Tag Archives: area

#435601 New Double 3 Robot Makes Telepresence ...

Today, Double Robotics is announcing Double 3, the latest major upgrade to its line of consumer(ish) telepresence robots. We had a (mostly) fantastic time testing out Double 2 back in 2016. One of the things that we found out back then was that it takes a lot of practice to remotely drive the robot around. Double 3 solves this problem by leveraging the substantial advances in 3D sensing and computing that have taken place over the past few years, giving their new robot a level of intelligence that promises to make telepresence more accessible for everyone.

Double 2’s iPad has been replaced by “a fully integrated solution”—which is a fancy way of saying a dedicated 9.7-inch touchscreen and a whole bunch of other stuff. That other stuff includes an NVIDIA Jetson TX2 AI computing module, a beamforming six-microphone array, an 8-watt speaker, a pair of 13-megapixel cameras (wide angle and zoom) on a tilting mount, five ultrasonic rangefinders, and most excitingly, a pair of Intel RealSense D430 depth sensors.

It’s those new depth sensors that really make Double 3 special. The D430 modules each uses a pair of stereo cameras with a pattern projector to generate 1280 x 720 depth data with a range of between 0.2 and 10 meters away. The Double 3 robot uses all of this high quality depth data to locate obstacles, but at this point, it still doesn’t drive completely autonomously. Instead, it presents the remote operator with a slick, augmented reality view of drivable areas in the form of a grid of dots. You just click where you want the robot to go, and it will skillfully take itself there while avoiding obstacles (including dynamic obstacles) and related mishaps along the way.

This effectively offloads the most stressful part of telepresence—not running into stuff—from the remote user to the robot itself, which is the way it should be. That makes it that much easier to encourage people to utilize telepresence for the first time. The way the system is implemented through augmented reality is particularly impressive, I think. It looks like it’s intuitive enough for an inexperienced user without being restrictive, and is a clever way of mitigating even significant amounts of lag.

Otherwise, Double 3’s mobility system is exactly the same as the one featured on Double 2. In fact, that you can stick a Double 3 head on a Double 2 body and it instantly becomes a Double 3. Double Robotics is thoughtfully offering this to current Double 2 owners as a significantly more affordable upgrade option than buying a whole new robot.

For more details on all of Double 3's new features, we spoke with the co-founders of Double Robotics, Marc DeVidts and David Cann.

IEEE Spectrum: Why use this augmented reality system instead of just letting the user click on a regular camera image? Why make things more visually complicated, especially for new users?

Marc DeVidts and David Cann: One of the things that we realized about nine months ago when we got this whole thing working was that without the mixed reality for driving, it was really too magical of an experience for the customer. Even us—we had a hard time understanding whether the robot could really see obstacles and understand where the floor is and that kind of thing. So, we said “What would be the best way of communicating this information to the user?” And the right way to do it ended up drawing the graphics directly onto the scene. It’s really awesome—we have a full, real time 3D scene with the depth information drawn on top of it. We’re starting with some relatively simple graphics, and we’ll be adding more graphics in the future to help the user understand what the robot is seeing.

How robust is the vision system when it comes to obstacle detection and avoidance? Does it work with featureless surfaces, IR absorbent surfaces, in low light, in direct sunlight, etc?

We’ve looked at all of those cases, and one of the reasons that we’re going with the RealSense is the projector that helps us to see blank walls. We also found that having two sensors—one facing the floor and one facing forward—gives us a great coverage area. Having ultrasonic sensors in there as well helps us to detect anything that we can't see with the cameras. They're sort of a last safety measure, especially useful for detecting glass.

It seems like there’s a lot more that you could do with this sensing and mapping capability. What else are you working on?

We're starting with this semi-autonomous driving variant, and we're doing a private beta of full mapping. So, we’re going to do full SLAM of your environment that will be mapped by multiple robots at the same time while you're driving, and then you'll be able to zoom out to a map and click anywhere and it will drive there. That's where we're going with it, but we want to take baby steps to get there. It's the obvious next step, I think, and there are a lot more possibilities there.

Do you expect developers to be excited for this new mapping capability?

We're using a very powerful computer in the robot, a NVIDIA Jetson TX2 running Ubuntu. There's room to grow. It’s actually really exciting to be able to see, in real time, the 3D pose of the robot along with all of the depth data that gets transformed in real time into one view that gives you a full map. Having all of that data and just putting those pieces together and getting everything to work has been a huge feat in of itself.

