Tag Archives: human

#431015 Finish Him! MegaBots’ Giant Robot Duel ...

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Android

It began two years ago when MegaBots co-founders Matt Oehrlein and Gui Cavalcanti donned American flags as capes and challenged Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a giant robot duel in a YouTube video that immediately went viral.
The battle proposed: MegaBots’ 15-foot tall, 1,200-pound MK2 robot vs. Suidobashi’s 9,000-pound robot, KURATAS. Oehrlein and Cavalcanti first discovered the KURATAS robot in a listing on Amazon with a million-dollar price tag.
In an equally flamboyant response video, Suidobashi CEO and founder Kogoro Kurata accepted the challenge. (Yes, he named his robot after himself.) Both parties planned to take a year to prepare their robots for combat.
In the end, it took twice the amount of time. Nonetheless, the battle is going down this September in an undisclosed location in Japan.
Oehrlein shared more about the much-anticipated showdown during our interview at Singularity University’s Global Summit.

Two years since the initial video, MegaBots has now completed the combat-capable MK3 robot, named Eagle Prime. This new 12-ton, 16-foot-tall robot is powered by a 430-horsepower Corvette engine and requires two human pilots.
It’s also the robot they recently shipped to Japan to take on KURATAS.

Building Eagle Prime has been no small feat. With arms and legs that each weigh as much as a car, assembling the robot takes forklifts, cranes, and a lot of caution. Fortress One, MegaBots’ headquarters in Hayward, California is where the magic happens.
In terms of “weaponry,” Eagle Prime features a giant pneumatic cannon that shoots huge paint cannonballs. Oehrlein warns, “They can shatter all the windows in a car. It’s very powerful.” A logging grapple, which looks like a giant claw and exerts 3,000 pounds of steel-crushing force, has also been added to the robot.
“It’s a combination of range combat, using the paint balls to maybe blind cameras on the other robot or take out sensitive electronics, and then closing in with the claw and trying to disable their systems at close range,” Oehrlein explains.
Safety systems include a cockpit roll cage for the two pilots, five-point safety seatbelt harnesses, neck restraints, helmets, and flame retardant suits.
Co-founder, Matt Oehrlein, inside the cockpit of MegaBots’ Eagle Prime giant robot.
Oehrlein and Cavalcanti have also spent considerable time inside Eagle Prime practicing battlefield tactics and maneuvering the robot through obstacle courses.
Suidobashi’s robot is a bit shorter and lighter, but also a little faster, so the battle dynamics should be interesting.
You may be thinking, “Why giant dueling robots?”
MegaBots’ grand vision is a full-blown international sports league of giant fighting robots on the scale of Formula One racing. Picture a nostalgic evening sipping a beer (or three) and watching Pacific Rim- and Power Rangers-inspired robots battle—only in real life.
Eagle Prime is, in good humor, a proudly patriotic robot.
“Japan is known as a robotic powerhouse,” says Oehrlein, “I think there’s something interesting about the slightly overconfident American trying to get a foothold in the robotics space and doing it by building a bigger, louder, heavier robot, in true American fashion.”
For safety reasons, no fans will be admitted during the time of the fight. The battle will be posted after the fact on MegaBots’ YouTube channel and Facebook page.
We’ll soon find out whether this becomes another American underdog story.
In the meantime, I give my loyalty to MegaBots, and in the words of Mortal Kombat, say, “Finish him!”

via GIPHY
Image Credit: MegaBots Continue reading →

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#431001 Elon Musk’s Neuralink Gets $27 ...

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Android

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO believes the only way to keep pace with artificial intelligence is to upgrade human intelligence. Continue reading →

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#430955 This Inspiring Teenager Wants to Save ...

