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A Momentary Flow

Rebuilding worldviews one world at a time

Ant studies to aid design of search and rescue robots - A study showing how ants tunnel their way through confined spaces could aid the design of search-and-rescue robots, according to US scientists. A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology found fire ants can use their antennae as “extra limbs” to catch themselves when they fall, and can build stable tunnels in loose sand. Researchers used high speed cameras to record in detail this behaviour. PhD student Nick Gravish, who led the research, designed “scientific grade ant farms” - allowing the ants to dig through sand trapped between two plates of glass, so every tunnel and every movement could be viewed and filmed. “These ants would move at very high speeds,” he explained, “and if you slowed down the motion, (you could see) it wasn’t graceful movement - they have many slips and falls.” Crucially, the insects were able to gather themselves almost imperceptibly quickly after each fall. To see how they managed this, the team set up a second experiment where, to move from their nest to their food source, the ants had to pass through a labyrinth of smooth glass tunnels. “We could watch these glass tunnels and really see what all the body parts were doing when the ants were climbing and slipping and falling,” said Mr Gravish. (via BBC News - Ant studies to aid design of search and rescue robots)

Ant studies to aid design of search and rescue robots

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A study showing how ants tunnel their way through confined spaces could aid the design of search-and-rescue robots, according to US scientists.

A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology found fire ants can use their antennae as “extra limbs” to catch themselves when they fall, and can build stable tunnels in loose sand.

Researchers used high speed cameras to record in detail this behaviour.

PhD student Nick Gravish, who led the research, designed “scientific grade ant farms” - allowing the ants to dig through sand trapped between two plates of glass, so every tunnel and every movement could be viewed and filmed.

“These ants would move at very high speeds,” he explained, “and if you slowed down the motion, (you could see) it wasn’t graceful movement - they have many slips and falls.” Crucially, the insects were able to gather themselves almost imperceptibly quickly after each fall. To see how they managed this, the team set up a second experiment where, to move from their nest to their food source, the ants had to pass through a labyrinth of smooth glass tunnels. “We could watch these glass tunnels and really see what all the body parts were doing when the ants were climbing and slipping and falling,” said Mr Gravish. (via BBC News - Ant studies to aid design of search and rescue robots)

Source BBC

“One truism of robotics is that not all aspects of human ability are being copied equally. However, so long as artificial intelligence is so artificial, maybe our natural intelligence provides us with a special station that robots cannot overcome. Sadly, such reasoning does not really improve the prospect of chronic underemployment. Outstanding research in telepresence promises to enable robots to act with guidance from humans. They can phone home when facing a tough decision, and humans can provide the eyes and brains while a robot wields the brute strength. As we research human-robot control systems, not least of all for robotic war-fighting drones, we learn how to patch a single person’s brains and problem-solving powers into many robots at once. A whole factory of thinking humans could be replaced by unthinking robots so long as they had that drone interface, asking for just-in-time problem-solving help from a human supervisor when needed. Give companies a great human-robot interface and a whole pallet of dumb robots, and you still have an underemployment crisis.”

We Need to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class | MIT Technology Review

Source technologyreview.com

“Then there is a more threatening issue: robots are improving in performance far faster than humans. We are stuck with an evolutionary timetable that is glacial, whereas computer vision is rapidly moving from amoeba to insect. We face a future in which robots will be better than humans in entire job categories—that is simply a matter of time. The Atlantic’s Adam Davidson writes about a uniquely specific example of robo-specialization in “Making It in America.” The question is, as this frontier collides with the reality of massive employment numbers in particular categories, do we justify machine replacement and presume to conduct a great deal of retraining? The frontier is ever-moving, and the retraining will be never-ending. This is an even harder question of identity for our civilization: is chronic underemployment a fact that cannot be changed because robots will be demonstrably better than we are, or do we have a responsibility to influence the advance of automation for the sake of some greater good?”

We Need to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class | MIT Technology Review

Source technologyreview.com

What’s going to happen is massive income transfers to flesh and blood human beings. These income transfers will come to be seen as a right-of-birth. This will make complete social sense once you realize that most of the beings on earth will be robots and therefore not-of-birth. Birth is something that happens to a minority of beings who are special, flesh and blood humans. The concern, as I see it, is over accepting the dual truth that robots will in all likelihood be sentient beings with an inner life just as ourselves, and they will live in grinding inescapable poverty. (via The robot threat: In the long run, we are telepathic androids | The Economist)

What’s going to happen is massive income transfers to flesh and blood human beings. These income transfers will come to be seen as a right-of-birth.

This will make complete social sense once you realize that most of the beings on earth will be robots and therefore not-of-birth.

Birth is something that happens to a minority of beings who are special, flesh and blood humans.

The concern, as I see it, is over accepting the dual truth that robots will in all likelihood be sentient beings with an inner life just as ourselves, and they will live in grinding inescapable poverty. (via The robot threat: In the long run, we are telepathic androids | The Economist)

Source economist.com

Kevin Drum on why the robots will rise up and take all our jobs - We’ve had technologies that save labor and increase productivity for years. What makes artificial intelligence different? Kevin Drum: The difference is that, in the Industrial Revolution, we got big productivity increases from steam engines but there were still people required to run those machines. We had a huge increase in the amount of stuff you could make, but you needed people to design the machines, and make the machines, and use the machines. With the digital revolution, the difference is that smart machines provide both power and intelligence. You don’t need human beings for anything anymore. You don’t need them for power, or for the intelligence to use the power. It puts everyone out of work eventually. Because smart machines will become as smart as human beings, there simply is not a job that a machine can’t do on its own. (via Kevin Drum on why the robots will rise up and take all our jobs)

Kevin Drum on why the robots will rise up and take all our jobs

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We’ve had technologies that save labor and increase productivity for years. What makes artificial intelligence different?