We have an extensive API for developers to do custom implementations, either for telepresence or other kinds of robotics research. Our system isn't running ROS, but we're going to be adding ROS adapters for all of our hardware components.

Telepresence robots depend heavily on wireless connectivity, which is usually not something that telepresence robotics companies like Double have direct control over. Have you found that connectivity has been getting significantly better since you first introduced Double?

When we started in 2013, we had a lot of customers that didn’t have WiFi in their hallways, just in the conference rooms. We very rarely hear about customers having WiFi connectivity issues these days. The bigger issue we see is when people are calling into the robot from home, where they don't have proper traffic management on their home network. The robot doesn't need a ton of bandwidth, but it does need consistent, low latency bandwidth. And so, if someone else in the house is watching Netflix or something like that, it’s going to saturate your connection. But for the most part, it’s gotten a lot better over the last few years, and it’s no longer a big problem for us.

Do you think 5G will make a significant difference to telepresence robots?

We’ll see. We like the low latency possibilities and the better bandwidth, but it's all going to be a matter of what kind of reception you get. LTE can be great, if you have good reception; it’s all about where the tower is. I’m pretty sure that WiFi is going to be the primary thing for at least the next few years.

DeVidts also mentioned that an unfortunate side effect of the new depth sensors is that hanging a t-shirt on your Double to give it some personality will likely render it partially blind, so that's just something to keep in mind. To make up for this, you can switch around the colorful trim surrounding the screen, which is nowhere near as fun.

When the Double 3 is ready for shipping in late September, US $2,000 will get you the new head with all the sensors and stuff, which seamlessly integrates with your Double 2 base. Buying Double 3 straight up (with the included charging dock) will run you $4,ooo. This is by no means an inexpensive robot, and my impression is that it’s not really designed for individual consumers. But for commercial, corporate, healthcare, or education applications, $4k for a robot as capable as the Double 3 is really quite a good deal—especially considering the kinds of use cases for which it’s ideal.

[ Double Robotics ] Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435541 This Giant AI Chip Is the Size of an ...

People say size doesn’t matter, but when it comes to AI the makers of the largest computer chip ever beg to differ. There are plenty of question marks about the gargantuan processor, but its unconventional design could herald an innovative new era in silicon design.

Computer chips specialized to run deep learning algorithms are a booming area of research as hardware limitations begin to slow progress, and both established players and startups are vying to build the successor to the GPU, the specialized graphics chip that has become the workhorse of the AI industry.

On Monday Californian startup Cerebras came out of stealth mode to unveil an AI-focused processor that turns conventional wisdom on its head. For decades chip makers have been focused on making their products ever-smaller, but the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE) is the size of an iPad and features 1.2 trillion transistors, 400,000 cores, and 18 gigabytes of on-chip memory.

The Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) is the largest chip ever built. It measures 46,225 square millimeters and includes 1.2 trillion transistors. Optimized for artificial intelligence compute, the WSE is shown here for comparison alongside the largest graphics processing unit. Image Credit: Used with permission from Cerebras Systems.
There is a method to the madness, though. Currently, getting enough cores to run really large-scale deep learning applications means connecting banks of GPUs together. But shuffling data between these chips is a major drain on speed and energy efficiency because the wires connecting them are relatively slow.

Building all 400,000 cores into the same chip should get round that bottleneck, but there are reasons it’s not been done before, and Cerebras has had to come up with some clever hacks to get around those obstacles.

Regular computer chips are manufactured using a process called photolithography to etch transistors onto the surface of a wafer of silicon. The wafers are inches across, so multiple chips are built onto them at once and then split up afterwards. But at 8.5 inches across, the WSE uses the entire wafer for a single chip.

The problem is that while for standard chip-making processes any imperfections in manufacturing will at most lead to a few processors out of several hundred having to be ditched, for Cerebras it would mean scrapping the entire wafer. To get around this the company built in redundant circuits so that even if there are a few defects, the chip can route around them.

The other big issue with a giant chip is the enormous amount of heat the processors can kick off—so the company has had to design a proprietary water-cooling system. That, along with the fact that no one makes connections and packaging for giant chips, means the WSE won’t be sold as a stand-alone component, but as part of a pre-packaged server incorporating the cooling technology.

