Lifeboat Foundation

NASA, in partnership with Space Center Houston, the Official Visitor Center of NASA Johnson Space Center, and NineSigma, a global innovation consultant organization, has opened registration for a new competition — the Space Robotics Challenge. This event seeks to develop the capabilities of humanoid robots to help astronauts on the journey to Mars.

The Space Robotics Challenge is a $1 million prize competition designed to push the boundaries of robotic dexterity. Teams must program a virtual robot, modeled after NASA’s Robonaut 5 (R5) robot, to complete a series of tasks in a simulation that includes periods of latency to represent communications delay from Earth to Mars.

Though some dexterity has been developed for Earth-based robotics systems using hydraulics, such robots cannot be used in space because of the below-freezing temperatures and the harsh environment of planetary surfaces. The R5 uses elastics technology instead of hydraulics – an innovative way of addressing the problems of operating in space. This technology could also benefit humankind on Earth, as they could operate under dangerous or extreme environments on our home planet.

Continue reading “Space Robotics Challenge Prepares Robots for the Journey to Mars” »

Doctors are now using ultrasound implants to treat brain tumors.

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It’s usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published August 10, 2010. We hope you enjoy it!

You don’t have a flying car, jetpack, or ray gun, but this is still the future. How do I know? Because we’re all surrounded by artificial intelligence. I love when friends ask me when we’ll develop smart computers…because they’re usually holding one in their hands. Your phone calls are routed with artificial intelligence.

Every time you use a search engine you’re taking advantage of data collected by ‘smart’ algorithms. When you call the bank and talk to an automated voice you are probably talking to an AI…just a very annoying one. Our world is full of these limited AI programs which we classify as “weak” or “narrow” or “applied.”

Continue reading “How Today’s Jungle of Artificial Intelligence Will Spawn Sentience” »

NextVR Targets International Growth and Global Partnerships with $80 Million Series B Funding Round.

Proud to be a part of this amazing team!

Artificial intelligence has an unimaginable potential. Within the next couple of years, it will revolutionize every area of our life, including medicine. I am fully convinced that it will redesign healthcare completely – and for the better. Let’s take a look at the promising solutions it offers.

A group of PhD students from the MIT Media Lab and researchers from Microsoft Research have come up with the ultimate wearable: a temporary tattoo that can turn into a touchpad, remotely control your smartphone, or share data using NFC.

The technology, which is described on MIT’s website and will be presented in full at a wearables symposium next month, is called DuoSkin. The researchers say you can design a circuit using any graphic software, stamp out the tattoo in gold leaf (which is conductive to electricity), and then apply other commodity materials and components that would make the tattoo interactive.

The paper presents three key use cases for the tattoo: you could use it to turn your skin into a trackpad, design it to change color based on temperature, or pull data from the tattoo. In one photo shared by MIT the tattoo even includes LED lights, creating a kind of glowing display on the skin.

Continue reading “MIT and Microsoft Research made a ‘smart’ tattoo that remotely controls your phone” »

A single gram of DNA can hold unimaginable amounts of data. Say hello to genetic storage.

If you’re interested in one day creating your own eco-house using open source tech, this kit is great place to start:

Picture this: you own a small piece of land. Nothing fancy — just a small plot. A group of people shows up, sets up a workshop in your shed, and within five days, using materials available at your local hardware store or made from the raw resources of your land, builds you a small starter house kitted out with state-of-the-art eco features for less than $25,000.

Sound crazy? Well, open source advocate and maker Catarina Mota and inventor Marcin Jakubowski (see their TED Talks, “Play with smart materials” and “Open-sourced blueprints for civilization,” respectively), are making the dream of accessible, affordable eco-housing come true with their Open Building Institute Eco-Building Toolkit. They’ve already built several prototypes and tested the concept through a series of educational builds.

Continue reading “How to Build Your Own Starter House in Just 5 Steps — for $25,000” »

Classic tv will never be the same.

Remember that amazing automatic colorizing algorithm we told you about back in March? It was just put to an interesting test. As a fun “what if?” hobbyist Amir Avni tried the neural network-powered colorizer on a B&W video.

Continue reading “Automatic Colorizing Bot Tries to Colorize a Black and White Video” »