Google teaches robots to learn from each other using a hive mind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robots learning from other robots will ultimately mean robots will learn new skills faster, accelerating the robot revolution. The robots of the world are uniting – and that’s either a great thing or a terrifying thing depending on your view. Google has a plan to...
Japanese company Spread set to open worlds first fully autonomous farm in 2017
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The only humans these Lettuces see will be the one who eats them. The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots – so much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on...
Amazons drones will recharge themselves using street lamposts
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Amazons new patent could change the look of your community forever. It looks like Amazon is finally answering a fundamental question about its long awaited delivery drones – where will they land? And a possible answer, according to a recent patent filing that they put...
Stanford’s humanoid robotic diver recovers treasures from King Louis XIV’s flagship
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Built to go where human divers can’t Stanfords OceanOne takes the plunge. Oussama Khatib held his breath as he swam through the wreck of La Lune, 100 meters below the Mediterranean. The flagship of King Louis XIV sank here in 1664, 20 miles off...
London boroughs new face of customer services is a bot
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The London borough of Enfield has enlisted artificial intelligence Amelia to take on customer service tasks for its residents starting late this year. Developed by IPSoft, Amelia is a cognitive agent – that’s bot to you, I and most people, capable of automating certain...
An AI Bot posing as a Teaching Assistant fooled students for five months
A quiet revolution is coming, one that will eventually turn every industry into a dumb pipe and flip the world of commerce, decision making, jobs and transactions on their heads. Here come the Bots. Earlier this year Eric Wilson who was taking an online Artificial Intelligence course at Georgia Institute of Technology...
Boston Dynamic’s humanoid Atlas robot has learnt to balance
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Balancing is a difficult skill and now one robot has mastered it. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot – the world’s most advanced humanoid robot, which previously demonstrated its ability to walk across rough terrain and take all kinds of abuse from its creators has now...
World first as surgeons use a robot to operate inside the eye
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The world’s first robot assisted eye surgery paves the way for surgeries that were previously impossible. British surgeons have successfully performed the world’s first robotic operation inside the eye, potentially revolutionising the way such conditions are treated. The procedure was carried out at John...
DoNotPay’s famous robo-lawyer helps people avoid homelessness
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The power of Bots is only just starting to be realised and it’s looking increasingly likely that the first industry they’ll disrupt is the legal profession. The idea started with a desperate email from a woman in a UK hospital. She was scared of being discharged at...
Zipline drones take to the skies to save lives
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Drone company Zipline takes to the skies to deliver medical care packages. San Francisco based startup, Zipline, is about to begin testing its drone delivery system intended to deliver medical supplies to remote areas of the US, and then eventually to the rest of the world...
Ford rolls out collaborative robots and ringfences workers jobs
We’re used to hearing about how robots will take our jobs so meet the co-bots that help us keep them With factories across the globe filling up with robots, often replacing workers on assembly lines or by transporting packages across the plant, human fears of being substituted by a machine...
First FAA approved drone flight drops donuts from heaven
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Not only will drone deliveries cut down the length of time that consumers have to wait for their goods to be delivered, further denting the value of brick and mortar retailers, but it will usher in a new era of Donuts-on-demand. 7-Eleven, the world’s...
Meet Ross, the world’s first AI lawyer
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF If AI can automate the legal profession is any job safe? Law firm Baker & Hostetler has announced that they are employing IBM’s AI “Ross” to handle their bankruptcy practice, which at the moment consists of nearly 50 lawyers. According to CEO and co-founder of...
Humanoid ATLAS robot crams millions of years of evolution into two years
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robotisists just crammed hundreds of millions of years of natural evolution into just two years. Boston Dynamics has unveiled a hugely upgraded version of its ATLAS humanoid that is smaller, lighter, and more agile. Furthermore it’s been amazing to see the advancements the team has made...
Robo-Lawyer overturns 160,000 parking tickets
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An artificial intelligence lawyer chatbot has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets across London and New York for free, showing that chatbots can actually be useful. Dubbed as “the world’s first robot lawyer”, a title which actually belongs to an American AI called “Ross”, by...
Robot surgeon STAR bests its human counterparts in world first
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF One step for a robot, one giant leap for robot kind. In a recent study Oxford University and others estimated that between 35% and 45% of all of todays’ jobs would be automated by AI, robots and, or, software robots (bots) within the next...
