence. The comparison limits our imagination. Focused on trying to recreate ourselves, we’re not thinking creatively about how to use robots to help humans flourish.
As Uber parks its plans for robotaxis, experts admit the autonomous vehicle challenge is bigger than anticipated
By 2021, according to various Silicon Valley luminaries, bandwagoning politicians and leading cab firms in recent years, self-driving cars would have long been crossing the US, started filing along Britain’s motorways and be all set to provide robotaxis in London.
1 January has not, however, brought a driverless revolution. Indeed in the last weeks of 2020 Uber, one of the biggest players and supposed beneficiaries, decided to park its plans for self-driving taxis, selling off its autonomous division to Aurora in a deal worth about $4bn (£3bn) – roughly half what it was valued at in 2019.
Continue reading...The pandemic has spurred on robotics companies building machines to perform tasks in hospitals and other industries
Standing just 5ft tall, Mitra navigates around the hospital wards, guided by facial recognition technology and with a chest-mounted tablet that allows patients and their loved ones to see each other.
Developed in recent years by the Bengaluru startup Invento Robotics, Mitra costs around $13,600 (£10,000) and – due to the reduced risk of infection to doctors – has become hugely popular in Indian hospitals during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Many robots are designed with a face – yet don't use their 'eyes' to see, or speak through their 'mouth'. Given that some of the more realistic humanoid robots are widely considered to be unnerving, and that humans have a propensity to anthropomorphise such designs, should robots have faces at all - or do these faces provide other important functions? And what should they actually look like anyway?
Continue reading...In an age of social distancing, machines are being used for everything from cleaning to taking temperatures
Continue reading...Prototype technology could help alleviate growing shortage of human crop pickers
The job of harvesting cauliflowers could one day be in the mechanical hands of robots thanks to a collaboration between scientists and the French canned vegetable producer Bonduelle.
Fieldwork Robotics, the team behind the world’s first raspberry-picking robot, is designing a machine in a three-year collaboration launched on Monday.
Continue reading...Starship Technologies’ small vehicles navigate pavements with no human driver required
A robotic delivery service in Milton Keynes could prove to be the future of locked-down Britain, as miniature autonomous vehicles bring food deliveries to almost 200,000 residents of the town.
Starship Technologies, an autonomous delivery startup created in 2014 by two Skype cofounders, has been testing its beer cooler-sized robots in public since 2015. The small, white, six-wheeled vehicles trundle along pavements to bring small deliveries to residents and workers of the neighbourhoods in which they operate, without the need for a human driver or delivery person.
Continue reading...A university in Japan has held a graduation ceremony for students using avatar robots remotely controlled by graduating students from their homes. The avatar robots, dubbed 'Newme,' by developer ANA Holdings, were dressed in graduation caps and gowns for the ceremony, complete with tablets projecting the graduates' faces. Business Breakthrough (BBT) University in Tokyo said it hoped the approach could be used as a model for other schools wishing to avoid large gatherings amid the pandemic. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has declared a state of emergency for the capital Tokyo and six other prefectures, for a period of about one month
French patient’s breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say experts
A French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.
The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough.
Continue reading...Engineer who quit over military drone project warns AI might also accidentally start a war
A new generation of autonomous weapons or “killer robots” could accidentally start a war or cause mass atrocities, a former top Google software engineer has warned.
Laura Nolan, who resigned from Google last year in protest at being sent to work on a project to dramatically enhance US military drone technology, has called for all AI killing machines not operated by humans to be banned.
Continue reading...A team of researchers at Japan’s Keio university have built a robotic tail. Dubbed 'Arque', the grey one-metre device mimics tails such as those of cheetahs and monkeys, used to keep balance while running and climbing
Continue reading...Autonomous machine expected to pick more than 25,000 raspberries a day, outpacing human workers
Quivering and hesitant, like a spoon-wielding toddler trying to eat soup without spilling it, the world’s first raspberry-picking robot is attempting to harvest one of the fruits.
After sizing it up for an age, the robot plucks the fruit with its gripping arm and gingerly deposits it into a waiting punnet. The whole process takes about a minute for a single berry.
Continue reading...Jody Williams and Mary Wareham were leading lights in the campaign to ban landmines. Now they have autonomous weapons in their sights
It sounds like something from the outer reaches of science fiction: battlefield robots waging constant war, algorithms that determine who to kill, face-recognition fighting machines that can ID a target and take it out before you have time to say “Geneva conventions”.
This is no film script, however, but an ominous picture of future warfare that is moving ever closer. “Killer robots” is shorthand for a range of tech that has generals salivating and peace campaigners terrified at the ethical ramifications of warfare waged via digital proxies.
Continue reading...The entrepreneur says Trump won the 2016 election because the US automated away jobs – so he wants to become president to do something about it
Donald Trump won 2,584 counties in the 2016 presidential election; Hillary Clinton carried only 472. But the Democratic nominee’s accounted for nearly two-thirds of America’s economic output, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.
Related: Leftwing Democrats steal the 2020 spotlight but can centrists fight back?
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