A day before snow hindered New York commuters, researchers at the University of Iowa and Princeton identified the growth of urbanization as the leading cause for catastrophic storm damage. Wednesday’s report stated that the $128 billion wake of Hurricane Harvey was 21 times greater due to the population density of Houston, one of America’s fastest growing cities. This startling statistic is even more alarming in light of a recent UN study which reported that 70% of the projected 9.7 billion people in the world will live in urban centers by 2050. Superior urban management is one of the major promises of autonomous systems and smart cities.

In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Gabriel Lopes, Robot and Control Scientist at Robot Care Systems, and Bernt Børnich, CEO and Co-founder of Halodi Robotics.

Why is a Robotics Flagship needed?
Robotics is a solid technological field, with important market opportunities. Europe contributed significantly to the growth of knowledge in this field and it is competitive, both in science and in industry. A European investment in robotics, with a long-term vision on the scale of a FET-Flagship, can take advantage of European competitiveness to boost industry and promote the robotics market expected across many service sectors. A public European initiative can also guarantee responsible robotics progress that produces beneficial socio-economic impacts, sustainable technological developments, welfare and jobs.

Two weeks ago, I participated on a panel at the BCI Summit exploring the impact of quantum computing. As a neophyte to the subject, I marveled at the riddle posed by Grover’s Algorithm. Imagine you are assigned to find a contact in a phonebook with a billion names, but all you are given is a telephone number. A quantum computer is able to decipher the answer with remarkable speed at a rate of .003% of today’s binary systems require one operation per line of data (in this case one billion).

The European Robotics Week (ERW) is achieving a major success with around 1200 interactive robotics related events across Europe, showing how robots will impact the way we work, live, and learn both now and in the future. Every year the ERW changes the central event and hosts an eco-system of various engaging activities in the chosen location. From 16 to 18 November, Augsburg has been in the spotlight, hosting the Central event of the European Robotics Week 2018 with 1,500 visitors coming to the exhibition over the three days.

A couple of months ago I interviewed Joel Esposito about the state of robotics education for the ROS Developers Podcast #21. On that podcast, Joel talks about his research on how robotics is taught around the world. He identifies a set of common robotics subjects that need to be explained in order to make students know about robotics, and a list of resources that people are using to teach them. But most important, he points out the importance of practicing with robots what students learn.

Look around and you’ll likely see something that runs on an electric motor. Powerful and efficient, they keep much of our world moving, everything from our computers to refrigerators to the automatic windows in our cars. But these qualities change for the worse when such motors are shrunk down to sizes smaller than a cubic centimeter.

By Esther Rolf∗, David Fridovich-Keil∗, and Max Simchowitz

In many tasks in machine learning, it is common to want to answer questions given fixed, pre-collected datasets. In some applications, however, we are not given data a priori; instead, we must collect the data we require to answer the questions of interest.

To celebrate the installation of the concrete façade mullions digitally fabricated using Smart Dynamic Casting in the DFAB House, we have released a new extended video showing the entire process from start to finish.