What type of tree is that anyway? Cornell is creating a catalogue for Nature Engineers from Caltech have developed a method that uses data from satellite and street-level images, such as the ones that you can see in Google Maps, to automatically create an inventory of street trees that cities...
Australia trials search and rescue drones to help protect people – and sharks Although the chance of dying from a shark attack in your lifetime is just one in 3.7 million, it doesn’t hurt to be a little vigilant in areas frequently visited by sharks. With this in mind, the...
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Autonomous drones – revered by extreme sports enthusiasts and feared in the battlefield – are on the rise. We all know that the next evolution of drones will be fully autonomous rather than just semi-autonomous as some of them, such as delivery or defence drones,...
Google’s machine learning based image software has come a long way but nature still has it baffled Google has just released the latest version of its open source image recognition software based on machine learning algorithms that the company first started developing back in 2014 and it’s now 93.9 percent accurate. this...
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...
IBM’s TrueNorth, a cognitive “neuromorphic” computing chip whose architecture resembles that of the human brain – although it switches neurons for transistors, is being trialled by Samsung to improve the Dynamic Vision Sensors (DVS) in their next generation gadgets, essentially helping them to build the equivalent of a digital eye that is far...
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It’s like combining Google Maps with Tivo, authorities can watch an entire city with just a one camera. An unblinking sentinel will watch over the Olympic Games from high above Rio de Janiero this summer. No, not the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue, but...
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...
Experience your new kitchen in the comfort of your own corner of someone elses’ store Lowe’s is building the first announced business application for new indoor mapping technology developed by Alphabet’s Google. The retailer wants customers to use the technology to map the rooms of their homes and visualise how products will...
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Just like many other forms of transportation cargo ships aren’t immune from the march of technological progress, as such in time they too will become increasingly autonomous and electric. Rolls Royce and the led Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA) believe the future of...
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...
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Creativity is said to be a uniquely “Human” gift but while we can argue the semantics it appears that increasingly machines share the same gift, albeit algorithmic rather than chemical. Many people believe that creativity is a uniquely human trait but what about self...
Entertainment has been evolving ever since the first multi cellular creature crawled out of the primordial soup and arguably its roots can be traced back to the very first hectic sibling tom foolery that gave our most ancient ancestors a safe arena to practice their survival skills. Since then however...
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