There are no details on costs or performance so far, but some customers have already been testing prototypes, and according to Cerebras results have been promising. CEO and co-founder Andrew Feldman told Fortune that early tests show they are reducing training time from months to minutes.

We’ll have to wait until the first systems ship to customers in September to see if those claims stand up. But Feldman told ZDNet that the design of their chip should help spur greater innovation in the way engineers design neural networks. Many cornerstones of this process—for instance, tackling data in batches rather than individual data points—are guided more by the hardware limitations of GPUs than by machine learning theory, but their chip will do away with many of those obstacles.

Whether that turns out to be the case or not, the WSE might be the first indication of an innovative new era in silicon design. When Google announced it’s AI-focused Tensor Processing Unit in 2016 it was a wake-up call for chipmakers that we need some out-of-the-box thinking to square the slowing of Moore’s Law with skyrocketing demand for computing power.

It’s not just tech giants’ AI server farms driving innovation. At the other end of the spectrum, the desire to embed intelligence in everyday objects and mobile devices is pushing demand for AI chips that can run on tiny amounts of power and squeeze into the smallest form factors.

These trends have spawned renewed interest in everything from brain-inspired neuromorphic chips to optical processors, but the WSE also shows that there might be mileage in simply taking a sideways look at some of the other design decisions chipmakers have made in the past rather than just pumping ever more transistors onto a chip.

This gigantic chip might be the first exhibit in a weird and wonderful new menagerie of exotic, AI-inspired silicon.

Image Credit: Used with permission from Cerebras Systems. Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435308 Brain-Machine Interfaces Are Getting ...

Elon Musk grabbed a lot of attention with his July 16 announcement that his company Neuralink plans to implant electrodes into the brains of people with paralysis by next year. Their first goal is to create assistive technology to help people who can’t move or are unable to communicate.

If you haven’t been paying attention, brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) that allow people to control robotic arms with their thoughts might sound like science fiction. But science and engineering efforts have already turned it into reality.

In a few research labs around the world, scientists and physicians have been implanting devices into the brains of people who have lost the ability to control their arms or hands for over a decade. In our own research group at the University of Pittsburgh, we’ve enabled people with paralyzed arms and hands to control robotic arms that allow them to grasp and move objects with relative ease. They can even experience touch-like sensations from their own hand when the robot grasps objects.

At its core, a BMI is pretty straightforward. In your brain, microscopic cells called neurons are sending signals back and forth to each other all the time. Everything you think, do and feel as you interact with the world around you is the result of the activity of these 80 billion or so neurons.

If you implant a tiny wire very close to one of these neurons, you can record the electrical activity it generates and send it to a computer. Record enough of these signals from the right area of the brain and it becomes possible to control computers, robots, or anything else you might want, simply by thinking about moving. But doing this comes with tremendous technical challenges, especially if you want to record from hundreds or thousands of neurons.

What Neuralink Is Bringing to the Table
Elon Musk founded Neuralink in 2017, aiming to address these challenges and raise the bar for implanted neural interfaces.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Neuralink’s system is the breadth and depth of their approach. Building a BMI is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring expertise in electrode design and microfabrication, implantable materials, surgical methods, electronics, packaging, neuroscience, algorithms, medicine, regulatory issues, and more. Neuralink has created a team that spans most, if not all, of these areas.

With all of this expertise, Neuralink is undoubtedly moving the field forward, and improving their technology rapidly. Individually, many of the components of their system represent significant progress along predictable paths. For example, their electrodes, that they call threads, are very small and flexible; many researchers have tried to harness those properties to minimize the chance the brain’s immune response would reject the electrodes after insertion. Neuralink has also developed high-performance miniature electronics, another focus area for labs working on BMIs.

Often overlooked in academic settings, however, is how an entire system would be efficiently implanted in a brain.

Neuralink’s BMI requires brain surgery. This is because implanted electrodes that are in intimate contact with neurons will always outperform non-invasive electrodes where neurons are far away from the electrodes sitting outside the skull. So, a critical question becomes how to minimize the surgical challenges around getting the device into a brain.

