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#431385 Here’s How to Get to Conscious ...

“We cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.” – Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Unlike the director leads you to believe, the protagonist of Ex Machina, Andrew Garland’s 2015 masterpiece, isn’t Caleb, a young programmer tasked with evaluating machine consciousness. Rather, it’s his target Ava, a breathtaking humanoid AI with a seemingly child-like naïveté and an enigmatic mind.
Like most cerebral movies, Ex Machina leaves the conclusion up to the viewer: was Ava actually conscious? In doing so, it also cleverly avoids a thorny question that has challenged most AI-centric movies to date: what is consciousness, and can machines have it?
Hollywood producers aren’t the only people stumped. As machine intelligence barrels forward at breakneck speed—not only exceeding human performance on games such as DOTA and Go, but doing so without the need for human expertise—the question has once more entered the scientific mainstream.
Are machines on the verge of consciousness?
This week, in a review published in the prestigious journal Science, cognitive scientists Drs. Stanislas Dehaene, Hakwan Lau and Sid Kouider of the Collège de France, University of California, Los Angeles and PSL Research University, respectively, argue: not yet, but there is a clear path forward.
The reason? Consciousness is “resolutely computational,” the authors say, in that it results from specific types of information processing, made possible by the hardware of the brain.
There is no magic juice, no extra spark—in fact, an experiential component (“what is it like to be conscious?”) isn’t even necessary to implement consciousness.
If consciousness results purely from the computations within our three-pound organ, then endowing machines with a similar quality is just a matter of translating biology to code.
Much like the way current powerful machine learning techniques heavily borrow from neurobiology, the authors write, we may be able to achieve artificial consciousness by studying the structures in our own brains that generate consciousness and implementing those insights as computer algorithms.
From Brain to Bot
Without doubt, the field of AI has greatly benefited from insights into our own minds, both in form and function.
For example, deep neural networks, the architecture of algorithms that underlie AlphaGo’s breathtaking sweep against its human competitors, are loosely based on the multi-layered biological neural networks that our brain cells self-organize into.
Reinforcement learning, a type of “training” that teaches AIs to learn from millions of examples, has roots in a centuries-old technique familiar to anyone with a dog: if it moves toward the right response (or result), give a reward; otherwise ask it to try again.
In this sense, translating the architecture of human consciousness to machines seems like a no-brainer towards artificial consciousness. There’s just one big problem.
“Nobody in AI is working on building conscious machines because we just have nothing to go on. We just don’t have a clue about what to do,” said Dr. Stuart Russell, the author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach in a 2015 interview with Science.
Multilayered consciousness
The hard part, long before we can consider coding machine consciousness, is figuring out what consciousness actually is.
To Dehaene and colleagues, consciousness is a multilayered construct with two “dimensions:” C1, the information readily in mind, and C2, the ability to obtain and monitor information about oneself. Both are essential to consciousness, but one can exist without the other.
Say you’re driving a car and the low fuel light comes on. Here, the perception of the fuel-tank light is C1—a mental representation that we can play with: we notice it, act upon it (refill the gas tank) and recall and speak about it at a later date (“I ran out of gas in the boonies!”).
“The first meaning we want to separate (from consciousness) is the notion of global availability,” explains Dehaene in an interview with Science. When you’re conscious of a word, your whole brain is aware of it, in a sense that you can use the information across modalities, he adds.
But C1 is not just a “mental sketchpad.” It represents an entire architecture that allows the brain to draw multiple modalities of information from our senses or from memories of related events, for example.
Unlike subconscious processing, which often relies on specific “modules” competent at a defined set of tasks, C1 is a global workspace that allows the brain to integrate information, decide on an action, and follow through until the end.
Like The Hunger Games, what we call “conscious” is whatever representation, at one point in time, wins the competition to access this mental workspace. The winners are shared among different brain computation circuits and are kept in the spotlight for the duration of decision-making to guide behavior.
