Free Republic

1. Youngstown, U.S.A. The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977. For much of the 20th century, Youngstown’s steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a homeownership rate that were among the nation’s highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet...

The contest is a battle of robots on an obstacle course meant to simulate conditions similar to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Team Kaist's DRC-Hubo humanoid robot defeated 22 others to win the top $2m prize from the US Department of Defense's Darpa research unit. The robots had an hour to complete a series of tasks, such as a driving a car and walking up steps. The challenge involved a series of tasks for the robots to complete, somewhat autonomously, with intermittent connectivity with their operators to simulate real disaster conditions. The challenge was the first where robots performed...

[Most of these, except for a couple, are very positive achievements. Let’s work for more in 2015, Happy New Year!] The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True In 2014 By George Dvorsky As 2014 comes to a close, it's time to reflect on the most futuristic breakthroughs and developments of the past year. This year's crop features a slew of incredible technological, scientific, and social achievements, from mind-to-mind communication to self-guiding sniper bullets. Here are 15 predictions that came true in 2014. Technologically-assisted telepathy was successfully demonstrated in humans For the first time ever, two humans exchanged thoughts via mind-to-mind...

Was This The First Robot Ever Arrested? On August 18, 1982 the Beverly Hills Police Department took a rather unusual perp into custody: a robot called DC-2. The crime? Illegally distributing business cards and generally causing a commotion on North Beverly Drive. It was probably the first time a robot had ever been arrested. When BHPD approached DC-2, the person operating it via remote control refused to identify himself to police. Officers searched the immediate area, but whoever was behind the thing was nowhere to be found. The bot's mysterious operator wasn't afraid of a little joking around though, despite...

Samsung Group subsidiary has worked on a robot sentry that they call the SGR-A1, and this particular robot will carry a fair amount of weapons that ought to make you think twice about crossing the borders of South Korea illegally – as it has been tested out at the demilitarized zone along the border over with its neighbor, North Korea. The SGR-A1 will be able to detect intruders with the help of machine vision (read: cameras), alongside a combination of heat and motion sensors. The whole idea of the Samsung SGR-A1 is to let this military robot sentry do the...

Speed and agility are hallmarks of the cheetah: The big predator is the fastest land animal on Earth, able to accelerate to 60 mph in just a few seconds. As it ramps up to top speed, a cheetah pumps its legs in tandem, bounding until it reaches a full gallop. Now MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they’ve successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah — a sleek, four-legged assemblage of gears, batteries, and electric motors that weighs about as much as its feline counterpart. The team recently took the robot for a test run on MIT’s Killian...

Researchers based in Norway believe that in around 10 years time cargo ships will have the technology to sail the seas without the need of a captain or crew. Marintek, part of the SINTEF group based in Norway, is one of a number of partners working on developing systems which can operate without the need for humans. The "Seatonomy" project is looking to have ships sailing without human crews in the next 10 to 20 years. The 12 million kroner ($1.9 million) research investment by SINTEF could actually improve ship safety as human error causes more than 75 percent of...

Progress in robotics, from drones to medical applications, is starting to come at a fast clip. Do you want your robot to cook your food, or just deliver it?The days of drones filling the sky and robots roaming in our streets are not far removed from reality anymore, and scenes from movies like Star Wars, Minority Report and I, Robot will be common soon. Just consider some of the ways that robots have started to permeate our lives. Start with Amazon, which is taking to drones in a big way. The online shopping giant started a new phase in high-tech...

RoboBrain marks the dawn of cloud robotics Posted by: Emily Smith August 25, 2014 in Tech RoboBrain is the new attempt of artificial intelligence researchers to create a cloud-based database that would help out existing and future robots. In theory, RoboBrain is supposed to be a massive database of all the information robots have been taught so far and offers the possibility of increasing that knowledge as well. The main idea behind RoboBrain is that the cumulative knowledge robots have been able to gather should be collected in the same place, namely cloud storage, and made available to every robot...

A team of researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have created a new sprinting robot inspired by a velociraptor. The robot, dubbed the Raptor, runs on two legs, and is capable of running 46 kilometers per hour (kph), or 28 miles per hour (mph), on a treadmill, according to CNET. Raptor can run faster than Usain Bolt, Olympic sprinter and the fastest known human, who has a recorded top speed of 44.7kph (27.44 mph). The robot is almost as fast as Boston Dynamics' Cheetah, which can run at 47kph (29.3 mph). Both Raptor and Cheetah...

