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Brain surgery: The robot efficacy test?

The internet hummed last week with reports that “Humans Still Make Better Surgeons Than Robots.” Stanford University Medical Center set off the tweetstorm with its seemingly scathing repo...
02 November 2017, by

The senate’s automated driving bill could squash state authority

My previous post on the House and Senate automated driving bills (HB 3388 and SB 1885) concluded by noting that, in addition to the federal government, states and the municipalities within them also p...
31 October 2017, by

Robocars will make traffic worse before it gets better

Many websites paint a very positive picture of the robocar future. And it is positive, but far from perfect. One problem I worry about in the short term is the way robocars are going to make traffic w...
25 October 2017, by

The five senses of robotics

Healthy humans take for granted their five senses. In order to mold metal into perceiving machines, it requires a significant amount of engineers and capital. Already, we have handed over many of our ...
24 October 2017, by

Could we build a Blade Runner-style ‘replicant’?

The new Blade Runner sequel will return us to a world where sophisticated androids made with organic body parts can match the strength and emotions of their human creators. As someone who builds biolo...

Robocar-only highways are not quite so nice an idea as expected

Recently Madrona Ventures, in partnership with Craig Mundie (former Microsoft CTO) released a white paper proposing an autonomous vehicle corridor between Seattle and Vancouver on I-5 and BC Highway 9...
11 October 2017, by



GM accepts all liability in robocars, and other news

General Motors announced this week that they would “take full responsibility” if a crash takes place during an autonomous driving trip. This follows a pledge to do the same made some time ago by D...
11 October 2017, by

Robotics, the traditional path and new approaches

Robotics, like many other technologies, suffered from an inflated set of expectations resulting in a decrease of the developments and results during the 90s. Over the last years, several groups though...
20 September 2017, by

The importance of research reproducibility in robotics

As highlighted in a previous post, despite the fact that robotics is increasingly regarded as a 'Science', as shown by the launch of new journals such as Science Robotics, reproducibility of experimen...
20 September 2017, by

New NHTSA Robocar regulations are a major, but positive, reversal

NHTSA released their latest draft robocar regulations just a week after the U.S. House passed a new regulatory regime and the senate started working on its own. The proposed regulations preempt state ...
15 September 2017, by

NTSB Tesla crash report and new NHTSA regulations to come

The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has released a preliminary report on the fatal Tesla crash with the full report expected later this week. The report is much less favourable to autopilo...
13 September 2017, by

Planning for hurricanes and other disasters with robocars

How will robocars fare in a disaster, like Harvey in Houston, Irma, or the tsunamis in Japan or Indonesia, or a big Earthquake, or a fire, or 9/11, or a war?...
08 September 2017, by

Robots won’t steal our jobs if we put workers at center of AI revolution

by Thomas Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management and Lee Dyer, Cornell University The technologies driving artificial intelligence are expanding exponentially, leading many technology experts and f...
02 September 2017, by

Those amazing flying machines

Last year, Intel partnered with Lady Gaga on the Super Bowl Halftime Show to showcase its latest aerial technology called “Shooting Star.” Intel did a reprise performance of its Shooting S...
16 August 2017, by

Many different approaches to Robocar Mapping

Almost all robocars use maps to drive. Not the basic maps you find in your phone navigation app, but more detailed maps that help them understand where they are on the road, and where they should go. ...
01 August 2017, by

Federal regulations pass next hurdle

This week's news is preliminary, but a U.S. house committee panel passed some new federal regulations which suggest sweeping change in the US regulatory approach to robocars....

News and commentary from AUVSI/TRB Automated Vehicle Symposium 2017

In San Francisco, I’m just back from the annual Automated Vehicle Symposium, co-hosted by the AUVSI (a commercial unmanned vehicle organization) and the Transportation Research Board, a governme...

Singapore: An autonomous innovation center

Jim Robinson of RRE Ventures said it best last month at the Silicon Dragon Conference when comparing Silicon Valley to New York, “There are two kinds of centers that have a lot of startups and t...
16 July 2017, by

New laissez-faire robocar rules may arise

While very few details have come out, Reuters reports that new proposed congressional bills on self-driving cars will reverse many of the provisions I critiqued in the NHTSA regulations last year....

An AI Primer for mechatronics

This week I attended an “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Roundtable” of leading scientists, entrepreneurs and venture investors. As the discussion focused mainly on basic statistical techniques, I l...
11 May 2017, by

Thoughts on the EU’s draft report on robotics

I was asked to write a short op-ed on the European Parliament Law Committee's recommendations on civil law rules for robotics. In the end, the piece didn't get published, so I am posting it here:...
08 May 2017, by

Does AI pose a threat to society?

Last week I had the pleasure of debating the question "does AI pose a threat to society?" with friends and colleagues Christian List, Maja Pantic and Samantha Payne. The event was organised by the B...
03 May 2017, by

Robocar news: Waymo starts pilot in Phoenix, Apple car gets more real, and the flying car takes off

Waymo (Google) has announced a pilot project in Phoenix offering a full ride service in their new minivans. Members of the public can sign up — the link is sure to be overwhelmed with applicants, bu...
26 April 2017, by

NASA spinoffs: Bringing space down to Earth

In a time of “America First,” the benefits of space travel are clouded by the smoke of hyperbole. In reality, there has been over 2,000 inventions courtesy of NASA that are making our lives bette...
24 April 2017, by

Luminar unstealths their 1.5 micron LIDAR

Luminar, a bay area startup, has revealed details on their new LIDAR. Unlike all other commercial offerings, this is a LIDAR using 1.5 micron infrared light. They hope to sell it for $1,000....
15 April 2017, by

No, Detroit is not winning the robocar race

A new report from Navigant Research includes the chart shown below, ranking various teams on the race to robocar deployment. It’s causing lots of press headlines about how Ford is the top company an...
05 April 2017, by

LIDAR (lasers) and cameras together: Which is more important?

Recently we’ve seen a series of startups arise hoping to make robocars with just computer vision, along with radar. That includes recently unstealthed AutoX, the off-again, on again efforts of comma...
29 March 2017, by

Asimov’s laws of robotics are not the moral guidelines they appear to be

Seventy-five years ago, the celebrated science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround. Set on Mercury, it features a sophisticated robot nicknamed Speedy that has been or...
29 March 2017, by

Artificial intelligence: Utopia or dystopia?

Artificial intelligence (AI) already plays a major role in human economies and societies, and it will play an even bigger role in the coming years. To ponder the future of AI is thus to acknowledge th...
02 March 2017, by

Should California electrify Caltrain or invest in robocars?

[Editor's note: According to a recent article on SFGate, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has put the brakes on $647 million for Caltrain to go electric. The delay may kill the project entirely.]...
20 February 2017, by







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