AI Technology & Industry Review
In the late 2000s Fortune Global 500 healthcare companies ramped up AI deployment in the industry, from in-hospital diagnosis and treatment to drug supply chain and out-of-hospital scenarios.
Respected AI pioneer and visionary Nils John Nilsson passed away early this morning at age 86.
In a YouTube video released today, Spot looks a lot more like a workhorse, harnessed up and hauling a box truck up a hill.
After eight-months of development efforts, the “Open AI Five” exacted their revenge today against one of the world’s top teams in a highly anticipated best-of-three 5v5 Dota 2 showdown in San Francisco.
Robots pitching politics, charities, sales, surveys, and scams of every stripe and in every tongue. Increasingly that’s the voice on the other end of a global citizen’s next incoming telephone call.
Synced Global AI Weekly March 3rd
Every year as the calendar turns from February to March, the world’s leading electronics and telecommunications companies, startups, inventors, and a herd of tech journalists and analysts head to the Mobile World Congress.
Having notched impressive victories over human professionals in Go, Atari Games, and most recently StarCraft 2 — Google’s DeepMind team has now turned its formidable research efforts to soccer. In a paper released last week, the UK AI company demonstrates a novel machine learning method that trains a team of AI agents to play a simulated version of “the beautiful game.”
There’s a lot more to a friendly game of Jenga than meets the eye. Strategies are informed by a complex set of tactile and visual stimuli — by touching a block and observing the tower, we not only see but also feel our actions and their consequences. The MIT Jenga robot thus marks an important step in AI’s transition to the physical world.
Every January, thousands of companies head to Las Vegas to launch new products at CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the world’sContinue Reading
In the past two weeks, news related to the field of human-computer interaction and voice interaction has been focused on technology giants Amazon and Google. Amazon upgraded its Fire TV Cube and the Amazon Music system, which enhances the diversity of voice interactions.
Last December Synced compiled its first “Artificial Intelligence Failures” recap of AI gaffes from the previous year. AI has achieved remarkable progress, and many scientists dream of creating the Master Algorithm proposed by Pedro Domingos — which can solve all problems envisioned by humans.
Sorting a bunch of differently coloured toy trucks and action figures seems like child’s play, right? Unfortunately this remains a challenging task in the world of machine learning. So why not have humans simply show the machines how to do it?
The robotics star company Boston Dynamics today posted a Youtube video of its humanoid robot Atlas doing parkour. It was a wow moment when Atlas smoothly jumps over the log and leaps up steps (40 cm step height) without breaking its pace.
UC Berkeley researchers have published a paper demonstrating how Deep Reinforcement Learning can be used to control dexterous robot hands for complicated tasks. Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations proposes a low-cost and high-efficiency control method that uses demonstration and simulation techniques to accelerate the learning process.
Google Brain Research Scientist Ian Goodfellow has tweeted an alarm about IoT hacking of a particularly nightmarish type, after Brown University security researchers were able to remotely access and control a robot in a university research lab. The research also showed that many robotic labs worldwide may be vulnerable to such a takeover technique.
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) had lured Cheng from a Japanese research institute. At TUM he founded the Institute of Cognitive Systems (ICS). With eight employees in a central office on Karlstraße 45, Cheng set to work on his arduous task: recreating the complexities of human skin and wiring it all to a brain.
At the Big Data & Spatial Information Expo in Changsha city today, Chinese Internet giant JD demonstrated a series of intelligent technology applications, including Drones, Delivery Robots and Routing Inspection Robots, etc. The company also unveiled a new set of HD Maps.
On July 10th, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang looking on, Siemens AG signed a partnership agreement with Alibaba Cloud — the cloud-computing arm of Internet conglomerate Alibaba — to bring an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) upgrade to China’s manufacturing industry.
Shanghai-based computer vision company Yitu announced today that it has acquired an additional US$100 million in funding, with China Industrial Asset Management as the sole investor this round.
At the recent IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Brisbane, Australia, the Best Student Paper award went to ETH Zurich Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL)’s Miguel de la Iglesia Valls et al. for Design of an Autonomous Racecar: Perception, State Estimation and System Integration.
In a new video posted by IEEE Spectrum, a 7.38-kilogram red robot composed of 12 interlinking modules swiggles through a 60 cm gap before rising and floating in mid-air like the mythical Dragon it is named after.
Founded in 2014, ROOBO received US$100 million in Series A financing from iFlytek, and in September 2017 announced B Round financing of US$53 million led by Seven Seas Capital.
We tend to notice the AI that’s in our smartphones, powering our home assistants or piloting self-driving cars. But there is another tech revolution going on — out of sight for most of us — wherein AI and robotics are reinventing entire factories and industrial processes.
Suzhou-based Ecovacs Robotics debuted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange today. The floor sweeping and window cleaning robot company issued 40.1 million shares at US $3.13 per share, and plans to use the funds raised via its IPO to produce four million home service robots, build an IoT ecosystem, and expand into the global market.
AI startup Orbbec (奥比中光) today closed an over US$200 million Series D funding round led by Ant Finance. Other investors include Saif Partners, Green Pine Capital, Telstra Ventures, and Renzhi Capital.
Eager to kickstart its AI industry, the nation of 52 million yesterday released an ambitious national plan to invest ₩2.2 trillion (US$2 billion) by 2020 to strengthen its AI R&D capability.
Founded in 2009, SlamTech is a Shanghai-based laser sensor manufacturer whose main products include the low-cost 360-degree laser scanning ranging radar RPLiDAR, the laser-based modular autonomous positioning navigation solution SLAMWARE, and the ZEUS robot service platform for business.
Chinese AI and humanoid robotic company UBTECH Robotics today announced a staggering US$820 million in Series C funding. With its new estimated value of US$5 billion, Shenzhen City-based UBTECH becomes the world’s most valuable AI startup.
The robotics community is abuzz with speculation following reports that Amazon’s R&D arm Lab126 is hiring senior researchers for a home robot-producing project codenamed “Vesta.”
Trashbot uses cameras and sensors to scan discarded items. A machine learning algorithm based on Bayesian classifier sorts the trash for either landfill or recycle. If you dump an unfinished can of Coke, excess liquid will be drained off on a Teflon-coated sheet.
Online education platform Udacity thrilled flying car enthusiasts with its announcement of the world’s first flying car program.
The anticipated 2020 deployment of 5G networks will effect a tenfold speed increase compared to 4G LTE, creating an environment favourable for the mass integration of various robots into an AI-powered cloud. Beijing-based CloudMinds wants to create such a cloud.
Engineers have long struggled to teach robots how to perform actions that appear simple by human standards. Former OpenAI research scientist Peter Chen believes the solution is transforming such robots into teachable apprentices.
At last week’s Collaborative Robotics and Advanced Vision Conference in San Jose, John Petry from Cognex stressed the need for robotic technology companies to provide maintainable deep learning-based solutions for their manufacturing customers.
RACECAR is a Powerful Platform for Robotics Research and Teaching. It is one of the greatest university courses in this field.
Some experts from different fields stated their concerns that with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in the next few decades, intelligent robots would take over the human world and extinguish the entire human culture.
This paper proposes a learning algorithm to speed up search in Task and Motion Planning problems (TAMP), and to solve three challenges in order to improve planning efficiency.
Recently, at an IEEE Conference, MIT researchers proposed a new control method which provides easier and more stable feedback that does not necessarily require existing limbs to control the artificial limbs.
We explore top-notch Swiss AI facilities: starting with deep learning and neural network research at IDSIA in Lugano, to interdisciplinary research at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and University of Basel, and ending with robotics innovations at ETH in Zurich and University of Zurich.