Because of these features, C1 consciousness is highly stable and global—all related brain circuits are triggered, the authors explain.
For a complex machine such as an intelligent car, C1 is a first step towards addressing an impending problem, such as a low fuel light. In this example, the light itself is a type of subconscious signal: when it flashes, all of the other processes in the machine remain uninformed, and the car—even if equipped with state-of-the-art visual processing networks—passes by gas stations without hesitation.
With C1 in place, the fuel tank would alert the car computer (allowing the light to enter the car’s “conscious mind”), which in turn checks the built-in GPS to search for the next gas station.
“We think in a machine this would translate into a system that takes information out of whatever processing module it’s encapsulated in, and make it available to any of the other processing modules so they can use the information,” says Dehaene. “It’s a first sense of consciousness.”
Meta-cognition
In a way, C1 reflects the mind’s capacity to access outside information. C2 goes introspective.
The authors define the second facet of consciousness, C2, as “meta-cognition:” reflecting on whether you know or perceive something, or whether you just made an error (“I think I may have filled my tank at the last gas station, but I forgot to keep a receipt to make sure”). This dimension reflects the link between consciousness and sense of self.
C2 is the level of consciousness that allows you to feel more or less confident about a decision when making a choice. In computational terms, it’s an algorithm that spews out the probability that a decision (or computation) is correct, even if it’s often experienced as a “gut feeling.”
C2 also has its claws in memory and curiosity. These self-monitoring algorithms allow us to know what we know or don’t know—so-called “meta-memory,” responsible for that feeling of having something at the tip of your tongue. Monitoring what we know (or don’t know) is particularly important for children, says Dehaene.
“Young children absolutely need to monitor what they know in order to…inquire and become curious and learn more,” he explains.
The two aspects of consciousness synergize to our benefit: C1 pulls relevant information into our mental workspace (while discarding other “probable” ideas or solutions), while C2 helps with long-term reflection on whether the conscious thought led to a helpful response.
Going back to the low fuel light example, C1 allows the car to solve the problem in the moment—these algorithms globalize the information, so that the car becomes aware of the problem.
But to solve the problem, the car would need a “catalog of its cognitive abilities”—a self-awareness of what resources it has readily available, for example, a GPS map of gas stations.
“A car with this sort of self-knowledge is what we call having C2,” says Dehaene. Because the signal is globally available and because it’s being monitored in a way that the machine is looking at itself, the car would care about the low gas light and behave like humans do—lower fuel consumption and find a gas station.
“Most present-day machine learning systems are devoid of any self-monitoring,” the authors note.
But their theory seems to be on the right track. The few examples whereby a self-monitoring system was implemented—either within the structure of the algorithm or as a separate network—the AI has generated “internal models that are meta-cognitive in nature, making it possible for an agent to develop a (limited, implicit, practical) understanding of itself.”
Towards conscious machines
Would a machine endowed with C1 and C2 behave as if it were conscious? Very likely: a smartcar would “know” that it’s seeing something, express confidence in it, report it to others, and find the best solutions for problems. If its self-monitoring mechanisms break down, it may also suffer “hallucinations” or even experience visual illusions similar to humans.
Thanks to C1 it would be able to use the information it has and use it flexibly, and because of C2 it would know the limit of what it knows, says Dehaene. “I think (the machine) would be conscious,” and not just merely appearing so to humans.
If you’re left with a feeling that consciousness is far more than global information sharing and self-monitoring, you’re not alone.
“Such a purely functional definition of consciousness may leave some readers unsatisfied,” the authors acknowledge.
“But we’re trying to take a radical stance, maybe simplifying the problem. Consciousness is a functional property, and when we keep adding functions to machines, at some point these properties will characterize what we mean by consciousness,” Dehaene concludes.
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#431343 How Technology Is Driving Us Toward Peak ...

