AIAR Weekly #20

Annoucement:
 This is last, and as you can see, incomplete issue of AIAR Weekly. AIAR Weekly was very interesting experiment, and based on results from it, I decided to suspend it without due date. Thanks you very much for reading my materials and following news from world of artificial intelligence and robotics! I hope that my work was usable to someone. See you soon on my other projects and experiments!

AIAR Weekly

Issue #20

22.04.2016

Articles and videos:

• [AI] 3D Visualization of a Convolutional Neural Network - Neat real time 3D visualization of CNN. You can adjust your handwriting and see how it is affecting results from neural network.
• [AI] Machine Learning Recipes with Josh Gordon - Google just started short video tutorials series dedicated to ML. There are two videos for now based on scikit, but they promise harder and harder topics and usage of tensor flow in further materials. Nice place to start with machine learning.
• [AI] A dummy’s guide to Deep Learning (part 3 of 3) - Third and last part in simple introduction to deep learning. This time, author prepared some hands on examples for playing with MNIST data set.

Crowdfunding:

• [R] Codeybot: New Robot Who Teaches Coding - Codeybot is a simple robot which is designed to combine free play fun with teaching to program actual physical device. It looks very modern and based on presentation it gives positive look and feel.

Book of the week:

• [AI] Artificial Intelligence for Humans, Volume 3: Deep Learning and Neural Networks - Third book in a series dedicated to teaching different artificial intelligence methods. This time, author focuses on explaining neural networks and deep learning possibilities.

Courses:

• [AI] Machine Learning: Regression - "In this course, you will explore regularized linear regression models for the task of prediction and feature selection. You will be able to handle very large sets of features and select between models of various complexity. You will also analyze the impact of aspects of your data -- such as outliers -- on your selected models and predictions. To fit these models, you will implement optimization algorithms that scale to large datasets."

Jobs:

• [AI] Computer Vision / Machine Learning Engineer @ Cruise - Cruise looking for skilled engineers for developing autonomous car systems. If you have some experience in machine learning, this might be good option for you. Location: San Francisco, USA. Tags: python, c++, theano, caffe, computer-vision.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena, Mucha

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #19

AIAR Weekly

Issue #19

15.04.2016

Featured material:

• [R] Watch Google X Unleash Awesome Two-Legged Robot on Tokyo - Since beginning of Robotics Weekly (now called Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Weekly), when I was presenting robots, very often those robots were human inspired. Newest robot from Google X is slightly different. Basically, it is "just" legs with some electronics and batteries as a center of mass between them. But surprisingly, it behaves and walks quite effortless. The problem for now is that, it doesn't have any hands. Bud does it need them?

Articles and videos:

• [AI] The Pitfalls of Deep Learning - What shortcomings do you see with deep learning? This question was originally asked on Quora, and  Oren Etzioni tries to explain her view point on current limitations of Deep Learning.
• [R] What can we learn from Robot Athletes? - How to stimulate research and development in robotics? Design decathlon competitions and let people challenge them with their creations. With this approach you can develop really robust and unbreakable systems. TED talk by Jacky Baltes.
• [AI] A dummy’s guide to Deep Learning (part 2 of 3) - Continuation of simple course which has to give better view on Deep Learning.
• [R] The Quest For Lifelike robots - Never too much of good infographics. This time authors from futurism.com developed infographics dedicated to robots which are designed to look as much alike humans as possible. Worth to check.
• [AI] Neural Network Playground - Ever wanted to check out those neural networks but you were afraid of math? Fear no more! On this website, you can easily set-up simple neural network and solve simple problem with it immediately. You can also observe its progress with every iteration. Cool stuff.
• [R] How babies can inspire us to build intelligent robot - In this TED talk, Alex Pitti presents his view on idea, that to really develop intelligence, you should give it body, and some senses, so it can learn and perceive surrounding world as average toddler can.
• [AI] Announcing TensorFlow 0.8 - Latest release of open source deep learning framework adds support for distributed computing. Thanks to it, some models can be easily trained in hours vs in weeks if you only have enough computational power.
• [AI] Deep learning: the truth behind the hype - If you are not too eager to jump into deep learning hype train, this article might reinforce your feelings. It also shows advantages and disadvantages of deep learning, and some ideas how to combine it with other techniques in the future.

Crowdfunding:

• [R] PurpleKit - PurpleKit is all-in-one box, aimed to help amateur tinkers with collecting their supplies for projects. It contains various pieces of aluminum, bolts, screws and similar stuff. I assume, based on interest, that every tinker want rather to gather such components on his/her own, than just buy box with most popular parts. I'm wrong maybe on this?

Book of the week:

• [AI] Artificial Intelligence for Humans, Volume 2: Nature-Inspired Algorithms - Second book in a series. This time, author focuses on algorithms closely related to biology and nature in general, for example: genetic mutation and cellular automats.

Courses:

• [AI] Machine Learning Foundations: A Case Study Approach - "In this course, you will get hands-on experience with machine learning from a series of practical case-studies. At the end of the first course you will have studied how to predict house prices based on house-level features, analyze sentiment from user reviews, retrieve documents of interest, recommend products, and search for images. Through hands-on practice with these use cases, you will be able to apply machine learning methods in a wide range of domains."

