MWC 2019: Spotlight on AI & Robotics Innovations
Synced Global AI Weekly March 3rd
Tag: robotics
Spotlight on AI & Robotics Innovations at MWC 2019
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.
After Mastering Go and StarCraft, DeepMind Takes on Soccer
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.”
AI Gaming Gets Physical: MIT Robot Plays Jenga!
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.
The Weird & the Wacky at CES 2019
Every January, thousands of companies head to Las Vegas to launch new products at CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the world’sContinue Reading
AI Biweekly: Smarter Responses from Amazon and Google; Innovations in Robotics
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.
2018 in Review: 10 AI Failures
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.
Fei-Fei Li’s Stanford Team Is Crowdsourcing Robot Training
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?
Watch This Boston Dynamics Robot Performs Incredible Parkour
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.
Get a Grip! Berkeley Targets Dexterous Manipulation Using Deep RL
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.
Brown University Paper Shows Research Robot Vulnerability
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.
Remaking Human Skin: Neurobotics at Gordon Cheng’s ICS Lab in Germany
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.
JD Unveils HD Maps for Robotics and Autonomous Driving
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.
German Manufacturing Behemoth Siemens Forges AI-Enhanced IIoT
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.
Computer Vision Startup Yitu Nabs $100 Million in Funding
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.
Robotic Innovations from ETH Zurich Autonomous Systems Laboratory
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.
ICRA Best UAV: A Nimble, Morphing, Hovering DRAGON
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.
Microsoft Partner ROOBO: Cute Robots, Smart Conferencing, AI Platform
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.
Microsoft Industrial IoT: Five Use Cases
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.
Cleaning-Robot Maker ECOVACS Goes Public on Shanghai Stock Exchange
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.
3D Sensor Unicorn Orbbec Closes Over $200 Million Series D
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.
South Korea Aims High on AI, Pumps $2 Billion Into R&D
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.
New SlamTech A3 LiDAR: Smaller Size, Bigger View
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.
UBTECH Robotics Gets US$820 Million Funding; Becomes the World’s Most Valuable AI Startup
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.
Amazon Patents Provide Clues to New Home Robot
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.”
“Trashbots” Boost Recycling at Pittsburgh Airport
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.
Program Lead Jake Lussier on Udacity’s New Flying Car Nanodegree
Online education platform Udacity thrilled flying car enthusiasts with its announcement of the world’s first flying car program.
Hosting Robot Brains on the Cloud
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.
Embodying Robots With Intelligence
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.
Bringing Robotics from the Lab to the Real World
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: A Powerful Platform for Robotics Research and Teaching
RACECAR is a Powerful Platform for Robotics Research and Teaching. It is one of the greatest university courses in this field.
Experts Warn Robots Are Growing in Consciousness and Should Be Classified as an “Invasive Species”
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.
Learning to Guide Task and Motion Planning Using Score-Space Representation
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.
How to Control Those Extra Robotic Limbs You’ve Always Wanted
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.
Canvassing Switzerland’s AI Landscape
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.
Applying Data Science to Robotics
In his blog post “How Data Science Apply to Robotics” on Data Science Central, Dr. Ammar A. Raja points out that there are two major problems scientists have encountered while applying data science to robotics.
Giving Robots a Sense of Touch
The rubber on GelSight sensor will conform to any object pressed against it, resulting in the reflective lights on the metallic paint to vary according to different materials and shapes.
Cool IJCNN Stuff from Alaska
From May 14 to 18, the 30th International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2017) was held in Anchorage, AK, USA. Continuing the long tradition, the conference is organized by the International Neural Network Society (INNS), in cooperation with the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE-CIS).
Mixtures of Lightweight Deep Convolutional Neural Networks: Application in Agricultural Robotics
Nowadays, the use of agricultural robots are steadily rising, like the AgBot II, which helps detect and classify weeds, and Harvey, used for detecting and segmenting crops.
Why AlphaGo is not AI
Thanks to AlphaGo, the term “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) came under the spotlight (again). However, Jean-Christophe Baillie doesn’t agree that AlphaGo is AI, for the reason that it’s not able to get us to full AI – an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).