Posted on August 26, 2017 by Android

It’s not every day you meet a high school student who’s been building functional robots since age 10. Then again, Mihir Garimella is definitely not your average teenager.
When I sat down to interview him recently at Singularity University’s Global Summit, that much was clear.
Mihir’s curiosity for robotics began at age two when his parents brought home a pet dog—well, a robotic dog. A few years passed with this robotic companion by his side, and Mihir became fascinated with how software and hardware could bring inanimate objects to “life.”
When he was 10, Mihir built a robotic violin tuner called Robo-Mozart to help him address a teacher’s complaints about his always-out-of-tune violin. The robot analyzes the sound of the violin, determines which strings are out of tune, and then uses motors to turn the tuning pegs.
Robo-Mozart and other earlier projects helped Mihir realize he could use robotics to solve real problems. Fast-forward to age 14 and Flybot, a tiny, low-cost emergency response drone that won Mihir top honors in his age category at the 2015 Google Science Fair.

The small drone is propelled by four rotors and is designed to mimic how fruit flies can speedily see and react to surrounding threats. It’s a design idea that hit Mihir when he and his family returned home after a long vacation to discover they had left bananas on their kitchen counter. The house was filled with fruit flies.
After many failed attempts to swat the flies, Mihir started wondering how these tiny creatures with small brains and horrible vision were such masterful escape artists. He began digging through research papers on fruit flies and came to an interesting conclusion.
Since fruit flies can’t see a lot of detail, they compensate by processing visual information very fast—ten times faster than people do.
“That’s what enables them to escape so effectively,” says Mihir.
Escaping a threat for a fruit fly could mean quickly avoiding a fatal swat from a human hand. Applied to a search-and-response drone, the scenario shifts—picture a drone instantaneously detecting and avoiding a falling ceiling while searching for survivors inside a collapsing building.

Now, at 17, Mihir is still pushing Flybot forward. He’s developing software to enable the drone to operate autonomously and hopes it will be able to navigate environments such as a burning building, or a structure that’s been hit by an earthquake. The drone is also equipped with intelligent sensors to collect spatial data it will use to maneuver around obstacles and detect things like a trapped person or the location of a gas leak.
For everyone concerned about robots eating jobs, Flybot is a perfect example of how technology can aid existing jobs.
Flybot could substitute for a first responder entering a dangerous situation or help a firefighter make a quicker rescue by showing where victims are trapped. With its small and fast design, the drone could also presumably carry out an initial search-and-rescue sweep in just a few minutes.
Mihir is committed to commercializing the product and keeping it within a $250–$500 price range, which is a fraction of the cost of many current emergency response drones. He hopes the low cost will allow the technology to be used in developing countries.
Next month, Mihir starts his freshman year at Stanford, where he plans to keep up his research and create a company to continue work on the drone.
When I asked Mihir what fuels him, he said, “Curiosity is a great skill for inventors. It lets you find inspiration in a lot of places that you may not look. If I had started by trying to build an escape algorithm for these drones, I wouldn’t know where to start. But looking at fruit flies and getting inspired by them, it gave me a really good place to look for inspiration.”
It’s a bit mind boggling how much Mihir has accomplished by age 17, but I suspect he’s just getting started.
Image Credit: Google Science Fair via YouTube Continue reading →

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#430913 Artificial Intelligence | Future of ...

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Android

In the latest installment of Singularity University’s web series, Future of Everything With Jason Silva, Silva takes a look at artificial intelligence. “AI is perhaps the granddaddy of all exponential technologies. Surely to transform the world and the human race in ways that we can barely wrap our heads around,” Silva says. Forms of creativity will be unleashed that we can not even imagine, and we’re going to transcend what it means to be human.
Image Credit: Stock Media provided by agsandrew / Pond5 Continue reading →

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#430874 12 Companies That Are Making the World a ...