ST. LOUIS • They’ve trounced hundreds of robotics teams at regional and state competitions. And Thursday, about 12,000 students in safety goggles will convene at the Edward Jones Dome and America’s Center for the chance at world champion status.It’s the fourth year in a row that U.S. FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — has held its top competition here, drawing competitors from 38 countries.The matches will be timed and intense. The crowds thick. The stands loud.Through it, thousands of students will demonstrate their knowledge of programming, and electrical and mechanical engineering.For self-proclaimed geeks, it’s a...

Autonomous vehicles will save thousands of lives. But what about the ones they take? Robot cars will save lots of lives, but they'll also open up some tricky liability issues. You are a terrible driver. By human standards, you might be pretty good, but you'll never be able to match the reaction time, 360-degree monitoring, and prescient awareness autonomous vehicles will soon provide. By almost any estimate, taking the wheel out of the hands of human drivers—when the technology is ready—will save thousands of lives. "Human beings just aren't that great as drivers," said Rand's James Anderson. Driverless cars "could...

Iranian teacher uses hi-tech robot to encourage prayers An Iranian schoolteacher has come up with a novel way of encouraging young children to learn their daily prayers. 27-year-old Akbar Rezaie, who teaches the Quran at the Alborz elementary school in Varamin, near Tehran, took a robotics course and applied his knowledge to help modify an educational robot kit. He says the aim is to provide pupils with a stimulating visual example of a variety of Shi’ite worship. “I used to pray hastily but now I want to pray more slowly like this robot,” said one student. Now, pupils in this...

Todd Blatt is betting that Google Glass will benefit from a few accessories when it is released to the public next year. The first is a camera cap. Already, the 30-year-old 3-D designer has had people shield their face from him while he was wearing his pair of phonesyncing glasses, a sign they don’t trust that he’s not recording them. Blatt, a Baltimorean who also lives in New York, used the crowd-funder Kickstarter to finance GlassKap, a plastic device that fits over the camera lens, and other Google Glass accessories. He scored a pair of the glasses as part of...

By now, you’ve definitely heard about the Burrit0bot — pretty much the most awesome 3D printer in the world. It lets you make burritos … with your iPhone. (If you hadn’t heard about this till now, go ahead and collect your brain pieces from the floor.) Burrit0bot is, very sadly, still a prototype designed by an NYU grad student named Marko Manriquez for his thesis project. Meaning that it hasn’t been made yet. So — to appease your disappointment — we decided to round up all of the grub that already can be made by robots. To follow, your futuristic...

If Seattle fast workers demanding a big raise in the minimum wage get their way, they'll soon be replaced by robots says KIRO Radio's John Curley, who points to growing automation as a warning to those who want $15 an hour or more to flip burgers. A group of local fast food workers recently staged a one-day walkout and are calling on the Seattle City Council to increase the minimum wage from $9.19 per hour - the highest in the country - to $15 an hour. "We're asking for $15 because in order to support one person in a one...

How's this for a weekend conference: Some of the smartest people in the world are gathering in New York to try to figure out how to build lifelike copies of humans ... to be eventually uploaded with the contents of a real human brain. It's the brainchild of a Russian multimillionaire, Dmitry Itskov. ... And he says he's perfectly serious, and that it could be accomplished by 2035. Crazy? The New York Times gave Itskov a front-page profile on its Sunday Business page a week and a half ago. Imagine this ... a digital copy of your brain in a...

Campaigners call for ban on "killer robots" LONDON (Reuters) - Machines with the ability to attack targets without any human intervention must be banned before they are developed for use on the battlefield, campaigners against "killer robots" urged on Tuesday. The weapons, which could be ready for use within the next 20 years, would breach a moral and ethical boundary that should never be crossed, said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, of the "Campaign To Stop Killer Robots". "If war is reduced to weapons attacking without human beings in control, it is going to be civilians who are going to bear...

Robotic automation has long been the domain of manufacturing, but of late, service robots have made an often entertaining and sometimes gimmicky leap to restaurants in China, Taiwan, Japan, and increasingly the US. Please accept the following video ode to Singularity Hub’s favorite restaurant robots of the past few years. Noodle bot: Knife-brandishing chopper of noodles, you terrify and inspire us in equal parts. You slice noodles with grim efficiency, and for that we are grateful. (VIDEO AT LINK) Sushi bot: Although the high art of sushi-making may best be suited for human hands, we hold your pace of 3,600...

Simple chemical reaction powers robot to make lofty leaps. Kaboom! Controlled explosions in the legs of this silicone 'soft robot' make it leap higher than 30 times its own height. Researchers led by George Whitesides, a chemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have engineered a three-legged silicone device that is powered by combustion — previously used only in hard systems such as diesel engines. The soft robot has in each of its legs a channel with a soft valve at the end. Methane and oxygen gases are fed into this channel in a ratio of one part methane to...