Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
“Want a Happy Worker? Let Robots Take Control”
August 24th, 2014Alternate Headline: Getting the Most Out of Your Remaining Human Meatsack Workers Until It Makes Economic Sense to Eliminate Them. Via: MIT Technology Review: If you’ve seen a sci-fi flick with autonomous robots in the last 40 years, you may be wary of giving robots any semblance of control. But new research coming out of […]
Bots on Patrol: Mobile Security Robot to be Mass Produced
August 22nd, 2014Via: Factor: In a move that will rock the job security of night watchmen everywhere, the world’s first commercially available security robot is set for mass production in the US. Designed by Denver-based Gamma 2 Robotics, the robot will now be manufactured entirely in the States, with a process that can be scaled up to […]
Despite FAA Setbacks, Amazon Prime Air Makes Notable Engineering, NASA And Aerospace Hires
August 21st, 2014Via: TechCrunch: Something big is going on with Amazon Prime Air, the e-commerce giant’s research project focused on delivering packages in 30 minutes or less using unmanned drones. … Prime Air is shaping up to be more than a marketing stunt, it seems. The company recently scored a few notable hires for this project, including […]
Navy Conducts First Series of Drone and Manned Fighter Jet Operations
August 19th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times: The U.S. Navy said its jet-powered, bat-winged X-47B drone has conducted carrier deck operations and performed maneuvers alongside an F/A-18 fighter jet, marking the first time manned and unmanned aircraft have operated together on the same carrier. Navy officials hailed the test flights of the experimental drone, which were completed Sunday […]
The Kilobot Project: A Low Cost Scalable Robot System for Demonstrating Collective Behaviors
August 15th, 2014Here’s one for your This-Will-End-Badly file folder. Via: Harvard: In current robotics research there is a vast body of work on algorithms and control methods for groups of decentralized cooperating robots, called a swarm or collective. These algorithms are generally meant to control collectives of hundreds or even thousands of robots; however, for reasons of […]
Humans Need Not Apply
August 14th, 2014Via: CGP Grey: Research Credit: P7y845W4
MonsterMind: NSA’s Cyberwar Bot
August 13th, 2014Via: Wired: Edward Snowden has made us painfully aware of the government’s sweeping surveillance programs over the last year. But a new program, currently being developed at the NSA, suggests that surveillance may fuel the government’s cyber defense capabilities, too. The NSA whistleblower says the agency is developing a cyber defense system that would instantly […]
Starwood Hotels Trials Robots That Make Deliveries to Guests
August 12th, 2014Via: CNBC: Look out Rosie the Robot, Starwood Hotels’ Aloft brand has a taskmaster of its own. His (or her?) name; A.L.O. pronounced “el-oh”, the hotels’ first Botlr (short of robotic butler.) Standing just under 3 feet tall, A.L.O. comes dressed in a vinyl-collared butler uniform and will soon be on call all day and […]
Robots Will Create ‘Permanently Unemployable Underclass’
August 9th, 2014Via: International Business Times: The advancement of robots that can do our jobs for us will create a class-divide not seen since the 19th century, a report by the Pew Research Centre in America has found. As machines have continued to displace factory workers, personal assistants and receptionists over the last decade, advanced countries must […]
Why Robots Are Getting Cuter
August 6th, 2014Via: The Verge: The tendency of people to treat minimally anthropomorphic bots as humans worries some people. We are, in a sense, falling prey to a powerful illusion. The expressions and gestures are shorthand for internal states you imagine, instinctively, are like yours, but really are only code. If a thing seems alive, if it […]