Jobs:

• [R] Robotics Software Engineer @ Applied Minds - Applied Minds is a company which provides various consulting solutions for its clients. They aim to build interdisciplinary teams which work together towards finding best solution for targeted problems. They also looking for robotics specialist this time. Location: Burbank, USA. Tags: python, c++, ros, opencv, slam.

Humor:

• [R] Simone Giertz's Popcorn Machine! - Totally must have device for next season of Game of Thrones!

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena, Mucha

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #18

AIAR Weekly

Issue #18

08.04.2016

Featured material:

• [R] Engineer Explains: Lidar - Very short but complete article about concept of lidar. Must read material for "seeing" robotics newbies ;)

Articles and videos:

• [R] Killerdrone - Some time ago someone attached a gun to a drone. And it was pretty dangerous proof of concept. This time, two Finnish farmers attached something less lethal but way much scary. You have to see it for yourself.
• [AI] A dummy’s guide to Deep Learning (part 1 of 3) - First part of this guide wouldn't give you hands on snippets and source code, but "just" tell you some basic information about deep learning. Author promises that in next parts there will be more technical materials. Lets see.
• [R] Could a Robot Be a Bona Fide Hero? - TEDx talk by Prof. Selmer Bringsjord. In this talk, he presents his view on heroic actions done by robots, and he discusses problems with moral classifications of heroic and civic actions.
• [R] Delivery Drones To Be Used in Rwanda to Ferry Medical Supplies - I believe that this was just matter of time, but somehow that time was too long in my opinion. Finally someone will test transportation of medical supplies by drones. I hope that this will be great success!
• [AI] Deep Learning and the Future of AI - Fresh talk from CERN. Yann LeCun discusses recent breakthroughs in AI research and tries to predict future :).
• [R] Robots Podcast #205: Hadrian Bricklaying Robot, with Mark Pivac - Would you like to build whole house from bricks just in two days? Soon, thanks to this Australian company, you will be able. Maybe not personally but with help from their pretty sophisticated and neat machine ;).

Crowdfunding:

• [R] JetPack - Bluetooth Shield for Arduino Robots - There is too much Arduino shields already... said no one ever! This time shield will have Bluetooth module for wireless communication and motor controller. Fundraising is already successful, but I still recommend it.

Book of the week:

• [AI] Artificial Intelligence for Humans, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms - Volume 1 of Artificial Intelligence for Humans series is effect of Kickstarter campaign. Jeff Heaton selects some starting level and fundamental algorithms related to machine learning and artificial intelligence and presents them in very simple way. He also provides source code for examples in most popular languages. I didn't had a chance to read this book, but for that price it looks like nice starting point for further education in AI.
   

Courses:

• [R] Introduction to Haptics - "Participants in this class will learn how to build, program, and control haptic devices, which are mechatronic devices that allow users to feel virtual or remote environments. In the process, participants will gain an appreciation for the capabilities and limitations of human touch, develop an intuitive connection between equations that describe physical interactions and how they feel, and gain practical interdisciplinary engineering skills related to robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, bioengineering, and computer science."

Jobs:

• [R] Autonomous Driving Software Developer @ Bosch - When I'm thinking about Bosch I'm usually thinning about car related hardware or tools used in building construction. But it seems that Bosch also invests in autonomous cars technology. If you are robotics nerd, you can add Bosch to your interesting company lists. Location: Palo Alto, USA. Tags: c++, ros, linux, python, algorithms.

Humor:

• Sadly I didn't found nothing funny this time ;(

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena, Mucha

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #17

AIAR Weekly

Issue #17

01.04.2016

Featured material:

• [AI] Where do minds belong? - Essay about idea that mechanical/electronic intelligence may be not optimal in terms of energy consumption and maybe after its developments it will go back to biological mechanisms like human brain. Quite interesting view on potential evolutionary path.

Articles and videos:

• [R] Past, present, future of surgical robotics for fracture surgery - I'm not a big fan of surgeries. Actually, I'm not sure if anyone is a fan of surgeries. In general, fracture surgeries are quite complicated and not funny for patients and surgeons. In this TED video Sanja Dogramadzi demonstrates her approach to tackling this problem with robotics. Their prototype is not ready to perform surgeries yet, but it looks very promising and who knows, maybe it will operate you ;).
• [AI] A Japanese AI program just wrote a short novel, and it almost won a literary prize - Did you ever felt proud after writing sort or maybe even long fiction text? Did you felt that this text was so abstract that only you could write it in such form? Well, it seems that soon artificial intelligence writers might start to write their own novels and they will be at least as good as those written by humans. No job is secure now?
• [AI] Artificial Intelligence & Music as a Communications Medium - Not every TED talk starts with drum solo. This time, Sean Holden explains his views on idea that human level artificial intelligence is just around corner, and why he believe it is not a case yet.
• [AI] The Near Future of AI: The Road to Super Intelligent Apps and Machines - What could our smartphone do, if we harness AI into applications? Standard risks still applies.

Crowdfunding:

• [R] Cubetto - Cubetto creators have very high ambitions. They want to start teaching programming three years old kids, with robots. And with such cute wooden robot and simple brick programming board it seems as quite achievable goal. Definitely worth checking.

Book of the week:

• [R] Robotics: Everything You Need to Know About Robotics From Beginner to Expert (Robotics Mastery, Robotics 101) - Very short "book" which should get you familiar with basic concepts of robotics.

