Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton
January 7th, 2014Via: Wired: A new drone with the mammoth wingspan of a Boeing 757 is set to give the U.S. Navy some serious surveillance power. Northrop Grumman and the Navy say they’ve just completed the ninth flight trial of the Triton unmanned aircraft system (UAS), an improvement upon its predecessor in the Air Force, the Global […]
How Google Cracked House Number Identification in Street View
January 7th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: Google can identify and transcribe all the views it has of street numbers in France in less than an hour, thanks to a neural network that’s just as good as human operators. … But the task of spotting and identifying these numbers is hugely time-consuming. Google’s street view cameras have recorded […]
Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience
December 28th, 2013Here’s one for your Omni-Magazine-Déjà-vu-Moments file folder. Via: New York Times: Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head. The first commercial version of the new kind of computer chip is scheduled to be released […]
Michigan: Cars with Self Drive Mode Allowed on Roads; On Board Human Supervision Required
December 28th, 2013Via: CBS: Gov. Rick Snyder has signed a law allowing companies to test driverless cars on Michigan roads. But there’s a key point: Someone must be in the car. In a statement Friday, Snyder says the law is important to keep Michigan involved in research and development of car technology. He also mentioned a need […]
Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap 2013-2038
December 28th, 2013Via: U.S. Department of Defense: 4.1.5 Autonomy and Cognitive Behavior Nearly all unmanned systems require active control of basic vehicle operations and behavior that affects communications, manpower, and system effectiveness. One of the largest cost drivers in the budget of DoD is manpower. A significant amount of that manpower, when it comes to operations, is […]
Neural Net Learns Breakout Then Thrashes Human Gamers
December 27th, 2013Via: Medium: The Atari 2600 games console has a special place in the hearts of any gamers who grew up in the 1970s. It popularised a number of games that changed the games industry for ever, such as Pong, Breakout and Space Invaders. Today, these games have legendary status and still play an important role […]
No Hands on Deck: Dawn of the Crewless Ship
December 26th, 2013Automation, lower costs, you know the routine. The monkey wrench in the gears appears further down in the piece. Via: Financial Times: Remote-controlled ships used to come wrapped up as presents under the Christmas tree, but if European researchers and one of the world’s best-known engineering groups have their way, full-size versions will start replacing […]
The OpenWorm Project
December 23rd, 2013Via: Telegraph: An ambitious project to recreate an entire roundworm, cell by cell, in a software model has reached a crucial breakthrough as the digital animal wriggled for the first time. The OpenWorm project brings together scientists and programmers from around the world in the common goal of entirely recreating the structure and behaviour of […]
Google-Owned SCHAFT Robot Won DARPA Robotics Challenge
December 22nd, 2013Via: Slashgear: The Google-owned Japanese robotics company SCHAFT has won the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials by a wide margin. It scored 27 out of 32 points, beating its nearest competitor IHMC Robotics by seven points. Coming up third was Tartan rescue with 18 points, and MIT following that with 16 points. The contest took place […]
‘Deep Learning’ Professor to Head Facebook AI Lab
December 16th, 2013Via: New Yorker: Earlier today, Facebook announced that one of the most prominent artificial-intelligence researchers in the world, Yann LeCun, will be joining the company to direct a massive new A.I. effort spread across offices in California, New York, and London. While it might sound like just another Facebook hire, the move, which LeCun describes […]
