2,000 Chinese schools are using robots to give students daily health checks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial Intelligence and robotics are helping China deliver healthcare in new ways. Interested in the future and want to experience even more?! eXplore More. China is increasingly in love with technology, and the government, for a variety of reasons, is keen to develop and deploy...
World’s first autonomous robot completes its journey inside the human body
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As healthcare and robotics merge, from Robo-Surgeons to Nanobots, we need to find new ways to help them navigate to where they’re needed. Interested in the future and want to experience even more?! eXplore More. Surgeons have used robots operated by joysticks for more than...
Baxter the robot fixes its mistakes by reading your mind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Dealing with today’s technology can be cumbersome, which is why researchers think things would be better if it could simply read your mind. Interested in the future and want to experience even more?! eXplore More. Baxter is but a child, a robot child with...
Scientists are teaching robots to share code and evolve just like animals
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We all too often think of machines, and robots, as static things, but new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, manufacturing, and materials are giving them the power to evolve. Bacteria do it, viruses do it. Worms, mammals, even bees do it. So our parents tell...
Evolving robots discover new ways to walk thanks to AI advances
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF People often think of robots as static things, with fixed forms that don’t evolve, but scientists are creating robots that can evolve to suit different situations. Evolution is a trip. On the one hand, it’s a seemingly simple mechanism -those best fitted to their environment have...
China shows off its first official neurosurgery robot
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the technologies needed to construct sophisticated robot surgeons advances, so too are the type and complexity of surgeries they can take on. Using robots in surgery isn’t new, and I’ve written about a bunch of them recently as the technology starts leaving the...
A US start up has created the world’s first fully autonomous vertical farm
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As global population grows we need new ways to produce affordable quality food, and vertical farms are increasingly the answer. Vertical farms that can grow eight times the crops using no chemicals, herbicides or pesticides, and with 99 percent less water than traditional farms...
World first as nanobots get to work choking cancers to death
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Nanobots are one of the ultimate medical frontiers and science fiction classics, and they’re slowing beginning to show their promise. Recently I discussed how we’re building the first generation of enzyme powered nanobots capable of hunting and tracking down disease within the human body...
Boston Dynamic’s robot Spot the dog learns to dance
WHY THIS MATTERS Teaching robots to dance helps researchers fine tune robots motor skills so they can be more agile and dextrous. At IROS in Madrid, Marc Raibert from Boston Dynamics, one of the world’s most advanced robotics companies, showed a few videos during his keynote presentation. One was...
Woebot, the World’s first AI counsellor, manages 2 million conversations a week
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Mental health issues seem to plague modern society, but the number of people who seek out professional help is minimal, so companies are developing AI counsellors that are free and accessible anywhere 24/7 Mental health has been increasingly on people’s minds, if you’ll excuse...
MIT discover a way to mass produce cell sized robots
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Small robots have their benefits too, in everything from the oil and gas industries to healthcare, now we can manufacture them en masse. Recently I’ve written about not just tiny robots, but microscopic ones – tiny molecule sized robots that are being used to...
World first as Chinese surgeon performs remote robotic surgery across a 5G network
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Globally there is a shortage of trained surgeons, but robo-surgeons and 5G networks could soon solve that. Recently dentists in China used the first autonomous robot dentist to replace a patients teeth, and the US Military started trialling what they call “remote robotic procedures” that...
World first as scientists create nanobot swarms capable of performing surgeries in humans
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By future standards today’s most advanced surgical techniques will look neanderthal, nanobots and nanomachines that can perform in vivo surgery are the future. A ground breaking new method of controlling nanobots that “emulates natural swarm behaviour” has been unveiled by scientists in Hong Kong...
The founder of China’s largest online retailer envisions a “100% robotic workforce”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are particular industries and companies that lend themselves for full automation, and E-Commerce is just one of them. “I hope my company would be 100% automation someday … no human beings anymore, 100% operated by AI and robots.” That’s Richard Liu’s audacious goal,...
NASA’s ISS robot companion CIMON gets caught copping an attitude
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more machines and humans work alongside one another how we interact with one another will become increasingly crucial. As he entered his final month on the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, Alexander Gerst could be proud that he’s helped given birth to...
Nitanic’s revolutionary AI’s evolve and battle for gamers loyalty
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Traditional marketing, where marketers create and distribute content, is being automated by AI. This is the future of marketing – automated, viral, and intelligent. Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, have announced that they’re going to be using a “thought provoking campaign” that “uses AI to...
Israel’s autonomous crane takes aim at the fully automated construction sites of the future
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF New technologies like AI, machine vision and autonomous robots and machines mean one day we’ll see fully autonomous construction sites – and they’ll need cranes. A little while ago I discussed how tomorrow’s construction sites will become increasingly autonomous thanks to the arrival of...
Stuntmen face the last act as technology comes to replace them
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are increasingly few areas of work and society that technology isn’t influencing, and even stuntmen aren’t immune. A new Artificial Intelligence (AI) system has been used to create computer animated stuntmen that could make action movies cooler than before. Researchers at University of...
Confidence that American’s can spot fake bots plummets to all time low
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF If people can longer tell fake content or “people” from what’s real then there’s the threat that trust in each other, and in society and government, could break down. How times have changed. Just a few years ago, before the arrival of fake Chinese...
The UK FCA could become the world’s first AI robo-regulator
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The level of regulation is already a major burden on companies, a robo-regulator could automate compliance, lighten the load, reduce costs, and even identify crime before it happens. A little while ago I wrote an article highlighting a point made by the UK’s Chancellor...