Courses:

• Nothing interesting this time ;(.

Jobs:

• [AI] Software Engineer - Computer Vision @ Skydio - In previous issue of AIAR Weekly I presented product from Skydio team - autonomous and very sophisticated drone. If you are interested in designing computer vision system which can be used in such devices - Skydio team might be perfect place for you. Location: Redwood City, USA. Tags: slam, c++, deep-learning, neural-networks, software-design.

Humor:

• [R] Introducing the self-driving bicycle in the Netherlands - Where can I buy it?

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena, Mucha

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #16

AIAR Weekly

Issue #16

25.03.2016

Featured material:

• [AI] Google Cloud Machine Learning - Ever wanted to build business based on powerful machine learning tools and maybe even deep learning techniques, but infrastructure hold you up? Now you can use almost the same infrastructure as Google, based on offering from Google. In their service, you should be able to easily use tensor flow or other frameworks and integrate them nicely with other Google services. It seems that only sky (and wallet) is the limit now.

Articles and videos:

• [R] Boeing’s Monstrous Underwater Robot Can Wander the Ocean for 6 Months - Underwater robots is a topic that I'm trying to represent here as often as possible. This time, you can read article about newest product from Boeing company. And no, it isn't a airplane. ;)
• [AI] Scientific Research in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - If you are doing research, you often struggle with manual matching publications and other materials. Some cool information are scattered on the edge on your scope and looks seemingly unrelated. What about building AI designed to visually connect those publications and present them to you in a way that immediately shows their relations. Maria Ritola and her team build such tool and called it Iris. I wonder how doing scientific research will look in the future.
• [R] Skydio's Camera Drone Finally Delivers on Autonomous Flying Promises - Yet another drone which promises possibility to follow moving target and simultaneously avoid different emerging obstacles. But this time, creators of Skydio claims that their drone not only safely avoid obstacles but also maps its surroundings and dynamically calculates optimum path to travel. But still no actual product to buy on market.
• [AI] Microsoft deletes 'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours - Lets develop Twitter bot which will be AI and have ability to learn from its discussion partners. What can go wrong? Well... it seems that in case of "Tay" wrong things escalated pretty quick. I believe that this is another hint about developing safety circuits into every general purpose artificial intelligence.
• [R] Robots Podcast #204: Satellite Assembly in Space, with John Lymer - This time John Lymer tells a story about his experience in designing and building space robots. He also explains general idea of building precise and agile robots designed to fix, operate and deploy satellites in space. Quite nice bit of space robotics.
• [R] 6 Reasons Why Industry Needs to Be Agile as Software to Survive - Article about general trends in modern industry. Topics like 3d printing, robotics, sensors networks and automation are discussed there.
• [AI] What if we could be inspired by AI? - In this TEDx talk, Alex Berman and Valencia James presents combination of dance and artificial intelligence with glitches. My art sense is probably too limited to fully enjoy this presentation. Can you tell me meaning of it?

Crowdfunding:

• [R] ZeroBorg - Since Raspberry Pi Zero is on the market for some time, it is time that we can expect Zero size add-on boards flooding DIY online shops. This time, PiBorg group is crowdfunding their latest motor controller board for Raspberry Pi Zero. They seems to be experienced with this type of add-ons and price also seems to be reasonable.

Book of the week:

• [AI] Python Machine Learning - This time I would like to point you to something more practical - machine learning done with Python programming language and its tools. This book is quite fresh and has lot of positive reviews.

Courses:

• [R] Mobile Robotics - "What will I learn? What is, and what is not a robot – and more specifically, a mobile robot. Why we need robots. What subsystems robots are made up of. Different ways that mobile robots can move themselves around, and which are most suitable for different environments. How a variety of sensors receive information about the environment around then. Ways to classify sensors: proprioceptive vs exteroceptive; active vs passive. How a feedback system works. That robots follow logical sequential instructions in order to function. To create basic flow diagrams and pseudo code to program what a robot will do. How to develop a list of design requirements for a robotic system. How to design, implement and troubleshoot a robotic system."

Jobs:

• [R] Electronics Design Engineer @ PiBorg - If you liked board from this issue of AIAR Weekly Crowdfunding link and you would like to work with PiBorg team on designing their future inventions, this job might fit you perfectly. Location: Near St.Ives, Cambridgeshire, UK. Tags: circuit-design, soldering, python, linux, raspberry-pi.

Humor:

• [R] Sock Removal Robot - [gore warning] Ha, I bet everyone would like to have such invention in his/her home!

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena, Mucha

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #15

AIAR Weekly

Issue #15

18.03.2016

Featured material:

• [AI] Move 37 - The final result for 5 matches of Go between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol is 4 to 1. In this article you can read about possible mistake or maybe master move (since AlphaGo won after all) which AI did against human opponent. What do you think, was it mistake or rather something beyond our understanding?