Maybe the most impressive aspect of Neuralink’s announcement was that they created a 3,000-electrode neural interface where electrodes could be implanted at a rate of between 30 and 200 per minute. Each thread of electrodes is implanted by a sophisticated surgical robot that essentially acts like a sewing machine. This all happens while specifically avoiding blood vessels that blanket the surface of the brain. The robotics and imaging that enable this feat, with tight integration to the entire device, is striking.

Neuralink has thought through the challenge of developing a clinically viable BMI from beginning to end in a way that few groups have done, though they acknowledge that many challenges remain as they work towards getting this technology into human patients in the clinic.

Figuring Out What More Electrodes Gets You
The quest for implantable devices with thousands of electrodes is not only the domain of private companies. DARPA, the NIH BRAIN Initiative, and international consortiums are working on neurotechnologies for recording and stimulating in the brain with goals of tens of thousands of electrodes. But what might scientists do with the information from 1,000, 3,000, or maybe even 100,000 neurons?

At some level, devices with more electrodes might not actually be necessary to have a meaningful impact in people’s lives. Effective control of computers for access and communication, of robotic limbs to grasp and move objects as well as of paralyzed muscles is already happening—in people. And it has been for a number of years.

Since the 1990s, the Utah Array, which has just 100 electrodes and is manufactured by Blackrock Microsystems, has been a critical device in neuroscience and clinical research. This electrode array is FDA-cleared for temporary neural recording. Several research groups, including our own, have implanted Utah Arrays in people that lasted multiple years.

Currently, the biggest constraints are related to connectors, electronics, and system-level engineering, not the implanted electrode itself—although increasing the electrodes’ lifespan to more than five years would represent a significant advance. As those technical capabilities improve, it might turn out that the ability to accurately control computers and robots is limited more by scientists’ understanding of what the neurons are saying—that is, the neural code—than by the number of electrodes on the device.

Even the most capable implanted system, and maybe the most capable devices researchers can reasonably imagine, might fall short of the goal of actually augmenting skilled human performance. Nevertheless, Neuralink’s goal of creating better BMIs has the potential to improve the lives of people who can’t move or are unable to communicate. Right now, Musk’s vision of using BMIs to meld physical brains and intelligence with artificial ones is no more than a dream.

So, what does the future look like for Neuralink and other groups creating implantable BMIs? Devices with more electrodes that last longer and are connected to smaller and more powerful wireless electronics are essential. Better devices themselves, however, are insufficient. Continued public and private investment in companies and academic research labs, as well as innovative ways for these groups to work together to share technologies and data, will be necessary to truly advance scientists’ understanding of the brain and deliver on the promise of BMIs to improve peoples’ lives.

While researchers need to keep the future societal implications of advanced neurotechnologies in mind—there’s an essential role for ethicists and regulation—BMIs could be truly transformative as they help more people overcome limitations caused by injury or disease in the brain and body.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences, / CC BY-NC-ND Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435260 How Tech Can Help Curb Emissions by ...

Trees are a low-tech, high-efficiency way to offset much of humankind’s negative impact on the climate. What’s even better, we have plenty of room for a lot more of them.

A new study conducted by researchers at Switzerland’s ETH-Zürich, published in Science, details how Earth could support almost an additional billion hectares of trees without the new forests pushing into existing urban or agricultural areas. Once the trees grow to maturity, they could store more than 200 billion metric tons of carbon.

Great news indeed, but it still leaves us with some huge unanswered questions. Where and how are we going to plant all the new trees? What kind of trees should we plant? How can we ensure that the new forests become a boon for people in those areas?

Answers to all of the above likely involve technology.

Math + Trees = Challenges
The ETH-Zürich research team combined Google Earth mapping software with a database of nearly 80,000 existing forests to create a predictive model for optimal planting locations. In total, 0.9 billion hectares of new, continuous forest could be planted. Once mature, the 500 billion new trees in these forests would be capable of storing about two-thirds of the carbon we have emitted since the industrial revolution.

Other researchers have noted that the study may overestimate how efficient trees are at storing carbon, as well as underestimate how much carbon humans have emitted over time. However, all seem to agree that new forests would offset much of our cumulative carbon emissions—still an impressive feat as the target of keeping global warming this century at under 1.5 degrees Celsius becomes harder and harder to reach.