Kevin Drum: The difference is that, in the Industrial Revolution, we got big productivity increases from steam engines but there were still people required to run those machines. We had a huge increase in the amount of stuff you could make, but you needed people to design the machines, and make the machines, and use the machines.

With the digital revolution, the difference is that smart machines provide both power and intelligence. You don’t need human beings for anything anymore. You don’t need them for power, or for the intelligence to use the power. It puts everyone out of work eventually. Because smart machines will become as smart as human beings, there simply is not a job that a machine can’t do on its own. (via Kevin Drum on why the robots will rise up and take all our jobs)

Source Washington Post

NAO Robot Has Learned To Write - Maybe you’ve dreamt of being that man or woman who is so important as to compose speeches and letters simply by barking out declamations whilst an attentive assistant jots down your brilliant every word. Robot developer Franck Calzada has brought us one step closer. He’s created an assistant scribe for the common man in his new program in which a NAO robot can write any word. At the moment, however, you’re going to need a lot of time – and patience – if you enlist NAO’s services. To say it’s deliberate in its writing is quite the understatement. Calzada has himself spent a lot of time with NAO, teaching it to play games like catch, Hangman and the Statue Game. Now, with his ability to write any word it hears, NAO can actually get some work done. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nao write. And while it will definitely be some time before it begins replacing office workers, its penmanship has certainly improved. (via NAO Robot Has Learned To Write | Singularity Hub)

NAO Robot Has Learned To Write

-

Maybe you’ve dreamt of being that man or woman who is so important as to compose speeches and letters simply by barking out declamations whilst an attentive assistant jots down your brilliant every word. Robot developer Franck Calzada has brought us one step closer. He’s created an assistant scribe for the common man in his new program in which a NAO robot can write any word.

At the moment, however, you’re going to need a lot of time – and patience – if you enlist NAO’s services. To say it’s deliberate in its writing is quite the understatement.

Calzada has himself spent a lot of time with NAO, teaching it to play games like catch, Hangman and the Statue Game. Now, with his ability to write any word it hears, NAO can actually get some work done. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nao write. And while it will definitely be some time before it begins replacing office workers, its penmanship has certainly improved. (via NAO Robot Has Learned To Write | Singularity Hub)

Source singularityhub.com

‘Touchy’ robot arm reaches past clutter

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Thanks to a robot with a flexible arm covered with tactile sensors, a man with quadriplegia was able to pull a blanket over himself and grab a cloth to wipe his face. Whether reaching for a book out of a cluttered cabinet or pruning a bush in the backyard, people’s arms frequently makes contact with objects during everyday tasks. Animals do it too, when foraging for food, for example. (via Futurity.org – ‘Touchy’ robot arm reaches past clutter)

Source futurity.org

emergentfutures: Researchers Expect To See A $6.5 Billion Market For Home Robotics By 2017 According to ABI Research’s Consumer Electronics Research Service, the consumer robotics market is currently at about $1.6 billion and growing. A slow economy and fairly expensive parts has stagnated things for the time being but improved devices and more interesting implementations – home helper robots, for example – could push the market up considerably   Full Story: CrunchBot

emergentfutures:

Researchers Expect To See A $6.5 Billion Market For Home Robotics By 2017

According to ABI Research’s Consumer Electronics Research Service, the consumer robotics market is currently at about $1.6 billion and growing. A slow economy and fairly expensive parts has stagnated things for the time being but improved devices and more interesting implementations – home helper robots, for example – could push the market up considerably

 

Full Story: CrunchBot

Reblogged from Emergent Futures Tumblelog

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With robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material and part digital. The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking, talking androids that are indistinguishable from people. Future robots will have superhuman abilities in both the physical and digital realms. They will be embedded in our physical spaces, with the ability to go where we cannot, and will have minds of their own, thanks to atificial intelligence. They will be fully connected to the digital world, far better at carrying out online tasks than we are. In Robot Futures, the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhsh considers how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as it incorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings.

Nourbakhsh imagines a future that includes adbots offering interactive custom messaging; robotic flying toys that operate by means of “gaze tracking”; robot-enabled multimodal, multicontinental telepresence; and even a way that nanorobots could allow us to assume different physical forms. Nourbakhsh follows each glimpse into the robotic future with an examination of the underlying technology and an exploration of the social consequences of the scenario.

Each chapter describes a form of technological empowerment—in some cases, empowerment run amok, with corporations and institutions amassing even more power and influence and individuals becoming unconstrained by social accountability. (Imagine the hotheaded discourse of the Internet taking physical form.) Nourbakhsh also offers a counter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps us understand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.

”

Robot Futures | The MIT Press

Source mitpress.mit.edu

Student Alejadro Bordallo demonstrates a competitive game of rock-paper-scissors with a robot in this photo. It’s all for the National Museum of Scotland’s Edinburgh International Science Festival, which runs through April 7. This little ‘bot was programmed to strategize using artificial intelligence and it looks as though it triumphed over its human adversary in the round pictured above. (via Image of the Day: | DVICE)

Student Alejadro Bordallo demonstrates a competitive game of rock-paper-scissors with a robot in this photo. It’s all for the National Museum of Scotland’s Edinburgh International Science Festival, which runs through April 7. This little ‘bot was programmed to strategize using artificial intelligence and it looks as though it triumphed over its human adversary in the round pictured above. (via Image of the Day: | DVICE)

Source dvice.com