Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
A Robot at Best Buy Sells CDs, DVDs, Games
October 5th, 2015Service with a smile. Via: Fox 5: Best Buy is experimenting with full automation — in the form of a robot — to sell a decidedly old-fashioned medium: CDs and DVDs. I’m in my 40s, so yes I remember vinyl records, tapes and even 8-tracks. So I still do like buying at least some of […]
Daimler Tests Self-Driving Truck on German Highway
October 2nd, 2015Via: AFP: German automaker Daimler said it trialled a self-driving truck under real traffic conditions for the first time Friday, on a motorway in southern Germany. The truck has smart systems including radars, cameras and active speed regulators and works without a human driver — although one has to be in the driver’s seat and […]
Apple Suddenly Banned an App That Maps U.S. Drone Strikes
September 29th, 2015Via: tech.mic: Freelance journalist and data artist Josh Begley has been methodically recording U.S. military drone activity for years. Every week or so — whenever the strikes occur — Begley will post a news story from the @dronestream Twitter account, identifying when and where drone strikes have occurred before feeding the results into an app […]
DARPA: Soldier Brain Implants to Improve Artificial Intelligence [???]
September 28th, 2015Via: Fusion: For decades, DARPA, the secretive research arm of the Department of Defense, has dreamed of turning soldiers into cyborgs. And now it’s finally happening. The agency has funded projects that involve implanting chips into soldiers’ brains that they hope will enhance performance on the battlefield and repair traumatized brains once the fog of […]
General Atomics Wants to Install 150-Kilowatt Laser Onto its Avenger UAV
September 23rd, 2015Via: DefenseOne: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., or GA-ASI, the San Diego-based company that makes the Predator and Reaper drones, is undertaking a privately funded study to integrate a 150-kilowatt solid-state laser onto its Avenger (née Predator-C) drone. If the company gets its way, a drone with a high-energy laser will be a reality at […]
Real Headline: “Marines Test Google’s Latest Military Robot”
September 21st, 2015Via: PC World: The latest version of a walking, quadruped battlefield robot from Boston Dynamics, the military robotics maker owned by Google X, was tested by U.S. Marines last week. Spot weighs about 70kgs, is electrically operated and walks on four hydraulically-actuated legs. It’s controlled via wireless by an operator who can be up to […]
Flying Robots Replace Oil Roughnecks
September 20th, 2015Via: Bloomberg: Oil rig inspection is a dangerous business. Traditionally roughnecks dangled from a wire, in gale-force winds if needed, to manually log wear and tear on the girders. Assessments include giant chimneys — called flare stacks — that belch fire during million-dollar-a-day shutdowns. Increasingly the industry has found that swapping abseiling humans for small […]
Apple Meets California Officials to Discuss Self-Driving Car
September 19th, 2015Via: Guardian: Apple executives have discussed their plans for an “autonomous vehicle” with officials at California’s department of motor vehicles (DMV), the Guardian has learnt. According to documents obtained by the Guardian, Mike Maletic, a senior legal counsel at Apple, had an hour-long meeting on 17 August with the department’s self-driving car experts Bernard Soriano, […]
Cyborg Insects
September 19th, 2015Via: Vice: I asked Anthes why she thought the military was so keen to work with insects. “I’d imagine there are several reasons,” she said. “Firstly those creatures are simpler to work with, biologically speaking. It’s much easier to commandeer an insect’s nervous system than a dog’s or a human’s. But also, for the specific […]
Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level
September 16th, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review: In a world first, an artificial intelligence machine plays chess by evaluating the board rather than using brute force to work out every possible move.