At some point in the future—and in some ways we are already seeing this—the amount of physical stuff moving around the world will peak and begin to decline. By “stuff,” I am referring to liquid fuels, coal, containers on ships, food, raw materials, products, etc.
New technologies are moving us toward “production-at-the-point-of-consumption” of energy, food, and products with reduced reliance on a global supply chain.
The trade of physical stuff has been central to globalization as we’ve known it. So, this declining movement of stuff may signal we are approaching “peak globalization.”
To be clear, even as the movement of stuff may slow, if not decline, the movement of people, information, data, and ideas around the world is growing exponentially and is likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.
Peak globalization may provide a pathway to preserving the best of globalization and global interconnectedness, enhancing economic and environmental sustainability, and empowering individuals and communities to strengthen democracy.
At the same time, some of the most troublesome aspects of globalization may be eased, including massive financial transfers to energy producers and loss of jobs to manufacturing platforms like China. This shift could bring relief to the “losers” of globalization and ease populist, nationalist political pressures that are roiling the developed countries.
That is quite a claim, I realize. But let me explain the vision.
New Technologies and Businesses: Digital, Democratized, Decentralized
The key factors moving us toward peak globalization and making it economically viable are new technologies and innovative businesses and business models allowing for “production-at-the-point-of-consumption” of energy, food, and products.
Exponential technologies are enabling these trends by sharply reducing the “cost of entry” for creating businesses. Driven by Moore’s Law, powerful technologies have become available to almost anyone, anywhere.
Beginning with the microchip, which has had a 100-billion-fold improvement in 40 years—10,000 times faster and 10 million times cheaper—the marginal cost of producing almost everything that can be digitized has fallen toward zero.
A hard copy of a book, for example, will always entail the cost of materials, printing, shipping, etc., even if the marginal cost falls as more copies are produced. But the marginal cost of a second digital copy, such as an e-book, streaming video, or song, is nearly zero as it is simply a digital file sent over the Internet, the world’s largest copy machine.* Books are one product, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in once-physical, separate products jammed into our devices at little to no cost.
A smartphone alone provides half the human population access to artificial intelligence—from SIRI, search, and translation to cloud computing—geolocation, free global video calls, digital photography and free uploads to social network sites, free access to global knowledge, a million apps for a huge variety of purposes, and many other capabilities that were unavailable to most people only a few years ago.
As powerful as dematerialization and demonetization are for private individuals, they’re having a stronger effect on businesses. A small team can access expensive, advanced tools that before were only available to the biggest organizations. Foundational digital platforms, such as the internet and GPS, and the platforms built on top of them by the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and others provide the connectivity and services democratizing business tools and driving the next generation of new startups.

