Tag Archives: robots

November 2015 in Review

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What did I learn in November? Let’s start with the bad and then go to the good.

Negative stories (-10):

  • The World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Risks Report came out. Some of the top risks are interstate conflict, water crisis, failure of climate change adaptation, unemployment and underemployment. Hmm, that “interstate conflict” items might be what we used to call “war”. And I think there might be one underway right now in the Middle East, which Jimmy Carter says we are getting all wrong. And it just might be caused by the other items on the list. And speaking of war, there is a new book on the Vietnam War aimed at the middle grades, but it seems pretty harsh for that age to me. (-2)
  • I noticed that Robert Costanza in 2014 issued an update to his seminal 1997 paper on ecosystem services. He now estimates their value at $125 trillion per year, compared to a world economy of $77 trillion per year. Each year we are using up about $4-20 trillion in value more than the Earth is able to replenish. The correct conclusion here is that we can’t live without ecosystem services any time soon with our current level of knowledge and wealth, and yet we are depleting the natural capital that produces them. We were all lucky enough to inherit an enormous trust fund of natural capital at birth, and we are spending it down like the spoiled trust fund babies we are. We are living it up, and we measure our wealth based on that lifestyle, but we don’t have a bank statement so we don’t actually know when that nest egg is going to run out. (-3)
  • This crop of presidential candidates is easy for comedians to make fun of. I enjoy it but think it may be a contrary indicator for the health of the country. (-1)
  • Bicycle helmets are not making U.S. bicycle riders any safer. This is why we need streets designed on the European model to be safe for driving, bicycling, and walking. It’s 100% known technology and there can be no excuses! (-2)
  • In current events, we had the awful, shocking terrorist attacks in Paris. I suggested that the long-term answer to violence caused by angry young men anywhere is to understand why they are angry, address their legitimate grievances, and give them productive work to do. Short term, we also have to detect and disrupt any plots involving nuclear or biological weapons, of course, because we can’t afford even one. (-2)

Positive stories (+9):

package delivery robots

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Here come the package delivery robots. I don’t know that this couldn’t work in a quieter urban residential neighborhood. This would work great on several narrow streets I have lived on in Philadelphia, where post office and UPS/FedEx trucks typically double park at the nearest intersection (often blocking crosswalks, fire hydrants, bike lanes, etc. because there aren’t other options) and then walk in. Urban areas can take a number of forms other than high rise towers and central business districts, which is what (most likely suburban living) authors of articles like this always seem to be picturing.

self driving buses

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Here’s another example of self driving vehicles expected in operation within a year or two, not 10-15 years as the pessimists are telling us.

EasyMile has already deployed its low-speed EZ10 shuttles — known as SDVs, or Shared Driverless Vehicles — in closed environments in Finland, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. At one location, the shuttles travel around an amusement park. In another, they take day-trippers from a parking lot to a beachfront. Much like the self-driving cars being developed by Google and other Silicon Valley companies, the vehicles use high-definition internal mapping software to know their routes and various sensors to avoid pedestrians and other obstacles.

But the vehicles will have to be modified to follow the new self-driving handbook from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which is already in force for testing on public roads and still being developed for consumer use.

“In Europe these are truly driverless cars; they don’t even have a steering wheel,” but in California a steering wheel, brake pedal and accelerator must be added, Willis said.

August 2015 in Review

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Negative stories (-12):

  • About 7-19% of cancers are caused by chemicals in the environment. (-1)
  • Steven Hawking is worried about an artificial intelligence arms race starting “within years, not decades”. (-2)
  • The anti-urban attack continues, based on the false idea that crowded, stressful living conditions are the only type of urban living conditions available, and people are being forced into them against their will. This is naked, obvious propaganda that must be rejected. (-1)
  • The more ignorant our species is, the more confident we tend to feel. (-3)
  • According to Naomi Klein, “Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.”  In related news, July was the warmest month ever recorded by humans, and carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest seen for millions of years. (-3)
  • The media buzz about a worldwide recession seems to be increasing. (-2)

Positive stories (+12):

  • The suburban vs. urban culture wars continue. Suburban office parks are tanking as young people prefer more urban job settings. Entrepreneurs are working on the problems of being car-less with children. (+1)
  • Steven Hawking has a plan to figure out if there is any intelligent life out there. (+1)
  • There are straightforward, practical ideas for dealing with the issues of loading, deliveries, and temporary contractor parking in dense urban areas. (+1)
  • Economists have concluded that preventing human extinction may be economical after all, because “reducing an infinite loss is infinitely profitable”. Is this kind of thinking really useful? (+0)
  • “gene drive” technology helps make sure that genetically engineered traits are passed along to offspring. (+0)
  • Technology marches on – quantum computing is in early emergence, the “internet of things” is arriving at the “peak of inflated expectations”, big data is crashing into the “trough of disillusionment”, virtual reality is beginning its assent to the “plateau of productivity”, and speech recognition is arriving on the plateau. And super-intelligent rodents may be on the way. (+1)
  • Honeybees may be in trouble, but they are not the only bees. (+0)
  • Robotics may be on the verge of a Cambrian explosion, which will almost certainly be bad for some types of jobs, but will also bring us things like cars that avoid pedestrians and computer chips powered by sweat. I for one am excited to be alive at this moment in history. (+2)
  • Dogs can be trained to smell cancer. (+1)
  •  There’s promise of a vaccine for MERS. (+1)
  • It may be possible to capture atmospheric carbon and turn it into high-strength, valuable carbon fiber. This sounds like a potential game-changer to me, because if carbon fiber were cheap it could be substituted for a lot of heavy, toxic and energy-intensive materials we use now, and open up possibilities for entirely new types of structures and vehicles. (+3)
  • Robot deliveries and reusable containers could be a match. (+1)

