Tag Archives: hybrid

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

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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#428575 Meet BALLU, UCLA’s Humanoid Blimp ...

A hybrid between a blimp and a humanoid robot can do amazing things Continue reading

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#428133 H-Ros – Hardware Robot Operating ...

As ROS – Robot Operating System is being used by more and more robots, a new form of building robots that uses ROS is coming into play, which is called H-Ros, Hardware Robot Operating System. This is currently supported by several companies that adopt its standard interfaces. Each piece runs ROS 2.0 on its own has its own ROS nodes and topics. Building robots is about putting together different H-ROS components that can come from different manufacturers but still interoperate thanks to the standard hardware interfaces defined within H-ROS. The blocks that make up the system fall into 5 categories, which are, sensing, actuation, communication, cognition and hybrid components. Below is the press release provied to us by Erle Robotics, which is one of the several firms that are currently working on this.
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Erle Robotics announced a new platform that provides manufacturers tools for building interoperable robot components that can easily be exchanged between robots
Photo Credit: https://www.h-ros.com/, www.erlerobotics.com

Erle Robotics announced during ROSCon 2016 in Seoul, Korea, a new game-changing standard for building robot components, H-ROS: the Hardware Robot Operating System. H-ROS provides manufacturers tools for building interoperable robot components that can easily be exchanged or replaced between robots.

Powered by the popular Robot Operating System (ROS), H-ROS offers building-block-style parts that come as reusable and reconfigurable components allowing developers, to easily upgrade their robots with hardware from different manufacturers and add new features in seconds.

With H-ROS, building robots will be about placing H-ROS-compatible hardware components together to build new robot configurations. Constructing robots won’t be restricted to a few with high technical skills but it will be extended to a great majority with a general understanding of the sensing and actuation needed in a particular scenario.

H-ROS was initially funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the Robotics Fast Track program in 2016 and developed by Erle Robotics. The platform has already been tested by several international manufacturers who have built robots out of this technology. This is the case of H-ROS Turtlebot, which was presented during the conference in Seoul.

H-ROS is now available for selected industry partners and will soon be released for the wider robotics community. Additional information can be requested through its official web page at https://h-ros.com/.
Photo Credit: https://www.h-ros.com/, www.erlerobotics.comPhoto Credit: https://www.h-ros.com/, www.erlerobotics.comPhoto Credit: https://www.h-ros.com/, www.erlerobotics.comPhoto Credit: https://www.h-ros.com/, www.erlerobotics.com
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