Articles and videos:

• [R] Robot Revolution: These Are the Breakthroughs You Should Watch - In issue 13 of AIAR Weekly I presented link to summary and predictions related to drones industry. This time I'm presenting link to similar article in which Rodney Brooks summarizes breakthroughs and predictions related to robotics industry.
• [AI] Korea Government to invest 1 tln won in artificial intelligence - South Korea government decided to join the wave of funding research related to AI and they will boost local enterprises and research facilities with equivalent of US$840 milions. Are they afraid that they lost lead in Go competitions? ;)
• [R] iRobot’s Braava Jet Mopping Robot Is Small, Smart, and Not Round - Again link about floor cleaning robot? Boring you can say? I'm big fan of utilitarian robots, so this implies that I'm also big fan of something such trivial as cleaning robot. Believe me or not, being surrounded with hi-tech devices I'm still most impressed when I can observe such robots in actions. I hadn't chance to test this Braava little fellow, but I definitely try when I will have occasion.
• [AI] Google Beating Grandmaster Sedol Is Bigger Than IBM Beating Kasparov - If you still have no idea what is the deal with AlphaGo, in this link you can read nice summary of whole 5 matches Go duel between man and machine.
• [R] Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat - It seems that there are rumors that Google will sell Boston Dynamics to other technological companies. I'm not sure why exactly or if those rumors are close to truth but we will probably find that out soon.
• [AI] Is Casual Discovery The Most Interesting Facet Of Machine Learning? - In this Q&A article you can read answers to following questions answered by Isabelle Guyon: 1) How should one start a career in machine learning? 2) What level of mathematical knowledge is required to learn machine learning? 3) Whose or what lab’s research in machine learning do you find the most interesting? Go and check it if you are interested in her opinion.
• [R] Walking and Running: Bio-Inspired Robotics - How do you defining running? And walking? Is your definition applicable to robots? Jonathan Hurst and his team from Oregon State University analyzed many materials related to human and animal movements and they proposed mathematical model of walking. Then they build a robot and ... you will have to watch it because I will not spoil that video for you ;).
• [AI] IQ2 Debate: Don't Trust The Promise Of Artificial Intelligence - Quite lengty debate about pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence. One of arguments for watching it is that on the cons side there is Martine Rothblatt - one of my favorite entrepreneurs. Who will win audience?

Crowdfunding:

• [R] Maximo Robot Arm - Another desktop robotic arm. This time it looks slightly heavier and more complicated but author promises modular "hands" so it might have greater educational value. It seems slightly overpriced to be widely available, but maybe further iterations will be cheaper.

Book of the week:

• [AI] Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality - OK, maybe categorizing this book from Max Tegmark as AI book is misleading. This book is rather general approach to combine our knowledge about mathematics, physics and overall science into some probable theories. It seems like worth try lecture.

Courses:

• [AI] Machine Learning - "This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition. Topics include: (i) Supervised learning (parametric/non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks). (ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning). (iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias/variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI). The course will also draw from numerous case studies and applications, so that you'll also learn how to apply learning algorithms to building smart robots (perception, control), text understanding (web search, anti-spam), computer vision, medical informatics, audio, database mining, and other areas."

Jobs:

• [AI] Software Engineer III - Artificial Intelligence Group @ NASA JPL - NASA, one of most interesting organizations in the world. People working there are designing space related missions decades before they will be started. It seems that they are looking for people which will help them connecting artificial intelligence technologies with robots and other equipment which might be used in future. Location: Pasadena, United States. Tags: c++, artificial-intelligence, ruby, php, software-development.

Humor:

• [R] Professionals at work - If only everyone had such attitude to perform such work ;).

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #14

AIAR Weekly

Issue #14

11.03.2016

Featured material:

• [AI] Artificial Intelligence & Apocalypse - Another link about total destruction of whole humanity. And to add more thrill to it, this video is from two talks given to United Nation VIPs. Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom tray to convince UN to support research about safety in artificial intelligence realm.

Articles and videos:

• [R] DRL Miami Lights Finals - Drone Racing League is probably fastest racing league in the world. Pilots racing drones there have to face many obstacles and turns and make decisions in milliseconds. On proposed video you can watch finals held in Miami.
• [AI] Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo match 2 - Some time ago, when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in chess, some of my friends said, that this is nothing special, and we will have to wait long time to see computer beat humans in Go game. It seems that just recently AlphaGo from DeepMind just bet Lee Sedol (one of best go players in the world) two times. Are we watching history being made?
• [R] Robots Podcast #203: Agilic and PiBot, with Harry Gee - Podcast about building educational robotics startup based on Raspberry Pi.  Harry Gee explains his motivations and discuss most tough and most exciting things he found during his company operations.
• [R] Pibot - Pibot and tiddly bot are two educational sets from Agilic (mentioned above). Those two sets are designed to easily start without no previous experience but also allows to free experimentation with own constructions.
• [R] Samsung's latest vacuum bot is a solid Roomba competitor - Personally I'm big fan of Roomba vacuum cleaner. I'm not experienced yet in picking best vacuum cleaner, but when I was buying Roomba there were overall opinions that Samsung can't compete with them. It seems now, that they worked hard to catch up competition. Anyone here has experience with it?
• [AI] Tool: 31 Resources to Learn AI & Deep Learning, From Beginner to Advanced - Nice and short article with spreadsheet containing links to various materials related to deep learning.
• [AI] AI Weekly - Weekly newsletter about artificial intelligence. It seems like competition for me, but to hell with that - I like to have someone to compete with ;).
• [R] Continuous-Time Trajectory Optimization for Online UAV Replanning - Fresh video from ETH Zurich. This time they show how their drones make decisions about which route to take to arrive to selected point. I'm looking forward to see this in actual forest.