“As these trends gain steam in coming decades, they’ll bleed into and fundamentally transform global supply chains.”

An AI startup, for example, doesn’t need its own server farm to train its software and provide service to customers. The team can rent computing power from Amazon Web Services. This platform model enables small teams to do big things on the cheap. And it isn’t just in software. Similar trends are happening in hardware too. Makers can 3D print or mill industrial grade prototypes of physical stuff in a garage or local maker space and send or sell designs to anyone with a laptop and 3D printer via online platforms.
These are early examples of trends that are likely to gain steam in coming decades, and as they do, they’ll bleed into and fundamentally transform global supply chains.
The old model is a series of large, connected bits of centralized infrastructure. It makes sense to mine, farm, or manufacture in bulk when the conditions, resources, machines, and expertise to do so exist in particular places and are specialized and expensive. The new model, however, enables smaller-scale production that is local and decentralized.
To see this more clearly, let’s take a look at the technological trends at work in the three biggest contributors to the global trade of physical stuff—products, energy, and food.
Products
3D printing (additive manufacturing) allows for distributed manufacturing near the point of consumption, eliminating or reducing supply chains and factory production lines.
This is possible because product designs are no longer made manifest in assembly line parts like molds or specialized mechanical tools. Rather, designs are digital and can be called up at will to guide printers. Every time a 3D printer prints, it can print a different item, so no assembly line needs to be set up for every different product. 3D printers can also print an entire finished product in one piece or reduce the number of parts of larger products, such as engines. This further lessens the need for assembly.
Because each item can be customized and printed on demand, there is no cost benefit from scaling production. No inventories. No shipping items across oceans. No carbon emissions transporting not only the final product but also all the parts in that product shipped from suppliers to manufacturer. Moreover, 3D printing builds items layer by layer with almost no waste, unlike “subtractive manufacturing” in which an item is carved out of a piece of metal, and much or even most of the material can be waste.
Finally, 3D printing is also highly scalable, from inexpensive 3D printers (several hundred dollars) for home and school use to increasingly capable and expensive printers for industrial production. There are also 3D printers being developed for printing buildings, including houses and office buildings, and other infrastructure.
The technology for finished products is only now getting underway, and there are still challenges to overcome, such as speed, quality, and range of materials. But as methods and materials advance, it will likely creep into more manufactured goods.
Ultimately, 3D printing will be a general purpose technology that involves many different types of printers and materials—such as plastics, metals, and even human cells—to produce a huge range of items, from human tissue and potentially human organs to household items and a range of industrial items for planes, trains, and automobiles.
Energy
Renewable energy production is located at or relatively near the source of consumption.
Although electricity generated by solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable sources can of course be transmitted over longer distances, it is mostly generated and consumed locally or regionally. It is not transported around the world in tankers, ships, and pipelines like petroleum, coal, and natural gas.
Moreover, the fuel itself is free—forever. There is no global price on sun or wind. The people relying on solar and wind power need not worry about price volatility and potential disruption of fuel supplies as a result of political, market, or natural causes.
Renewables have their problems, of course, including intermittency and storage, and currently they work best if complementary to other sources, especially natural gas power plants that, unlike coal plants, can be turned on or off and modulated like a gas stove, and are half the carbon emissions of coal.
Within the next decades or so, it is likely the intermittency and storage problems will be solved or greatly mitigated. In addition, unlike coal and natural gas power plants, solar is scalable, from solar panels on individual homes or even cars and other devices, to large-scale solar farms. Solar can be connected with microgrids and even allow for autonomous electricity generation by homes, commercial buildings, and communities.
It may be several decades before fossil fuel power plants can be phased out, but the development cost of renewables has been falling exponentially and, in places, is beginning to compete with coal and gas. Solar especially is expected to continue to increase in efficiency and decline in cost.
Given these trends in cost and efficiency, renewables should become obviously cheaper over time—if the fuel is free for solar and has to be continually purchased for coal and gas, at some point the former is cheaper than the latter. Renewables are already cheaper if externalities such as carbon emissions and environmental degradation involved in obtaining and transporting the fuel are included.
Food
Food can be increasingly produced near the point of consumption with vertical farms and eventually with printed food and even printed or cultured meat.
These sources bring production of food very near the consumer, so transportation costs, which can be a significant portion of the cost of food to consumers, are greatly reduced. The use of land and water are reduced by 95% or more, and energy use is cut by nearly 50%. In addition, fertilizers and pesticides are not required and crops can be grown 365 days a year whatever the weather and in more climates and latitudes than is possible today.
While it may not be practical to grow grains, corn, and other such crops in vertical farms, many vegetables and fruits can flourish in such facilities. In addition, cultured or printed meat is being developed—the big challenge is scaling up and reducing cost—that is based on cells from real animals without slaughtering the animals themselves.
There are currently some 70 billion animals being raised for food around the world [PDF] and livestock alone counts for about 15% of global emissions. Moreover, livestock places huge demands on land, water, and energy. Like vertical farms, cultured or printed meat could be produced with no more land use than a brewery and with far less water and energy.
A More Democratic Economy Goes Bottom Up
This is a very brief introduction to the technologies that can bring “production-at-the-point-of-consumption” of products, energy, and food to cities and regions.
What does this future look like? Here’s a simplified example.
Imagine a universal manufacturing facility with hundreds of 3D printers printing tens of thousands of different products on demand for the local community—rather than assembly lines in China making tens of thousands of the same product that have to be shipped all over the world since no local market can absorb all of the same product.
Nearby, a vertical farm and cultured meat facility produce much of tomorrow night’s dinner. These facilities would be powered by local or regional wind and solar. Depending on need and quality, some infrastructure and machinery, like solar panels and 3D printers, would live in these facilities and some in homes and businesses.
The facilities could be owned by a large global corporation—but still locally produce goods—or they could be franchised or even owned and operated independently by the local population. Upkeep and management at each would provide jobs for communities nearby. Eventually, not only would global trade of parts and products diminish, but even required supplies of raw materials and feed stock would decline since there would be less waste in production, and many materials would be recycled once acquired.

“Peak globalization could be a viable pathway to an economic foundation that puts people first while building a more economically and environmentally sustainable future.”

