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New laissez-faire robocar rules may arise
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
19 Jun 2017
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
Oliver Mitchell
11 May 2017
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...
Thoughts on the EU’s draft report on robotics
Alan Winfield
08 May 2017
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:...
Does AI pose a threat to society?
Alan Winfield
03 May 2017
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...
Robocar news: Waymo starts pilot in Phoenix, Apple car gets more real, and the flying car takes off
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
26 Apr 2017
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...
NASA spinoffs: Bringing space down to Earth
Oliver Mitchell
24 Apr 2017
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...
Luminar unstealths their 1.5 micron LIDAR
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
15 Apr 2017
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....
No, Detroit is not winning the robocar race
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
05 Apr 2017
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...
LIDAR (lasers) and cameras together: Which is more important?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
29 Mar 2017
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...
Asimov’s laws of robotics are not the moral guidelines they appear to be
Tom Sorell
29 Mar 2017
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...
Artificial intelligence: Utopia or dystopia?
Margaret Boden
02 Mar 2017
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...
Should California electrify Caltrain or invest in robocars?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
20 Feb 2017
[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.]...
Uber talks of deal with Daimler which shows Uber’s great advantage
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
10 Feb 2017
I generally pay very little attention when companies issue a press release about an “alliance.” It’s usually not a lot more than a press release, unless there are details on what will actually b...
California publishes robocar intervention reports: Google/Waymo vastly outpaces competition
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
08 Feb 2017
California published its summary of all the reports submitted by vendors testing robocars in the state. You can read the individual reports. They are interesting, but several other outlines have creat...
The infrastructure of life part 2: Transparency
Alan Winfield
03 Feb 2017
Part 2: Autonomous Systems and Transparency
In my previous post I argued that a wide range of AI and Autonomous Systems (from now on I will just use the term AS as shorthand for both) should be reg...
Flying cars are coming, what will they mean?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
27 Jan 2017
Earlier I posted my gallery of CES gadgets and included a photo of the eHang 184 from China, a “personal drone” able, in theory, to carry a person up to 100kg.
Whether the eHang is real or not...
The infrastructure of life part 1: Safety
Alan Winfield
26 Jan 2017
Part 1: Autonomous Systems and Safety
We all rely on machines. All aspects of modern life, from transport to energy, work to welfare, play to politics depend on a complex infrastructure of physical...
NHTSA ODI report exonerates Tesla in fatal crash
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
20 Jan 2017
NHTSA released the report from their Office of Defects Investigation on the fatal Tesla crash in Florida last spring. It’s a report that is surprisingly favorable to Tesla. So much so that even I am...
CES 2017, part one: Robocar technology and concept cars
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
17 Jan 2017
CES is the big event for major car makers to show off robocar technology. Most of the north hall, and a giant parking lot next to it, were devoted to car technology and self-driving demos....
No, a Tesla didn’t predict an accident and brake for it
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Jan 2017
You may have seen a lot of press around a dashcam video of a car accident in the Netherlands. It shows a Tesla in AutoPilot hitting the brakes around 1.4 seconds before a red car crashes hard into a b...
De-automation is a thing
Alan Winfield
29 Dec 2016
We tend to assume that automation is a process that continues - that once some human activity has been automated there's no going back. That automation sticks. But, as Paul Mason pointed out in a rece...
Jibo look-alike appears on Chinese websites
Frank Tobe
29 Dec 2016
For all of us who participated in the Jibo IndieGoGo crowdfunding and are anxiously awaiting delivery - which has been delayed again - this Chinese knock-off came as quite a surprise....
Ethically Aligned Design
Alan Winfield
27 Dec 2016
Having been involved in roboethics for some years, I was delighted when the IEEE launched its initiative on Ethical Considerations in AI and Autonomous Systems, early this year. Especially so because ...
What are the right disability rules for robotaxis?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
26 Dec 2016
Robocars are broadly going to be a huge boon for many people with disabilities, especially disabilities that make it difficult to drive or those that make it hard to get in and out of vehicles. Exist...
Designing robots with bugs??
Jibo
26 Dec 2016
Ask a child to design a robot, and they’ll produce a drawing that looks a little like you or I—the parts may be gray and boxy, but it will have two arms, two legs, and a head (probably with an ant...
Google car is now Waymo
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Dec 2016
Google’s car project (known as “Chauffeur”) kickstarted the entire robocar revolution, and Google has put in more work, for longer, than anybody. The car was also the first project of what becam...
What if the city ran Waze and you had to obey it? Could this cure congestion?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
09 Dec 2016
I believe we have the potential to eliminate a major fraction of traffic congestion in the near future, using technology that exists today which will be cheap in the future. The method has been outlin...
Robocar news: Comma One goes open source, creating simulations for robocars in New Zealand earthquakes
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
02 Dec 2016
There have been few postings this month, as I took the time to enjoy a holiday in New Zealand around speaking at the SingularityU New Zealand summit in Christchurch. The night before the summit, we en...
The Ford factor: Mad scientists and corporate villains
Michael Szollosy
16 Nov 2016
Please note: The following article may contain spoilers up to Episode 5 of Westworld.
HBO’s Westworld (on Sky Atlantic here in the UK) is progressing nicely, though even now at five episodes in ...
Should both the successes and failures of space robots curb the ambition of a manned Mars mission?
Alex Kirkpatrick
11 Nov 2016
Late morning, red skies over Mars, and the first human interloper emerges from her landing craft to review the dusty expanse. As she eases carefully down the ladder towards the alien earth, her mind s...
Comma.ai cancels comma-one add-on box after threats from NHTSA
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
31 Oct 2016
Comma.ai, the brash startup attempting to make a self-driving system entirely from a neural network has announced it will cancel the “comma one” add-on box it has planned to sell to owners of cert...
Why watching Westworld’s robots should make us question ourselves
Tony Prescott
21 Oct 2016
For a sci-fi fan like me, fascinated by the nature of human intelligence and the possibility of building life-like robots, it’s always interesting to find a new angle on these questions. As a re-ima...
Automation should complement professional expertise, not replace it
Frank Pasquale
19 Oct 2016
Will your next doctor be an app? A cost-cutting NHS wants more patients to act as “self-carers,” with some technologized assistance. A series of flowcharts and phone trees might tell parents whose...
The new Westworld: Humanizing the un-human, or dehumanizing humankind?
Michael Szollosy
18 Oct 2016
HBO’s latest offering (on SkyAtlantic here in the UK) is an update of Michael Crichton‘s 1973 film Westworld; this time brought to us as a ten-part television series by sci-fi re-booter extraordin...
The Robot Economy: Interview with MEP Mady Delvaux
SPARC
08 Oct 2016
In our final interview in The Robot Economy series, we speak with Mady Delvaux, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and Chair of the Working Group on robotics. Mady has written an extensive draft ...
The four coolest NASA robots
Jibo
06 Oct 2016
NASA may be known for sending men to the moon, establishing the International Space Station, and planning for a base on Mars—but apart from astronauts, its best-known spokesmen aren’t men at all...