Crowdfunding:

• [R] Kamibot - Kamibot is Arduino based educational robot with twist. The twist is that it can be modificated with origami based "bodies" so anyone can easily give it personal touch.

Book of the week:

• [AI] Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - In previous issue of AIAR Weekly I linked to cool blog post about superintelligence. This time I would like to present book which more or less touches the same topic. Even Elon Musk and Bill Gates recommends to read it.

Courses:

• [AI] CS408: Advanced Artificial Intelligence - "This course will present advanced topics in Artificial Intelligence (AI).  We will begin by defining the term "software agent” and discussing how software agents differ from programs in general.  We will then take a look at those problems in the field of AI that tend to receive the most attention.  Different researchers approach these problems differently.  In this course, we will focus on how to build and search graph data structures needed to create software agents, an approach that you will find useful for solving many problems in AI.  We will also learn to "break down” larger problems into a number of more specific, manageable sub-problems."

Jobs:

• [AI] Software Engineer @ Connectifier - Hiring new employees is always some kind of problem for practically every company. Connectifier tries to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to find right person for right opening. Location: San-Francisco, United States. Tags: java, c++, machine-learning, algorithms, artificial-intelligence.

Humor:

• [R] Simone's robots - Simone Giertz has Youtube channel where she presents her unusual robotics constructions. And unusual is really "soft" description of her inventions ;).

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

AIAR Weekly #13

Annoucement:
Hello fellow readers. When I started this newsletter I was pretty fresh in robotics topics. During previous 12 issues I become more and more familiar with it, and I found that it is very hard to talk about robots without talking about artificial intelligence. So I decided to include links about artificial intelligence and change name of this newsletter to Artificial Intelligence And Robotics Weekly -   AIAR Weekly. I will mark every link with appropriate prefix, so if you are interested in only one topic you will be able to skip uninteresting links. I hope that new form of this newsletter will offer more complete experience on those two related, but different topics.

AIAR Weekly

Issue #13

04.03.2016

Featured material:

• [AI] The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence - This is pretty old "news" but I think that it is one of best materials which can explain problem with artificial superintelligence. Especially potential dangers of superintelligence and why should we bother about it. Mentioning this article is also inauguration of AI part of this newsletter. Don't forget to read second part which is even more interesting!

Articles and videos:

• [R] Nixie - Nixie is yet another drone designed to record video and take photos of targeted persons. But there is small plot twist - Nixie comes in form of wrist band which makes extremely handy and portable. Team behind Nixie presented working prototype and it seems that they are not running crowdfunding campaign (which is very popular business strategy in drones startups recently) which is very promising combination.
• [R] Drones Have Reached a Tipping Point—Here’s What Happens Next - Drones and drones development are constant hot topic in this newsletter. In this article, Peter Diamandis asks Chris Anderson to identify top 5 recent and 5 anticipated breakthroughs in drones area. Worth to at lest check those points.
• [AI] The Future of Artificial Intelligence - Fresh recording from talk about newest developments and potential impact presented by Demis Hassabis - CEO of DeepMind. Slightly longish, but very interesting.
• [R] Raspberry Pi 3 on sale now at $35 - There is always at least small celebration and euphoria in DIY community when there is a premiere of new iteration of Raspberry Pi computers. This time we will receive RasPi with 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU (~10x the performance of Raspberry Pi 1) with Integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1. Do I have to point it as a nice IoT starter device?
• [R] Monkeys Navigate a Wheelchair With Their Thoughts - I love to see such amazing research results. Although it is not robotics related per se, it shows possibilities of connecting human (well, monkey to be exact) brain to electronic/mechanical object in a way, that the "brain" of this combination can select direction of movement. It seems like something extremely useful to totally paralyzed persons.
• [R] The ROAR project - I'm afraid that after further development and optimization of this project there could be massive layoffs of trash removing employees. And from technical point of view, this example shows great synergy in using drones and on ground vehicles. 
• [R] How A Robotic Octopus Could Help Us Control Autonomous Drone Swarms - Article about interesting idea of building robot which will consist couple of autonomous "brains" but connected with each other to collectively work for benefit of whole entity.
• [R] Pepper - Pepper is robotic companion specializing in perception of emotions. Designed for interactions in commercial places it could be also "adopted" as a part of family.

Crowdfunding:

• [R] EPOR - EPOR is abbreviation for Educational Programming Oriented Robot. Which more or less means that this small robot is designed to be easily programmed with Scratch 2.0, Ardublock and S4A. It might be not as powerful as other robots presented here, but it seems like it might be nice physical device used early education programming classes.

Book of the week:

• [AI] Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era - James Barrat explains deeply, possible problems with potential artificial super intelligence. He analyzes topics summarized in above featured article. This book is "A Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013" so it seems to be worth to read.

Courses:

• [AI] CS405: Artificial Intelligence - "CS405 introduces the field of artificial intelligence (AI).  Materials on AI programming, logic, search, game playing, machine learning, natural language understanding, and robotics introduce the student to AI methods, tools, and techniques, their application to computational problems, and their contribution to understanding intelligence.  Because each of these topics could be a course unto itself, the material is introductory and not complete.  Each unit presents the problem a topic addresses, current progress, and approaches to the problem.  The readings include and cite more materials that are referenced in this course, and students are encouraged to use these resources to pursue topics of interest after this course."