This model suggests a shift toward a “bottom up” economy that is more democratic, locally controlled, and likely to generate more local jobs.
The global trends in democratization of technology make the vision technologically plausible. Much of this technology already exists and is improving and scaling while exponentially decreasing in cost to become available to almost anyone, anywhere.
This includes not only access to key technologies, but also to education through digital platforms available globally. Online courses are available for free, ranging from advanced physics, math, and engineering to skills training in 3D printing, solar installations, and building vertical farms. Social media platforms can enable local and global collaboration and sharing of knowledge and best practices.
These new communities of producers can be the foundation for new forms of democratic governance as they recognize and “capitalize” on the reality that control of the means of production can translate to political power. More jobs and local control could weaken populist, anti-globalization political forces as people recognize they could benefit from the positive aspects of globalization and international cooperation and connectedness while diminishing the impact of globalization’s downsides.
There are powerful vested interests that stand to lose in such a global structural shift. But this vision builds on trends that are already underway and are gaining momentum. Peak globalization could be a viable pathway to an economic foundation that puts people first while building a more economically and environmentally sustainable future.
This article was originally posted on Open Democracy (CC BY-NC 4.0). The version above was edited with the author for length and includes additions. Read the original article on Open Democracy.
* See Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Part II, pp. 69-154.
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#431238 AI Is Easy to Fool—Why That Needs to ...

Con artistry is one of the world’s oldest and most innovative professions, and it may soon have a new target. Research suggests artificial intelligence may be uniquely susceptible to tricksters, and as its influence in the modern world grows, attacks against it are likely to become more common.
The root of the problem lies in the fact that artificial intelligence algorithms learn about the world in very different ways than people do, and so slight tweaks to the data fed into these algorithms can throw them off completely while remaining imperceptible to humans.
Much of the research into this area has been conducted on image recognition systems, in particular those relying on deep learning neural networks. These systems are trained by showing them thousands of examples of images of a particular object until they can extract common features that allow them to accurately spot the object in new images.
But the features they extract are not necessarily the same high-level features a human would be looking for, like the word STOP on a sign or a tail on a dog. These systems analyze images at the individual pixel level to detect patterns shared between examples. These patterns can be obscure combinations of pixel values, in small pockets or spread across the image, that would be impossible to discern for a human, but highly accurate at predicting a particular object.

“An attacker can trick the object recognition algorithm into seeing something that isn’t there, without these alterations being obvious to a human.”

What this means is that by identifying these patterns and overlaying them over a different image, an attacker can trick the object recognition algorithm into seeing something that isn’t there, without these alterations being obvious to a human. This kind of manipulation is known as an “adversarial attack.”
Early attempts to trick image recognition systems this way required access to the algorithm’s inner workings to decipher these patterns. But in 2016 researchers demonstrated a “black box” attack that enabled them to trick such a system without knowing its inner workings.
By feeding the system doctored images and seeing how it classified them, they were able to work out what it was focusing on and therefore generate images they knew would fool it. Importantly, the doctored images were not obviously different to human eyes.
These approaches were tested by feeding doctored image data directly into the algorithm, but more recently, similar approaches have been applied in the real world. Last year it was shown that printouts of doctored images that were then photographed on a smartphone successfully tricked an image classification system.
Another group showed that wearing specially designed, psychedelically-colored spectacles could trick a facial recognition system into thinking people were celebrities. In August scientists showed that adding stickers to stop signs in particular configurations could cause a neural net designed to spot them to misclassify the signs.
These last two examples highlight some of the potential nefarious applications for this technology. Getting a self-driving car to miss a stop sign could cause an accident, either for insurance fraud or to do someone harm. If facial recognition becomes increasingly popular for biometric security applications, being able to pose as someone else could be very useful to a con artist.
Unsurprisingly, there are already efforts to counteract the threat of adversarial attacks. In particular, it has been shown that deep neural networks can be trained to detect adversarial images. One study from the Bosch Center for AI demonstrated such a detector, an adversarial attack that fools the detector, and a training regime for the detector that nullifies the attack, hinting at the kind of arms race we are likely to see in the future.
While image recognition systems provide an easy-to-visualize demonstration, they’re not the only machine learning systems at risk. The techniques used to perturb pixel data can be applied to other kinds of data too.

