Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Wal-Mart Experimenting With Robotic Shopping Cart for Stores
June 16th, 2016Alternate headline: Americans Too Obese to Push Their Chinese Crap Around Walmart and Out to Their Cars. Via: Bloomberg: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is working with a robotics company to develop a shopping cart that helps customers find items on their lists and saves them from pushing a heavy cart through a sprawling store and parking […]
New Robot Picks Individual Items from Warehouse Shelves
June 15th, 2016Via: MIT Technology Review: A German firm called Magazino believes it has built a better warehouse robot: the Toru. Unlike the robots used in Amazon warehouses that help locate items for shipping by moving entire shelves, Toru robots can pick up individual items. “The [Amazon] approach saves a lot of human work spent on walking […]
Welcome to Larry Page’s Secret Flying-Car Factories
June 9th, 2016Via: Bloomberg: With Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk, the Google co-founder looks to the skies.
Wal-Mart Testing Drones in Warehouses to Manage Inventory
June 2nd, 2016Via: AP: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is testing drones that it says will help it manage its warehouse inventory more efficiently, and which it said Thursday could be rolled out in the next six to nine months across its distribution centers. The move is another sign of how the nation’s largest retailer is seeking to compete […]
Foxconn Replaces 60,000 Factory Workers with Robots
May 25th, 2016Via: BBC: Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots. One factory has “reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots”, a government official told the South China Morning Post. Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: “More companies are likely to […]
Magic 8-Ball Future Crime Predictor Influencing Decisions About Prison Sentences
May 24th, 2016Via: ProPublica: Scores like this — known as risk assessments — are increasingly common in courtrooms across the nation. They are used to inform decisions about who can be set free at every stage of the criminal justice system, from assigning bond amounts — as is the case in Fort Lauderdale — to even more […]
Robot Ranchers Monitor Animals on Giant Australian Farms
May 24th, 2016Via: New Scientist: A two-year trial, which starts next month, will train a “farmbot” to herd livestock, keep an eye on their health, and check they have enough pasture to graze on. Sick and injured animals will be identified using thermal and vision sensors that detect changes in body temperature and walking gait, says Salah […]
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds – from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist
May 20th, 2016Via: Medium: Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how we’re manipulated upstream by limited menus we didn’t choose. This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu […]
Google, Apple, Tesla Veterans: Startup Developing Self-Driving Truck Kits
May 17th, 2016Via: The Verge: Former employees of Google, Apple, Tesla, Cruise Automation, and others — 40 people in total — have formed a new San Francisco-based company called Otto with the goal of turning commercial trucks into self-driving freight haulers. Prominent staffers include former Google Maps lead Lior Ron and Anthony Levandowski of Google’s self-driving car […]
Battelle Fielding 100 Drone Zappers to Pentagon, Homeland Security
May 17th, 2016Via: Defense Tech: The military has turned to a directed energy frequency jammer mounted on an assault rifle-type frame to deal with the growing threat of small drones to military bases and troops in the field. Officials of Battelle, the non-profit research and development organization based in Columbus, Ohio, said Monday the Defense Department and […]