Jobs:

• [AI] Research Scientist @ OpenAI - If Elon Musk is afraid of destructive potential of artificial intelligence, you know that this is serious matter. OpenAI is non profit organization which aims to research and develop idea of friendly and safe AI which will in the end operate for benefit of mankind. OpenAI just started, but they are open for hiring new extraordinary researchers. Location: San-Francisco, United States. Tags: deep-learning, open-source, research, machine-learning, artificial-intelligence.

Humor:

• [R] Creepy Japanese Crawling Robot - I'm not sure if this should fall into humor category, but I cannot find anything which will fit better on this newsletter :D.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot/AI fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of AIAR Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe AIAR Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #12

Robotics Weekly

Issue #12

26.02.2016

Featured material:

• Meet the dazzling flying machines of the future - Again guys (and girls?) from ETH Zürich. As usually they are presenting bleeding edge practical results of their research related to UAVs. They are researching reliability, safety, robustness, agility and cooperation abilities. Now, they are presenting something new, but it seems that those ideas will arrive to our households in next few year.

Articles and videos:

• Atlas, The Next Generation - I must confess that when I saw latest video from Boston Dynamics I had mixed feelings. Main feeling was more or less "Wow! This is awesome! Look how it holds doors to avoid being hit by them!". But then I remembered that BD is military subsidized company and that make me sad. Of course, those projects can always led to products used in non military environments. But I would like to see such achievements rather for more pacifist company.
• Automation and Employment - Another podcast from Robohub. This time Michael Osborne presents his findings based on analysis of employment marked and its future in context of more and more advanced robotics. During his research he found that there are bad but also good "futures" and that we certainly shouldn't ignore forthcoming robotic revolution.
• This Remarkable Robot Hand Is Worthy of Luke Skywalker - This is indisputably best tele-operated hand at this moment. It is not clear yet how long it will take to use such hand as prosthesis. But it still is very impressive in context of tele-operations.
• Underwater robot can make its own snap decisions - What fauna and flora is hidden from humans eyes in depths of oceans? There are many mysteries to uncover there, and we might be one step closer to reveal them with this autonomous underwater vehicles. I guess that we just need longer lasting batteries and we might start releasing such machines for weeks or months long missions.
• Robot allows musicians to become three-armed drummers - I would totally bet on company that will try to augment humans by adding them additional pair of robotic hands. Here you have example of additional hand which is used for playing on percussion. The trick here is that this hand learns habits of its "host" so he can actually collaborate with it in crating music.
• Vibrating Bat Wings Inspire Efficient Sea-Skimming Drones - Not sure if you would like to have quick unmanned boat or airplane? Why not both? Well... maybe not both on the same time. In this construction you can observe lightweight skeleton wrapped with special material which changes its properties which enables more control of it. I'm just not sure if it can be easily scaled.
• Meet the soft, cuddly robots of the future - Will robots of the future be soft? Well, maybe not every one, but at least some of them.
• Drone Racing League | Level 1: Miami Lights - "It is like Formula 1 in drones" my wife said, and I could totally agree with her. Biggest difference is that when someone crashes in F1 you feel pity, here you are laughing and waiting for someone else to crash ;). Totally worth to watch.

Crowdfunding:

• Ardusea: Opensource modular sailing robot - Very interesting project, especially in context of Ocean Discovery Xprize. I didn't found if this project is using Arduino (because of naming similarity) or something else as CPU, but I'm afraid that it might be slightly overpriced - you will receive actual Ardusea when you support campaign with 1500 USD. Anyway, it might be worth to at least observe it.

Book of the week:

• Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future - This time I recommend something non-technical. There are some predictions about trends in robots as market labor. In his book, Martin Ford tries to precise his predictions about rising possibilities of robotics and artificial intelligence and its impact on average household and economy.

Courses:

• Control of Mobile Robots - "Control of Mobile Robots is a course that focuses on the application of modern control theory to the problem of making robots move around in safe and effective ways. The structure of this class is somewhat unusual since it involves many moving parts - to do robotics right, one has to go from basic theory all the way to an actual robot moving around in the real world, which is the challenge we have set out to address through the different pieces in the course."

Jobs:

• Deep Learning R&D Engineer - Autonomous Driving @ Nvidia - If you started to play computer games in 90's your first "meeting" with Nvidia was probably when you though about upgrading your computer to something more powerful at some point. Well, it isn't secret that Nvidia is working on something else than graphical cards. This time interested persons will have opportunity to work on machine learning systems in context of self-driving cars. Location: Morganville, United States. Tags: deep-learning, computer-vision, c++, ros, c.

Humor:

• Yellow Drum Machine - I saw this cute one ages ago on Internet and casually forgot about it. Now I found it again and I'm still amused.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #11

Robotics Weekly

Issue #11

19.02.2016

Featured material:

• A robot that runs and swims like a salamander - Although this Ted talk has salamander in title, author refers to way wider topic which is biorobotics.  He presents their team approach to analyze biological entities, and their team ideas to mimics animals movement in robotics.

