Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
GOOGLE BUYS BOSTON DYNAMICS
December 14th, 2013😯 Via: New York Times: BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat and Atlas have joined Google’s growing robot menagerie. Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that […]
NASA Unveils ‘Valkyrie’ Robot for DARPA Competition
December 13th, 2013Via: IEEE Spectrum: Valkyrie (officially designated “R5” by NASA) is a 1.9 meter tall, 125 kilogram, 44 degree of freedom, battery-powered humanoid robot. A team from NASA’s JSC in Houston, in partnership with the University of Texas and Texas A&M and with funding from the state of Texas itself, built the robot for the DRC, […]
Meet the Robot Telemarketer Who Denies She’s A Robot
December 13th, 2013Via: Time: The phone call came from a charming woman with a bright, engaging voice to the cell phone of a TIME Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer. She wanted to offer a deal on health insurance, but something was fishy. When Scherer asked point blank if she was a real person, or a computer-operated robot […]
What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
December 10th, 2013Via: ACLU: We now know that the NSA is collecting location information en masse. As we’ve long said, location data is an extremely powerful set of information about people. To flesh out why that is true, here is the kind of future memo that we fear may someday soon be uncovered…
Birds Will Attack Amazon’s Delivery Drones
December 7th, 2013Amazon is just one potential operator. Once the rules are formalized in 2015, tens of thousands of organizations are going to be operating similar aircraft. Via: Slate: Birds already cause a lot of problems for other things in the airspace. The FAA has tracked more than 121,000 instances of bird-aircraft collisions since 1990. These are […]
Northrop Grumman RQ-180
December 7th, 2013Via: Aviation Week: A large, classified unmanned aircraft developed by Northrop Grumman is now flying—and it demonstrates a major advance in combining stealth and aerodynamic efficiency. Defense and intelligence officials say the secret unmanned aerial system (UAS), designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, is scheduled to enter production for the U.S. Air Force […]
Rise of the Machines – USA
December 6th, 2013Via: Journeyman Pictures:
Navy Launches a Drone from a Submerged Submarine
December 6th, 2013Via: Defense One: The Naval Research Lab just launched a drone from a submerged submarine – giving a huge edge to the future of special operations. It took six years to develop and launch an all-electric, fuel cell-powered, folding-wing drone aircraft from a submerged submarine. The eXperimental Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial System, or XFC UAS, […]
Nissan Begins Autonomous Vehicle Trials on Japanese Roads
December 5th, 2013Via: Autoblog: Earlier this week, the Japanese automaker tested a self-driving Nissan Leaf electric vehicle on public roads for the first time and proclaimed the exercise a success in driverless motoring. Nissan equipped the vehicle with its so-called Autonomous Drive feature and took the car out onto Sagami Expressway in Kanagawa prefecture. The car, the […]
Amazon Drone Attempted Delivery Tag *Chortle*
December 2nd, 2013I don’t have a Humor category, but if I did…