You might think I rigged that to come out even, but I didn’t.

machines of loving grace

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Fresh Air has an interview with John Markoff, author of Machines of Loving Grace.

Markoff, the author of the new book Machines of Loving Grace, points out that artificial intelligence plays a role in many of our lives — sometimes without our even realizing it. “I have a car that I bought this year … that is able to recognize both pedestrians and bicyclists, and if I don’t stop, it will,” he says. “That’s a very inexpensive add-on that you can get for almost any car on the market now.”

Looking ahead, Markoff predicts further advances in driverless-car technology. He also foresees a generation of computer chips that don’t require batteries; instead, they would run on sunlight or vibration or sweat.

“In the next five years … this [computer chip] technology will fan out all around us and create applications we can’t even think about today,” he says. “They’ll be used for robotic sensors. They’ll be made to make robots more mobile. And they’ll be used to do a million other things we can’t even conceive of, and it will continue to transform our society.”

June 2015 in Review

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Negative stories:

Positive stories:

robots

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Here’s a robot learning some tasks on its own. It’s interesting that my two year old human child is roughly around this same stage – he has thoroughly mastered a couple of these tasks, like putting a ring on a stick or a peg in a hole. He is still getting the hang of others, like sticking together legos and screwing on a lid. He has other skills though that I doubt the robot has, like making fart jokes and flirting with pretty girls (which sometimes go together at this age).

February 2015 in Review

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This blog got 173 hits in February! Pretty cool, considering I really just meant it as a place to collect my own scattered thoughts and refer back to them later. If 173 out of the 6 billion people out there like it, I am flattered. Okay, I understand there may have been a few repeat visitors. Also, judging from the most popular posts, there is one thing I mention occasionally that people really like: robots!

Negative trends and predictions:

  • Fresh Air had an interview with Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction. The idea here is that what humans are doing to other species is equivalent in scope to events that have killed off most life on Earth in the past.
  • The drought in the western U.S. continues to grind on.
  • There are some depressing new books out there about all the bad things that could happen to the world, from nuclear terrorism to pandemics. Also a “financial black hole”, a “major breakdown of the Internet”, “the underpopulation bomb”, the “death of death”, and more!
  • Government fragmentation explains at least part of suburban sprawl and urban decline in U.S. states, with Pennsylvania among the worst.

Positive trends and predictions:

  • Libraries are starting to go high-tech using warehouse robot technology.
  • I had a rambling post on technologies to watch: carbon fiber, the internet of things, self-driving cars and trucks, biotechnology for everything from carbon sequestration to cancer treatment to agriculture, and of course more automation, robots, and artificial intelligence. And yes, Clark W. Griswold’s cereal varnish is a real thing!
  • U.S. utility solar capacity is slowly ramping up.
  • A new study suggests a sudden, catastrophic climate tipping point may not be too likely.
  • Robots can independently develop new drugs.
  • According to Google, self-driving taxis are only 2-5 years away.
  • Complex ecosystems can be designed.
  • Compost toilets may save the world…if we can get over the ick factor and the sawdust problem.
  • There are lots of cheap new options for the aspiring high-tech handymen (and women and children) among us. Even better news, we may have reached the point where if you build a robot with your kid in the basement, and he then tells other kids about it, he might not get beat up on the playground.
  • New York City has some good examples of green stormwater infrastructure integrated in sidewalk and street design.

One thing that strikes me is that we keep hearing about biotechnology, but we haven’t seen big, obvious impacts in most of our daily lives yet. I suspect biotechnology is like computers and robots in the 70s, 80s, and 90s – slow but steady progress was being made in the background, the pressure was building, and then the wave suddenly broke onto the commercial and public consciousness. I suspect biotechnology is the next big wave that is going to break.

DIY programming and robotics stuff

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Here’s some programming and robotics stuff that could be useful for education and do-it-yourself projects around the house. Oh, the things I could do if I didn’t have to work for a living…

  • The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a capable little device that enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to learn how to program in languages like Scratch and Python. It’s capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games.

  • Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for anyone making interactive projects.

  • VEX IQ is a robotics platform designed to transform STEM learning for young students and their teachers. Students as young as 8 can jump right in and snap robots together using this intuitive, toolless platform while educators can utilize the free VEX IQ Curriculum to help teach them valuable lessons and skills that are needed in today’s changing world. The VEX IQ Challenge, presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, gives students affordable access to the inspiration, excitement and learning that comes from participating in a STEM challenge.