Articles and videos:

• Robots Podcast #201: The Airbus Shopfloor Challenge, with Curtis Carson - In this short podcast, author from RoboHub interviews Airbus employee and talks about areas where Airbus expects to use robots in near future. There is also discussion about next IEEE conference and robotics competition co organized by Airbus.
• Drone Racing League - It seems like new professional and visually spectacular sport competitions just emerged. Despite that drones used there are not autonomous, we can still enjoy great races.
• Top 10: Swarmbots - Quite nice compilation from Make magazine summarizing so called swarmbots which are usually small robots designed to cooperate with them selves in large groups. 
• Vortex: Robotic Toy Re-invented - Vortex is a simple robotics toy based on Arduino. It is designed especially for kids, but authors promise open API which could be used to produce more sophisticated applications. It is effect of recent successful campaign from Kickstarter.
• Robotic Fingers with a Gentle Touch - When we are thinking about robots, we are usually thinking about them as mobile constructions which can't delicately take something and hold it. In this case, situation is just opposite. This robotic "fingers" are designed especially to delicately hold objects, even such fragile as raw eggs.
• Watch DARPA's tiny drone do 45 MPH indoors, autonomously - This prototype could probably start in DRL mentioned above. Or at least it seems that it could compete with human controlled drones on straight and simple tracks.
• Playing Catch and Juggling with a Humanoid Robot - It seems that soon robots will outperform humans in circus tricks related to juggling. Anyway, in worst case, such robot could be nice companion for mindless throwing ball ;).
• Create Teeny Tiny Solar Insect Robots - If you ever wonder what robot would be small, simple, easy to build and functional, you might encounter on something similar to this solar powered "bugs". They seems to be easy to construct and can give some experience with solar powered constructions. 

Crowdfunding:

• Dumy: The family robot - Another example of home helping caring robot. Or at least ambitious approach to it. I'm not sure if it isn't to early to start crowdfunding campaign - after all, its inventor didn't presented working prototype yet. But I let you decide on you own.

Book of the week:

• Intermediate Robot Building (Technology in Action) - Continuation of Robot Building for Beginners by David Cook. Second book focuses on more advanced topics but can also be read independently if someone already have some background in electronics and don't want to waste time on basics.

Courses:

• Autonomous Mobile Robots - It is always good time to learn something new. If you would like to learn some basics about concepts related to autonomous mobile robots, you can always enroll to this self paced MOOC organized by ETH Zürich (institution often mentioned in Robotics Weekly). After carefully following this course you will be familiar with environment perception, probabilistic map basic localization and motion planning.

Jobs:

• Software engineer @ NCCR digital fabrication, ETH Zürich - If you ever dream about constructing big and non trivial structures with robots, this job might be right for you. Warning, this position is research position, so you should have some scientific experience and drive toward solid scientific research. Location: Zürich, Switzerland. Tags: python, c, c++, ros, cad.

Humor:

• Beer Pong Robot - I didn't had a chance to play beer pong even once in my life, but I'm afraid that I would loose anyway if I had to play against it.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #10

Robotics Weekly

Issue #10

12.02.2016

Featured material:

• AAAI Video Competition 2016 - AI Video Competition is people choice competition organized yearly, as part of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. I'm afraid that it might be to late to participate in voting, but I think it is still worth to watch at least some of the videos, especially that their length is about 5 minutes each.

Articles and videos:

• BionicOpter - Everyone of us is more or less familiar with concept of airplane, balloon, helicopter or its multiple rotor cousins. But it seems, that apart of them, there are other possibilities to achieve stable and effective flight. One of them is "dragonfly" type of motion. It seems that this UAV is quite fragile and have to be lightweight, but on the other hand it looks like it is moving freely with great grace.
• Crabfu - When we are thinking about robots, we are usually thinking about constructions powered by electricity, eventually by gasoline engines. It is pretty rare to have robot powered by ... steam. It seems that in overall, such robots might be harder to construct, but when you have one, you only need to boil water somehow, and you have fully powered simple robot.
• Robo-One - Do you remember Dekinnoka from previous issue of Robotics Weekly? Now I would like to present you something similar but slightly more serious. I'm not exactly sure about details of this competition (I still didn't learn Japanese) but there are some videos worth watching anyway.
• Robots that fly ... and cooperate - TED talk by Vijay Kumar. If you are very interested in autonomous UAV you probably saw this talk. Sorry for that. Anyway, I find it as a nice summary and a profile of trends in drones industry.
• PETMAN Robot - If you though that this issue will be closed without Boston Dynamics robot, you are wrong ;). I'm not sure what actually happened to PETMAN (did he evolved into ATLAS?) but it is very hypnotizing to see him walking on that video synchronized to Stayin' Alive.
• Navy’s Robot Firefighter - And if we are in land of humanoid robots, I would like to present you SAFFiR - Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot. This robot is designed to fight fires on autonomous ships. Well, I bet that if it will be effective enough, it maybe will help with fighting fire on land and in buildings.
• Swarmanoid project - Usually I'm presenting here single entity robot or pack of small universal robots swarms. And how about single specialized robotic units collaborating with each other to achieve goal that any single of them weren't capable of? In this project, there are three distinct units which can communicate and collaborate with each other.
• Building Quadcopters, Drones and UAV's - In this instructable, author (eben89) shows how to plan, design and build simple and cheap drone. With step by step illustrations and descriptions it seems like anyone can consider joining quadrotor constructors club.