Recently, there was a story about a Brazilian couple who replanted trees in the valley where they live. The couple planted about 2.7 million trees in two decades. Back-of-the-napkin math shows that they on average planted 370 trees a day, meaning planting 500 billion trees would take about 3.7 million years. While an over-simplification, the point is that planting trees by hand is not realistic. Even with a million people going at a rate of 370 trees a day, it would take 83 years. Current technologies are also not likely to be able to meet the challenge, especially in remote locations.

Tree-Bombing Drones
Technology can speed up the planting process, including a new generation of drones that take tree planting to the skies. Drone planting generally involves dropping biodegradable seed pods at a designated area. The pods dissolve over time, and the tree seeds grow in the earth below. DroneSeed is one example; its 55-pound drones can plant up to 800 seeds an hour. Another startup, Biocarbon Engineering, has used various techniques, including drones, to plant 38 different species of trees across three continents.

Drone planting has distinct advantages when it comes to planting in hard-to-access areas—one example is mangrove forests, which are disappearing rapidly, increasing the risk of floods and storm surges.

Challenges include increasing the range and speed of drone planting, and perhaps most importantly, the success rate, as automatic planting from a height is still likely to be less accurate when it comes to what depth the tree saplings are planted. However, drones are already showing impressive numbers for sapling survival rates.

AI, Sensors, and Eye-In-the-Sky
Planting the trees is the first step in a long road toward an actual forest. Companies are leveraging artificial intelligence and satellite imagery in a multitude of ways to increase protection and understanding of forested areas.

20tree.ai, a Portugal-based startup, uses AI to analyze satellite imagery and monitor the state of entire forests at a fraction of the cost of manual monitoring. The approach can lead to faster identification of threats like pest infestation and a better understanding of the state of forests.

AI can also play a pivotal role in protecting existing forest areas by predicting where deforestation is likely to occur.

Closer to the ground—and sometimes in it—new networks of sensors can provide detailed information about the state and needs of trees. One such project is Trace, where individual trees are equipped with a TreeTalker, an internet of things-based device that can provide real-time monitoring of the tree’s functions and well-being. The information can be used to, among other things, optimize the use of available resources, such as providing the exact amount of water a tree needs.

Budding Technologies Are Controversial
Trees are in many ways fauna’s marathon runners—slow-growing and sturdy, but still susceptible to sickness and pests. Many deforested areas are likely not as rich in nutrients as they once were, which could slow down reforestation. Much of the positive impact that said trees could have on carbon levels in the atmosphere is likely decades away.

Bioengineering, for example through CRISPR, could provide solutions, making trees more resistant and faster-growing. Such technologies are being explored in relation to Ghana’s at-risk cocoa trees. Other exponential technologies could also hold much future potential—for instance micro-robots to assist the dwindling number of bees with pollination.

These technologies remain mired in controversy, and perhaps rightfully so. Bioengineering’s massive potential is for many offset by the inherent risks of engineered plants out-competing existing fauna or growing beyond our control. Micro-robots for pollination may solve a problem, but don’t do much to address the root cause: that we seem to be disrupting and destroying integral parts of natural cycles.

Tech Not The Whole Answer
So, is it realistic to plant 500 billion new trees? The short answer would be that yes, it’s possible—with the help of technology.

However, there are many unanswered challenges. For example, many of areas identified by the ETH-Zürich research team are not readily available for reforestation. Some are currently reserved for grazing, others owned by private entities, and others again are located in remote areas or areas prone to political instability, beyond the reach of most replanting efforts.

If we do wish to plant 500 billion trees to offset some of the negative impacts we have had on the planet, we might well want to combine the best of exponential technology with reforestation as well as a move to other forms of agriculture.

Such an approach might also help address a major issue: that few of the proposed new forests will likely succeed without ensuring that people living in and around the areas where reforestation takes place become involved, and can reap rewards from turning arable land into forests.

Image Credit: Lillac/Shutterstock.com Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435196 Avatar Love? New ‘Black Mirror’ ...

This week, the widely-anticipated fifth season of the dystopian series Black Mirror was released on Netflix. The storylines this season are less focused on far-out scenarios and increasingly aligned with current issues. With only three episodes, this season raises more questions than it answers, often leaving audiences bewildered.

The episode Smithereens explores our society’s crippling addiction to social media platforms and the monopoly they hold over our data. In Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, we see the disruptive impact of technologies on the music and entertainment industry, and the price of fame for artists in the digital world. Like most Black Mirror episodes, these explore the sometimes disturbing implications of tech advancements on humanity.

