Futuristic, SciFi, Cyberpunk, Future Tech ~ images, art, videos, info....
- Thread starter Lexx Diamond
- Start date
Walking robot takes first steps into the market
Ben Coxworth
February 9th, 2017
Some day in the not-too-distant future, an autonomous delivery van may pull up in front of your house. A bipedal robot will then step out, and carry a package to your front door. That scenario is envisioned by Jonathan Hurst, an associate professor of robotics at Oregon State University, and chief technology officer of spin-off company Agility Robotics. To that end, his group has developed an ostrich-like two-legged walking robot … and it's called Cassie.
First of all, Cassie isn't intended to make deliveries in its present form. It's intended more as a developmental platform, to be utilized by other robotics companies and research institutes. In other words, a Cassie-derived robot may eventually come strolling up your front walk.
The team used a previous Oregon State-designed bipedal robot, ATRIAS, as its jumping-off point when designing Cassie. "ATRIAS had motors that would work against either other, which was inefficient," notes Hurst. "With Cassie, we've fixed this problem and added steering, feet, and a sealed system, so it will work outdoors in the rain and snow as we continue with our controller testing."
Additionally, Cassie weighs about half as much as its predecessor. And no, it's not specifically intended to look like an ostrich – although the group did make a point of studying bird legs as a means of achieving agility, efficiency and robustness.
Plans currently call for initial production to take place at Agility's facilities in Albany, Oregon. Other legged robots may follow, once Cassie production ramps up.
"We want to be able to design and build machines that can go anywhere that a human can go, and run on about the same amount of energy," says Hurst.
Cassie can be seen in action, in the video below.
Sources: Oregon State University, Agility Robotics
Ben Coxworth
February 9th, 2017
Some day in the not-too-distant future, an autonomous delivery van may pull up in front of your house. A bipedal robot will then step out, and carry a package to your front door. That scenario is envisioned by Jonathan Hurst, an associate professor of robotics at Oregon State University, and chief technology officer of spin-off company Agility Robotics. To that end, his group has developed an ostrich-like two-legged walking robot … and it's called Cassie.
First of all, Cassie isn't intended to make deliveries in its present form. It's intended more as a developmental platform, to be utilized by other robotics companies and research institutes. In other words, a Cassie-derived robot may eventually come strolling up your front walk.
The team used a previous Oregon State-designed bipedal robot, ATRIAS, as its jumping-off point when designing Cassie. "ATRIAS had motors that would work against either other, which was inefficient," notes Hurst. "With Cassie, we've fixed this problem and added steering, feet, and a sealed system, so it will work outdoors in the rain and snow as we continue with our controller testing."
Additionally, Cassie weighs about half as much as its predecessor. And no, it's not specifically intended to look like an ostrich – although the group did make a point of studying bird legs as a means of achieving agility, efficiency and robustness.
Plans currently call for initial production to take place at Agility's facilities in Albany, Oregon. Other legged robots may follow, once Cassie production ramps up.
"We want to be able to design and build machines that can go anywhere that a human can go, and run on about the same amount of energy," says Hurst.
Cassie can be seen in action, in the video below.
Sources: Oregon State University, Agility Robotics
All pictures is by Syd Mead,probably the greatest Neo-Futurist concept artist of all time.
It's crazy,how folks have this stereotype that black people don't like sci-fi and fantasy stuff...
I'll do a fantasy thread,if people are interested in it....
Cool.
The genre of African American science fiction is really scarce too, if anyone is writing...
The genre of African American science fiction is really scarce too, if anyone is writing...
Google can now recognize objects in videos using machine learning
A ‘whoa’ moment for artificial intelligence
by Dieter Bohn@backlon Mar 8, 2017, 2:21pm EST SHARE
Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google Cloud, came on stage at Google’s Next Cloud conference today to talk about the current and next-generation applications of AI that Google’s working on. These technologies will make a difference in self-driving cars and healthcare, sure, but also Snapchat’s filters and Google Photos’ search capabilities. But the big highlight came when she announced a new way to allow software to parse video.
This new “Video Intelligence API” was demoed onstage, and it offered the kind of “whoa” moment you expect from a Google keynote. By playing a short commercial, the API was able to identify the dachshund in the video, when it appeared in the video, and then understand that the whole thing was a commercial. In another demo, we saw a simple search for “beach” and was able to find videos which had scenes from beaches in them, complete with timestamps. That’s similar to how Google Photos lets you search for “sunset” and pull up your best late-day snapshots.
Before now, computers couldn’t really understand the content of a video directly without manual tagging. “We are beginning to shine light on the dark matter of the digital universe,” Li said. At least in Google’s demo, it was genuinely impressive. And Google is making the API available to developers, just as it has with its other machine learning APIs.
The demo came near the end of a long keynote about Google’s attempt to convince everybody that it’s a serious player in the cloud services game. To signal its investment in this business, Google brought out the big guns: SVP of Google Cloud Diane Greene spoke, of course, alongside CEO Sundar Pichai and Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
“WE’RE BEGINNING TO SHINE LIGHT ON THE DARK MATTER OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE.”
The Wall Street Journal notes, Google is significantly behind those two competitors, even though its technology is competitive. Basically, the companies Google needs to woo are all already engaged in longstanding partnerships with another cloud provider. As Dave Bartoletti, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told the Journal: “They’re not invited to the party enough.”
But if Google can find practical applications for whiz-bang features like the Video API demo it showed today, it might find itself allowed into the next soirée.
A ‘whoa’ moment for artificial intelligence
by Dieter Bohn@backlon Mar 8, 2017, 2:21pm EST SHARE
Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google Cloud, came on stage at Google’s Next Cloud conference today to talk about the current and next-generation applications of AI that Google’s working on. These technologies will make a difference in self-driving cars and healthcare, sure, but also Snapchat’s filters and Google Photos’ search capabilities. But the big highlight came when she announced a new way to allow software to parse video.
This new “Video Intelligence API” was demoed onstage, and it offered the kind of “whoa” moment you expect from a Google keynote. By playing a short commercial, the API was able to identify the dachshund in the video, when it appeared in the video, and then understand that the whole thing was a commercial. In another demo, we saw a simple search for “beach” and was able to find videos which had scenes from beaches in them, complete with timestamps. That’s similar to how Google Photos lets you search for “sunset” and pull up your best late-day snapshots.
Before now, computers couldn’t really understand the content of a video directly without manual tagging. “We are beginning to shine light on the dark matter of the digital universe,” Li said. At least in Google’s demo, it was genuinely impressive. And Google is making the API available to developers, just as it has with its other machine learning APIs.
The demo came near the end of a long keynote about Google’s attempt to convince everybody that it’s a serious player in the cloud services game. To signal its investment in this business, Google brought out the big guns: SVP of Google Cloud Diane Greene spoke, of course, alongside CEO Sundar Pichai and Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
“WE’RE BEGINNING TO SHINE LIGHT ON THE DARK MATTER OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE.”
The Wall Street Journal notes, Google is significantly behind those two competitors, even though its technology is competitive. Basically, the companies Google needs to woo are all already engaged in longstanding partnerships with another cloud provider. As Dave Bartoletti, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told the Journal: “They’re not invited to the party enough.”
But if Google can find practical applications for whiz-bang features like the Video API demo it showed today, it might find itself allowed into the next soirée.