“Bypassing cybersecurity defenses is one of the more worrying and probable near-term applications for this approach.”

Chinese researchers showed that adding specific words to a sentence or misspelling a word can completely throw off machine learning systems designed to analyze what a passage of text is about. Another group demonstrated that garbled sounds played over speakers could make a smartphone running the Google Now voice command system visit a particular web address, which could be used to download malware.
This last example points toward one of the more worrying and probable near-term applications for this approach: bypassing cybersecurity defenses. The industry is increasingly using machine learning and data analytics to identify malware and detect intrusions, but these systems are also highly susceptible to trickery.
At this summer’s DEF CON hacking convention, a security firm demonstrated they could bypass anti-malware AI using a similar approach to the earlier black box attack on the image classifier, but super-powered with an AI of their own.
Their system fed malicious code to the antivirus software and then noted the score it was given. It then used genetic algorithms to iteratively tweak the code until it was able to bypass the defenses while maintaining its function.
All the approaches noted so far are focused on tricking pre-trained machine learning systems, but another approach of major concern to the cybersecurity industry is that of “data poisoning.” This is the idea that introducing false data into a machine learning system’s training set will cause it to start misclassifying things.
This could be particularly challenging for things like anti-malware systems that are constantly being updated to take into account new viruses. A related approach bombards systems with data designed to generate false positives so the defenders recalibrate their systems in a way that then allows the attackers to sneak in.
How likely it is that these approaches will be used in the wild will depend on the potential reward and the sophistication of the attackers. Most of the techniques described above require high levels of domain expertise, but it’s becoming ever easier to access training materials and tools for machine learning.
Simpler versions of machine learning have been at the heart of email spam filters for years, and spammers have developed a host of innovative workarounds to circumvent them. As machine learning and AI increasingly embed themselves in our lives, the rewards for learning how to trick them will likely outweigh the costs.
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#431178 Soft Robotics Releases Development Kit ...

Cambridge, MA – Soft Robotics Inc, which has built a fundamentally new class of robotic grippers, announced the release of its expanded and upgraded Soft Robotics Development Kit; SRDK 2.0.

The Soft Robotics Development Kit 2.0 comes complete with:

Robot tool flange mounting plate
4, 5 and 6 position hub plates
Tool Center Point
Soft Robotics Control Unit G2
6 rail mounted, 4 accordion actuator modules
Custom pneumatic manifold
Mounting hardware and accessories

Where the SRDK 1.0 included 5 four accordion actuator modules and the opportunity to create a gripper containing two to five actuators, The SRDK 2.0 contains 6 four accordion actuator modules plus the addition of a six position hub allowing users the ability to configure six actuator test tools. This expands use of the Development Kit to larger product applications, such as: large bagged and pouched items, IV bags, bags of nuts, bread and other food items.

SRDK 2.0 also contains an upgraded Soft Robotics Control Unit (SRCU G2) – the proprietary system that controls all software and hardware with one turnkey pneumatic operation. The upgraded SRCU features new software with a cleaner, user friendly interface and an IP65 rating. Highly intuitive, the software is able to store up to eight grip profiles and allows for very precise adjustments to actuation and vacuum.

Also new with the release of SRDK 2.0, is the introduction of several accessory kits that will allow for an expanded number of configurations and product applications available for testing.

Accessory Kit 1 – For SRDK 1.0 users only – includes the six position hub and 4 accordion actuators now included in SRDK 2.0
Accessory Kit 2 – For SRDK 1.0 or 2.0 users – includes 2 accordion actuators
Accessory Kit 3 – For SRDK 1.0 or 2.0 users – includes 3 accordion actuators

The shorter 2 and 3 accordion actuators provide increased stability for high-speed applications, increased placement precision, higher grip force capabilities and are optimized for gripping small, shallow objects.

Designed to plug and play with any existing robot currently in the market, the Soft Robotics Development Kit 2.0 allows end-users and OEM Integrators the ability to customize, test and validate their ideal Soft Robotics solution, with their own equipment, in their own environment.