But once again, in the midst of all the doom and gloom, the creators of the series leave us with a glimmer of hope. Aligned with Pride month, the episode Striking Vipers explores the impact of virtual reality on love, relationships, and sexual fluidity.

*The review contains a few spoilers.*

Striking Vipers
The first episode of the season, Striking Vipers may be one of the most thought-provoking episodes in Black Mirror history. Reminiscent of previous episodes San Junipero and Hang the DJ, the writers explore the potential for technology to transform human intimacy.

The episode tells the story of two old friends, Danny and Karl, whose friendship is reignited in an unconventional way. Karl unexpectedly appears at Danny’s 38th birthday and reintroduces him to the VR version of a game they used to play years before. In the game Striking Vipers X, each of the players is represented by an avatar of their choice in an uncanny digital reality. Following old tradition, Karl chooses to become the female fighter, Roxanne, and Danny takes on the role of the male fighter, Lance. The state-of-the-art VR headsets appear to use an advanced form of brain-machine interface to allow each player to be fully immersed in the virtual world, emulating all physical sensations.

To their surprise (and confusion), Danny and Karl find themselves transitioning from fist-fighting to kissing. Over the course of many games, they continue to explore a sexual and romantic relationship in the virtual world, leaving them confused and distant in the real world. The virtual and physical realities begin to blur, and so do the identities of the players with their avatars. Danny, who is married (in a heterosexual relationship) and is a father, begins to carry guilt and confusion in the real world. They both wonder if there would be any spark between them in real life.

The brain-machine interface (BMI) depicted in the episode is still science fiction, but that hasn’t stopped innovators from pushing the technology forward. Experts today are designing more intricate BMI systems while programming better algorithms to interpret the neural signals they capture. Scientists have already succeeded in enabling paralyzed patients to type with their minds, and are even allowing people to communicate with one another purely through brainwaves.

The convergence of BMIs with virtual reality and artificial intelligence could make the experience of such immersive digital realities possible. Virtual reality, too, is decreasing exponentially in cost and increasing in quality.

The narrative provides meaningful commentary on another tech area—gaming. It highlights video games not necessarily as addictive distractions, but rather as a platform for connecting with others in a deeper way. This is already very relevant. Video games like Final Fantasy are often a tool for meaningful digital connections for their players.

The Implications of Virtual Reality on Love and Relationships
The narrative of Striking Vipers raises many novel questions about the implications of immersive technologies on relationships: could the virtual world allow us a safe space to explore suppressed desires? Can virtual avatars make it easier for us to show affection to those we care about? Can a sexual or romantic encounter in the digital world be considered infidelity?

Above all, the episode explores the therapeutic possibilities of such technologies. While many fears about virtual reality had been raised in previous seasons of Black Mirror, this episode was focused on its potential. This includes the potential of immersive technology to be a source of liberation, meaningful connections, and self-exploration, as well as a tool for realizing our true identities and desires.

Once again, this is aligned with emerging trends in VR. We are seeing the rise of social VR applications and platforms that allow you to hang out with your friends and family as avatars in the virtual space. The technology is allowing for animation movies, such as Coco VR, to become an increasingly social and interactive experience. Considering that meaningful social interaction can alleviate depression and anxiety, such applications could contribute to well-being.

Techno-philosopher and National Geographic host Jason Silva points out that immersive media technologies can be “engines of empathy.” VR allows us to enter virtual spaces that mimic someone else’s state of mind, allowing us to empathize with the way they view the world. Silva said, “Imagine the intimacy that becomes possible when people meet and they say, ‘Hey, do you want to come visit my world? Do you want to see what it’s like to be inside my head?’”

What is most fascinating about Striking Vipers is that it explores how we may redefine love with virtual reality; we are introduced to love between virtual avatars. While this kind of love may seem confusing to audiences, it may be one of the complex implications of virtual reality on human relationships.

In many ways, the title Black Mirror couldn’t be more appropriate, as each episode serves as a mirror to the most disturbing aspects of our psyches as they get amplified through technology. However, what we see in uplifting and thought-provoking plots like Striking Vipers, San Junipero, and Hang The DJ is that technology could also amplify the most positive aspects of our humanity. This includes our powerful capacity to love.

Image Credit: Arsgera / Shutterstock.com Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots