Friday, April 22, 2016

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:
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:
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.

Friday, April 15, 2016

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:
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:
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.

Friday, April 8, 2016

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.

Friday, April 1, 2016

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:
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:
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:
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.