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opinion
Indoor drone shows are here
Markus Waibel
09 Jan 2018
2017 was the year where indoor drone shows came into their own. Verity Studios' Lucie drones alone completed more than 20,000 autonomous flights. A Synthetic Swarm of 99 Lucie micro drones started t...
How artificial intelligence will transform higher education
David Gann and Mark Dodgson
09 Aug 2017
As AI surpasses human abilities in Go and poker – two decades after Deep Blue trounced chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov – it is seeping into our lives in ever more profound ways. It affects the wa...
The agricultural labor conundrum
Frank Tobe
09 Aug 2017
Instead of worrying so much about robots taking away jobs, maybe we should worry more about wages being too low for robots to even get a chance. Seasonal labor for harvesting agricultural products, p...
Asimov’s Laws won’t stop robots harming humans so we’ve developed a better solution
The Conversation
17 Jul 2017
By Christoph Salge, Marie Curie Global Fellow, University of Hertfordshire
How do you stop a robot from hurting people? Many existing robots, such as those assembling cars in factories, shut down ...
Sci-Fi Dreams: How visions of the future are shaping the development of intelligent technology
Alan Winfield
14 Jul 2017
Here are the slides I gave recently as member of panel Sci-Fi Dreams: How visions of the future are shaping the development of intelligent technology, at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence 201...
More efficient and safer: How drones are changing the workplace
Jonathan Downey
23 Jun 2017
Technology-driven automation plays a critical role in the global economy, and its visibility in our lives is growing. As technology impacts more and more jobs, individuals and enterprises find themsel...
It’s not just self-driving cars; trains could soon be autonomous too!
Andreas Kunze
20 Jun 2017
Judging by the frequency that self-driving cars are mentioned in scientific discussions and the media, they are not only the next big thing, but might actually take over as our main means of transport...
The Uncanny Valley of human-robot interactions
Oliver Mitchell
02 Jun 2017
The device named “Spark” flew high above the man on stage with his hands waving in the direction of the flying object. In a demonstration of DJI’s newest drone, the audience marveled at the Cok...
Farming (r)evolution
Peter Feuilherade
12 May 2017
This article was originally published on IEC e-Tech. Click here to view the original post.
Many advances in electric self‑driving car technology and robotics are transferring across to industrial...
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...
Are gestures the future of robotic control?
Anna Johansson
29 Apr 2017
A few decades ago, touchscreens were impressive, yet clunky pieces of technology reserved for applications that did little more than show off that touchscreens were possible. Today’s touchscreens ar...
Cooperative payload transportation with UAVs
Julian Estevez
27 Apr 2017
Delivery robots are touted as gaining widespread popularity in the near future. Wheeled models could be suitable for urban areas, while UAVs have great potential in accessing difficult areas and carr...
The legal issues of robotics
Andrea Bertolini
06 Apr 2017
Robots are the technology of the future. But the current legal system is incapable of handling them. This generic statement is often the premise for considerations about the possibility of awarding ri...
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...
Vertical farms profiled on CBS Morning News
Frank Tobe
05 Apr 2017
CBS News profiled a New Jersey vertical farm providing baby kale, arugula, spinach and romaine to nearby Newark and NYC groceries. They boast 130 times more productivity, 95% less water and no pest...
To really help US workers, invest in robots
Nikolaus Correll
31 Mar 2017
America’s manufacturing heyday is gone, and so are millions of jobs, lost to modernization. Despite what Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin might think, the National Bureau of Economic Research and S...
Artificial people: How will the law adapt to intelligent systems?
Rob van den Hoven van Genderen
31 Mar 2017
Robotics technology is no longer limited to industry. Climate Controls, 3D printers, surveillance robots, drones, household and even sex robots are entering the private market. The more autonomous the...
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...
Should an artificial intelligence be allowed to get a patent?
Ronald Yu
09 Mar 2017
Whether an A.I. ought to be granted patent rights is a timely question given the increasing proliferation of A.I. in the workplace. Examples: Daimler-Benz has tested self-driving trucks on public road...
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...
At what point should an intelligent machine be considered a person?
Kyle Bowyer
22 Feb 2017
Science fiction likes to depict robots as autonomous machines, capable of making their own decisions and often expressing their own personalities. Yet we also tend to think of robots as property, and ...
Legal artificial intelligence: Can it stand up in a court of law?
Ronald Yu
21 Feb 2017
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly mentions what has become known as the “10,000-hour rule”, which states that to become world-class in any field you must devote 10,000 hours of “...
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...
Why artificial intelligence could be key to future-proofing the grid
Valentin Robu
03 Feb 2017
A recent Conversation piece pointed out that the British electricity mix in 2016 was the cleanest in 60 years, with record capacity from renewable energy, mainly from wind and solar power. But one pro...
How will farmers and robots work together?
John Payne
03 Feb 2017
Let's assume, for a moment, that the vision I've laid out in this blog is ridiculously successful, and, over the next few decades, robotic devices take over all aspects of tending land and crops and h...
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...
How regenerative agriculture and robotics can benefit each other
John Payne
25 Jan 2017
I've come around to the view that the best and most inclusive term for high-concept farming which is both sustainably productive and ecologically responsible is Regenerative Agriculture. It implies al...
How AR technology can help farmers stay relevant
John Payne
19 Jan 2017
I've long believed that Augmented Reality (AR) and robotics are closely related. Both model their environments to some degree. Robotics uses that model to guide the behavior of a machine, whereas AR u...
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...
2016: the best year yet for funding robotics startups
Frank Tobe
02 Jan 2017
2016 was a busy and abundant year for seed, crowd, series A,B,C,D and VC funding of robotics-related startups. 128 companies got funded, some multiple times. $1.95 billion, 50% more than 2015 whic...
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....
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...
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...
Robohub roundtable: Robotic bee swarms from Black Mirror – what’s hype, what’s real?
Alex Kirkpatrick
06 Dec 2016
In this roundtable edition, we watched the Black Mirror episode “Hated in the Nation” and asked our Robohub team members: with many institutions focused on developing aerial drone technology, and ...
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...
