A sensor in its chest area (covered by a shirt, because the face is unsettling enough, thanks) alerts the robot when to turn and face a person in front of it, and its eye movements shift from direct eye contact to the rapid eye movements known as saccades. It also moves slightly up and down to mimic breathing.
The robot was developed by engineers at Disney's Research division, Walt Disney Imagineering, and robotics researchers from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the California Institute of Technology.
Quite a lot has been going on:
The Rise of the Warehouse Robot | Transport Topics
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the decline of brick-and-mortar retail establishments and accelerated e-commerce, creating a massive logistical challenge for warehouse and distribution center operators.
* * *
While much of the freight transportation industry is watching the development of autonomous trucks for the open road, regulatory and technical obstacles remain. Yet other forms of autonomous vehicles — such as small robots that select and move goods inside a warehouse and self-driving yard trucks for distribution centers — already have been working their way into the supply chain.
Full Page Reload
For Social Distancing, Customers in Seoul Are Served by Robotic Waiter
A recent Reuters article told the story of an inventive way for restaurants to stay open during the coronavirus pandemic. “‘Aglio Kim,’ a trolley-like robot which uses artificial intelligence (AI) , is delivering food to customers at a restaurant in Seoul, in order to minimize human contact and maintain social distancing,” the article said.
“Shortly after customers order through a touchscreen on the table, the 1.25-meter-tall robot, developed by South Korean telecoms company KT Corp, brings the food and uses its visual SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) capabilities to avoid obstacles and navigate around customers. The robot can deliver food to up to four tables at once, KT’s AI Platform Business Team leader Lee Young-jin told Reuters.”
Were you following this:
Robots Save Us Time — But Do They Make Us Happier?
As consumer psychologists, we have accumulated a great deal of evidence that spending money to outsource disliked tasks — such as by paying for a housecleaner — can improve happiness, lower stress, and improve our romantic relationships (even during the pandemic ). But as technology develops, we have begun outsourcing not only to humans, but to machines as well.
These findings could help to explain why the adoption of autonomous products is still significantly lower than initial predictions. While as recently as four years ago, think tanks predicted that a typical family home would hold up to 500 smart objects in 2020 , this has not yet come to fruition. For example, as of March 2020, only 10% of Americans owned an autonomous vacuum (despite decreasing price tags making these products fairly affordable).
Scientists develop 'mini-brains' to help robots recognize pain and to self-repair -- ScienceDaily
Using a brain-inspired approach, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a way for robots to have the artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise pain and to self-repair when damaged.
The system has AI-enabled sensor nodes to process and respond to 'pain' arising from pressure exerted by a physical force. The system also allows the robot to detect and repair its own damage when minorly 'injured', without the need for human intervention.
Robust.AI raises a $15M Series A to improve problem solving for collaborative robots –
Founded mid-2019, the company counts Rodney Brooks among its C-level executives. The iRobot co-founder serves as the startup's CTO, following the unexpected closure of the promising (but financially untenable) Rethink, which gave the world the Baxter and Sawyer robots. (Fellow iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner also notably landed at a new venture in recent months). CEO Gary Marcus, meanwhile, is also the co-founder of Geometric Intelligence , which was acquired by Uber, back in 2016.
Robots help to answer age-old question of why fish school -- ScienceDaily
A fish school is a striking demonstration of synchronicity. Yet centuries of study have left a basic question unanswered: do fish save energy by swimming in schools? Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB), the University of Konstanz, and Peking University have provided an answer that has long been suspected but never conclusively supported by experiments: yes.
Using biomimetic fish-like robots, the researchers show that fish could take advantage of the swirls of water generated by those in front by applying a simple behavioural rule. By adjusting their tail beat relative to near neighbours -- a strategy called vortex phase matching -- robots were shown to benefit hydrodynamically from a near neighbour no matter where they are positioned with respect to that neighbour.
Happening on Twitter
📸 New poster from @akshaykumar @advani_kiara 's #Laxmii. Coming to Disney+ Hotstar, November 9th. https://t.co/RqZHPGlGzc LetsOTT (from Global) Sat Oct 31 05:36:13 +0000 2020
Disney's new skinless robot can blink like a human because why not https://t.co/MeUByppzQV verge (from New York) Sun Nov 01 15:43:58 +0000 2020
We LOVED working with Disney, but after 2 years of waiting for a new season, it's time to make something ourselves!… https://t.co/EVYL07DfxH ParkerGames Sun Nov 01 18:31:29 +0000 2020
SPECIAL DELIVERY! We're unwrapping a brand-new show! Disney Junior's new show Pikwik Pack follows Suki, Axel, Tibor… https://t.co/vA8u9v88BV DisneyJunior (from United States) Sun Nov 01 21:00:51 +0000 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment