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Verbal common sense will prevent AIs from harvesting kings and unlocking oranges
If I hand you an apple, you know from experience that it isn’t something you can drive. And the tree it came from can’t be woven, or its seeds bandied. You know that’s nonsense, but AIs don’t have the benefit of years spent navigating the world, and as such have no real idea as to what you can do with what — but a little common sense could be coming their way. Read More
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O-Robotix spruces up its SeaDrone underwater robo-craft
At last year’s Disrupt NY, SeaDrone made it to the Battlefield finals with its simple, robust and affordable underwater drone. With a few customers and a year of feedback under their belts, the engineers behind the robo-sub are putting out a version 2.0 with a few improvements. Read More
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Flippy, the hamburger cooking robot, gets its first restaurant gig
Today at Disrupt SF, we got our first look at Flippy in its final form. Miso Robotics has been showing off its burger-flipping “robotic kitchen assistant” for several months now, but today’s food robotics panel marks the first time we’ve actually seen it put to work in a real-world kitchen. No surprise, Caliburger is the first restaurant to get its hands on a Flippy. Read More
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Watch industrial robots play traditional instruments
Robots are stealing jobs, the narrative says, and, according to this video, robots are stealing the arts too. The video shows several industrial robotic arms playing the piano, guitar, drums and a keyboard. Through some stellar music production, it sounds amazing too. Read More
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A typical day for researchers on Google’s Brain Team
What do you and researchers on Google’s Brain Team have most in common? You both probably spend a lot of time triaging email. In a Reddit AMA, 11 Google AI researchers took time to share the activities that consume the greatest chunks of their days. Email was a frequent topic of conversation, in addition to less banal activities like skimming academic papers and brainstorming with… Read More
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Here’s all the crazy hardware presented at HAX’s 10th demo day
We stopped by HAX’s demo day at the San Francisco Mint to check out all the hardware startups in the accelerator’s 10th batch. Many of the startups showcased creative combinations of hardware and software, particularly machine learning, to improve upon legacy services and outdated business models. HAX is known for its expertise in prototyping and manufacturing in China. The… Read More
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Kuri, the cutest home robot, has learned how to dance
Kuri’s definitely the most adorable home robot, even if that’s not that hard an honor to claim given the relatively sparse competitive field. But it’s even cuter now, because it can now dance. The debut product from Mayfield Robotics shows off its moves in a brand new video from the company, dancing to a pancake robot song. If you missed it Kuri debuted at CES last year, and… Read More
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Watch this robot rock band destroy their instruments
What happens when a mad scientist’s musicbots rebel against their own precision? You get “Automatica”, the latest video from Nigel Stanford, who scored 13 million views controlling water, fire, and lightning with sound in his viral hit “Cymatics”. Stanford tells us “I’m trying to create an online version of Synethsesia – the brain disorder… Read More
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Modular, self-healing robot swarms are definitely a great idea
Robots are going to have to work together if they want to destroy us, their soft, fallible masters. But the current paradigm of having a Skynet-like (or rather, Zerglike) overmind control a set of semi-autonomous drones is too easy to beat — take out the brain and the rest fail, right? Not if they’re all the brain, which is the idea demonstrated in a wonderful new paper in Nature. Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Rolls-Royce planning autonomous naval ship for patrol, surveillance and mine detection
Rolls-Royce is designing an autonomous naval ship capable of patrol, surveillance, mine detection and fleet screening. The latest version of the ship is 60m long and capable of traveling for 100 days. With a top speed above 25 knots, the ship maintains a range of 3,500 nautical miles. The company is banking on a future where large, human operated, ships operate in consonance with… Read More
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SpaceVR thinks VR-enabled robots are the future for colonizing space
Mars: 2051. In the bitter cold of a martian winter, 30 remote controlled robots walk out of a holding bay across the icy terrain to begin their day in the mines. They pile in to the latest autonomous, hydrogen-powered Waymo rover, power down and charge up at docking ports… It’s going to be a long day. Read More
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Canvas’ robot cart could change how factories work
We stopped by Andy Rubin’s Playground in Palo Alto to check out a new autonomous cart from Canvas Technologies. The startup aims to replace existing fixed and expensive factory infrastructure, like conveyor belts, with its lightweight and adaptable computer-vision-powered cart. Read More
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You can get your own mini Mars rover for Earth through this new project
Mars is a long way away, and super expensive to get to, so if you have the very specific dream of owning your own Mars rover, it’s probably not going to happen. But if you want an EARTH rover, there’s a new Kickstarter project that could deliver one once it reaches its funding goal. Read More
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Researchers propose Iron Man style flight for humanoid robot
The way Iron Man flies may be cool, but it’s also impractical. Even if your core strength is off the chart, as I assume Tony Stark’s is (you’re basically planking the whole time), putting jets on your hands and feet is just asking for broken bones. But the seeming foolishness of this method hasn’t stopped a handful of Italian researchers from suggesting we give it a… Read More
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Sony backs Acutronic Robotics’ hardware robot operating system
Sony is investing in Acutronic Robotics‘ Series A round, via its Sony Innovation Fund. Sony will also adopt Acutronic’s Hardware Robot Operating System (H-ROS), for use in its own robotics division, the company says. This funding follows investment by DARPA in Acutronic’s platform, which aims to become an industry standard for robotics components from across hardware and… Read More
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Sphero’s new Star Wars toys include R2-D2 and a new droid from ‘The Last Jedi’
Star Wars and Sphero were a match made in heaven. The company had spent a few years in relative startup obscurity when Disney came along with the design for a new droid. The resulting BB-8 remote control device changed the company’s fortunes overnight. With The Last Jedi a few months away, the companies are looking to recapture the magic with another brand new, spherical droid and the… Read More
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MIT CSAIL teaches a robot to follow contextual voice commands
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has devised a method by which robots can understand and respond to voice commands, stated in clear, plain language. The system is advanced enough to understand contextual commands, too, including references made to previously mentioned commands and objects. The so-called ComText system (short for “commands in… Read More
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This vacuum-activated modular robot is equally nasty and neat
Soft robots are a major area of research right now, but the general paradigm seems to be that you pump something (a muscle or tube) full of something else (air, fluid) causing it to change its shape. But a robot from Swiss roboticists does the opposite: its little muscles tense when the air in them is removed. It’s cool — but it also looks kind of gross. Read More
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MIT’s new Ford-funded robot can deftly navigate pedestrian traffic
Robots have a lot of challenges remaining before they become commonplace in our lives, and many of those are likely not even something you’d think about when trying to make a list. One good example is simply walking around among people, and keeping pace with pedestrians on streets and sidewalks. MIT engineers have created a new autonomous robot that can do exactly that, however, in a… Read More
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13 things drones are doing besides flying around your yard
Everyone who’s flown around a drone (or UAV, or multirotor, or what have you) knows that they’re a lot of fun. But they’re being used all over the world for more serious purposes — after all, an autonomous flying vehicle is a great place to start for all kinds of applications, from delivery to archaeology. Here’s a sampling of what drones are getting up to across… Read More
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