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Android

The Singularity University Global Summit in San Francisco this week brought brilliant minds together from all over the world to share a passion for using science and technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.
Solving these challenges means ensuring basic needs are met for all people. It means improving quality of life and mitigating future risks both to people and the planet.
To recognize organizations doing outstanding work in these fields, SU holds the Global Grand Challenge Awards. Three participating organizations are selected in each of 12 different tracks and featured at the summit’s EXPO. The ones found to have the most potential to positively impact one billion people are selected as the track winners.
Here’s a list of the companies recognized this year, along with some details about the great work they’re doing.
Global Grand Challenge Awards winners at Singularity University’s Global Summit in San Francisco.
Disaster Resilience
LuminAID makes portable lanterns that can provide 24 hours of light on 10 hours of solar charging. The lanterns came from a project to assist post-earthquake relief efforts in Haiti, when the product’s creators considered the dangerous conditions at night in the tent cities and realized light was a critical need. The lights have been used in more than 100 countries and after disasters, including Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan, and the earthquakes in Nepal.

Environment
BreezoMeter uses big data and machine learning to deliver accurate air quality information in real time. Users can see pollution details as localized as a single city block, and data is impacted by real-time traffic. Forecasting is also available, with air pollution information available up to four days ahead of time, or several years in the past.
Food
Aspire Food Group believes insects are the protein of the future, and that technology has the power to bring the tradition of eating insects that exists in many countries and cultures to the rest of the world. The company uses technologies like robotics and automated data collection to farm insects that have the protein quality of meat and the environmental footprint of plants.
Energy
Rafiki Power acts as a rural utility company, building decentralized energy solutions in regions that lack basic services like running water and electricity. The company’s renewable hybrid systems are packed and standardized in recycled 20-foot shipping containers, and they’re currently powering over 700 household and business clients in rural Tanzania.

Governance
MakeSense is an international community that brings together people in 128 cities across the world to help social entrepreneurs solve challenges in areas like education, health, food, and environment. Social entrepreneurs post their projects and submit challenges to the community, then participants organize workshops to mobilize and generate innovative solutions to help the projects grow.
Health
Unima developed a fast and low-cost diagnostic and disease surveillance tool for infectious diseases. The tool allows health professionals to diagnose diseases at the point of care, in less than 15 minutes, without the use of any lab equipment. A drop of the patient’s blood is put on a diagnostic paper, where the antibody generates a visual reaction when in contact with the biomarkers in the sample. The result is evaluated by taking a photo with an app in a smartphone, which uses image processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Prosperity
Egalite helps people with disabilities enter the labor market, and helps companies develop best practices for inclusion of the disabled. Egalite’s founders are passionate about the potential of people with disabilities and the return companies get when they invest in that potential.
Learning
Iris.AI is an artificial intelligence system that reads scientific paper abstracts and extracts key concepts for users, presenting concepts visually and allowing users to navigate a topic across disciplines. Since its launch, Iris.AI has read 30 million research paper abstracts and more than 2,000 TED talks. The AI uses a neural net and deep learning technology to continuously improve its output.
Security
Hala Systems, Inc. is a social enterprise focused on developing technology-driven solutions to the world’s toughest humanitarian challenges. Hala is currently focused on civilian protection, accountability, and the prevention of violent extremism before, during, and after conflict. Ultimately, Hala aims to transform the nature of civilian defense during warfare, as well as to reduce casualties and trauma during post-conflict recovery, natural disasters, and other major crises.
Shelter
Billion Bricks designs and provides shelter and infrastructure solutions for the homeless. The company’s housing solutions are scalable, sustainable, and able to create opportunities for communities to emerge from poverty. Their approach empowers communities to replicate the solutions on their own, reducing dependency on support and creating ownership and pride.

Space
Tellus Labs uses satellite data to tackle challenges like food security, water scarcity, and sustainable urban and industrial systems, and drive meaningful change. The company built a planetary-scale model of all 170 million acres of US corn and soy crops to more accurately forecast yields and help stabilize the market fluctuations that accompany the USDA’s monthly forecasts.
Water
Loowatt designed a toilet that uses a patented sealing technology to contain human waste within biodegradable film. The toilet is designed for linking to anaerobic digestion technology to provide a source of biogas for cooking, electricity, and other applications, creating the opportunity to offset capital costs with energy production.
Image Credit: LuminAID via YouTube Continue reading →

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