Once an ideal solution has been found, the Soft Robotics team will take those exact specifications and build a production-grade tool for implementation into the manufacturing line. And, it doesn’t end there. Created to be fully reusable, the process – configure, test, validate, build, production – can start over again as many times as needed.

See the new SRDK 2.0 on display for the first time at PACK EXPO Las Vegas, September 25 – 27, 2017 in Soft Robotics booth S-5925.

Learn more about the Soft Robotics Development Kit at www.softroboticsinc.com/srdk.
Photo Credit: Soft Robotics – www.softroboticsinc.com
###
About Soft Robotics
Soft Robotics designs and builds soft robotic gripping systems and automation solutions
that can grasp and manipulate items of varying size, shape and weight. Spun out of the
Whitesides Group at Harvard University, Soft Robotics is the only company to be
commercializing this groundbreaking and proprietary technology platform. Today, the
company is a global enterprise solving previously off-limits automation challenges for
customers in food & beverage, advanced manufacturing and ecommerce. Soft Robotics’
engineers are building an ecosystem of robots, control systems, data and machine
learning to enable the workplace of the future. For more information, please visit
www.softroboticsinc.com.

Media contact:
Jennie Kondracki
The Kondracki Group, LLC
262-501-4507
jennie@kondrackigroup.com
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#431175 Servosila introduces Mobile Robots ...

Servosila introduces a new member of the family of Servosila “Engineer” robots, a UGV called “Radio Engineer”. This new variant of the well-known backpack-transportable robot features a Software Defined Radio (SDR) payload module integrated into the robotic vehicle.

“Several of our key customers had asked us to enable an Electronic Warfare (EW) or Cognitive Radio applications in our robots”, – says a spokesman for the company, “By integrating a Software Defined Radio (SDR) module into our robotic platforms we cater to both requirements. Radio spectrum analysis, radio signal detection, jamming, and radio relay are important features for EOD robots such as ours. Servosila continues to serve the customers by pushing the boundaries of what their Servosila robots can do. Our partners in the research world and academia shall also greatly benefit from the new functionality that gives them more means of achieving their research goals.”
Photo Credit: Servosila – www.servosila.com
Coupling a programmable mobile robot with a software-defined radio creates a powerful platform for developing innovative applications that mix mobility and artificial intelligence with modern radio technologies. The new robotic radio applications include localized frequency hopping pattern analysis, OFDM waveform recognition, outdoor signal triangulation, cognitive mesh networking, automatic area search for radio emitters, passive or active mobile robotic radars, mobile base stations, mobile radio scanners, and many others.

A rotating head of the robot with mounts for external antennae acts as a pan-and-tilt device thus enabling various scanning and tracking applications. The neck of the robotic head is equipped with a pair of highly accurate Servosila-made servos with a pointing precision of 3.0 angular minutes. This means that the robot can point its antennae with an unprecedented accuracy.

Researchers and academia can benefit from the platform’s support for GnuRadio, an open source software framework for developing SDR applications. An on-board Intel i7 computer capable of executing OpenCL code, is internally connected to the SDR payload module. This makes it possible to execute most existing GnuRadio applications directly on the robot’s on-board computer. Other sensors of the robot such as a GPS sensor, an IMU or a thermal vision camera contribute into sensor fusion algorithms.

Since Servosila “Engineer” mobile robots are primarily designed for outdoor use, the SDR module is fully enclosed into a hardened body of the robot which provides protection in case of dust, rain, snow or impacts with obstacles while the robot is on the move. The robot and its SDR payload module are both powered by an on-board battery thus making the entire robotic radio platform independent of external power supplies.

Servosila plans to start shipping the SDR-equipped robots to international customers in October, 2017.

Web: https://www.servosila.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/servosila/videos

About the Company
Servosila is a robotics technology company that designs, produces and markets a range of mobile robots, robotic arms, servo drives, harmonic reduction gears, robotic control systems as well as software packages that make the robots intelligent. Servosila provides consulting, training and operations support services to various customers around the world. The company markets its products and services directly or through a network of partners who provide tailored and localized services that meet specific procurement, support or operational needs.
Press Release above is by: Servosila
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