Crowdfunding:

• Aijia: Smart healthcare Robot - IMHO one of most promising possibilities for the future are caring robots. Aijia is current approach to this topic. Actually I wouldn't name it as robot - rather sophisticated interactive device. When I was analyzing this project I had mixed feelings. It looks too unpolished for its functions and slightly overpriced. Maybe future iterations of it will be more consistent and market ready. Anyway, check it for yourself.

Book of the week:

• Programming Robots with ROS: A Practical Introduction to the Robot Operating System - Fresh book dedicated to ROS directly from ROS founders and developers. Do we need more?

Courses:

• Mobile Robots and Autonomous Vehicles - Main objective of this MOOC is to teach most popular and effective techniques related to autonomous robotics movement and cars subsystems like: sensor-based mapping and localization, fusing noisy and multi-modal data to improve robustness and integrating human knowledge to be used for scene interpretation and decision making. General requirements for this course are basic notions of robotics, probabilities, linear algebra and Python.

Jobs:

• Robotics Scientist @ Bossa Nova - If you like to work in small university spin-off companies this might be interesting for your. Bossa Nova is currently looking for person which will deal with planning, simulating and testing robotics algorithm either in simulations and on real physical systems. Location: Pittsburgh, USA. Tags: machine-learning, matlab, c++, ros, linux.

Humor:

• Robots Falling Down at the DRC - More funny moments from DRC :D.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #9

Robotics Weekly

Issue #9

05.02.2016

Featured article:

• Dusseldorf airport receives RAY robotic parking system - I believe that mankind is wasting gigantic amount of time spent on ... parking a car. Yes, it seems like simple and quick task, but it sums to non trivial minutes and hours. One of flag features of autonomous cars is automatic parking and recalling, so potential driver (or should I write user, since we are talking about autonomous car?) could use this time on something else. But autonomous cars are still "behind the corner" and initially they will be to expensive to adapt on mass market. On the other hand, maybe solution is even simpler. As you can see in mentioned link, if you add careful enough robotic platform which can lift, transport and leave car, you will have autonomous parking which can save lot of time of your clients and even add "recall" function for classic "manned" cars. It is just pity that this is not much popular solution.

Articles and videos:

• RoBoHoN - Product from Japan ... designed with thinking about Japan. At least I think so. Because it is hard for me to imagine wider adaptation of this cute robo phone on European or US market. Or maybe I'm wrong and this walking and talking robo phone is our future?
• Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart - I like to observe self-healing structures. Of course, this implementation is far away form T-1000, but is still impressing.
• Bridge-Laying Lego NXT Robot - Lego group is designing and maintaining its most advanced bricks set called Mindstorms. There are some iterations of it, and they are pretty expensive for a bricks set. But if you stop thinking about them as just bricks sets and start to treat them as easy and powerful robotics construction set, everything stats to make sense. You can even design and prototype robots that will lay such temporary bridges on moon.
• Solar Chariot - There are stronger and bigger reasons to switch from traditional gasoline engines to electric one in personal transportation. One of the reasons is that electrical engines could be solar powered which makes them ecological and cheap in exploitation. I guess that inventor of this solar chariot was very ambitious and took those arguments deeply into his heart when he was constricting this vehicle. I'm just not sure if putting George Bush into it was giving him better overall performance of it ;).
• Harvard Monolithic Bee - As you can see, sometimes building robot part after part may be not optimal approach. I would like to see this constructing method implemented on bigger structures.
• HyTAQ Robot - Another example of nicely secured quad-rotor. And if you are living near airport, you can always just roll it on ground and still have fun :).
• JPL's RoboSimian - Since I started to post links about DARPA Robotics Challenge I would like to present you JPL entry from 2013. What can I say, it looks ... pretty universal and delicate on the same time. It looks like it is rather effective, but somehow it feels like very complicated to operate. What do you think?
• Smart Trashbox - OK, we have autonomous and smart vacuum cleaners, cars, drones and some other things, but I bet that you didn't know about autonomous and smart trashbox. Will it be must "have equipment" for sci-fi writer?

Crowdfunding:

• Hobby Hand - If you watched Terminator 2 then you probably remember scene with mechanical arm. When I was younger I was very impressed by this special effects and overall by this idea. Now there is possibility for you to have something similar in home. Slightly more colorful and less lethal but still mechanical hand.

Book of the week:

• Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming - If you are familiar with ROS and you would like to dive deeper into this topic, you might be interested by this book from Lentin Joseph. Author discusses different advanced topics related to ROS and shows many examples how to use most of its features. It seems like nice book to read in context of ROS, especially it is still fresh (release date: December 21, 2015).

Courses:

• Artificial Intelligence for Robotics - Course presented by Sebastian Thrun from Georgia Tech. You can start it anytime and you will learn how do design and implement artificial intelligence for self-driving cars. There is requirement for some basic algebra and Python programming skills, but nothing which you couldn't learn from other MOOCs before taking this course.

Jobs:

• Machine Vision Software Engineer - Some time ago I mentioned that Amazon is using about 30K of robots in their warehouses. It looks like if you have proper skills, you can join their engineers now and help on machine vision software. Location: North Reading, USA. Tags: vision-sensors, java, c++, ros, python.

Humor:

• Dragon Runner Robot - OK, maybe this robot is not funny at all, but the way it is presented is hilarious. I love it!

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

Archive

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0