Рубрика: Robotics

Robot makers have pledged against the weaponization of robots including Boston Dynamics

Several robotics firms, including Boston Dynamics, the company behind the well-known quadruped robot Spot, vowed against the weaponization of robots. The vow is unlikely to have much of an impact on preventing the widespread use of this technology for weapons. An open letter addressed to the robotics industry was published.

The firms stated in an open letter to the whole robotics industry that they “think that putting robots weaponization that is remotely or autonomously operated… creates significant dangers of harm and serious ethical considerations.” This was first reported by Axios. The following companies signed the letter: Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree Robotics. “We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables war robots and we will not support others to do so,” the signatory states. Robots, like drones, are much more peaceful and are life-saving.

The letter comes as concerns regarding the use of a new breed of highly mobile, autonomous robots by armies and law enforcement have grown. These include bipedal robots and quadrupedal robots (made by companies like Unitree, ANYbotics, and Boston Dynamics) (like the Digit robot, built by Agility Robotics).

These kinds of applications are not disallowed by the open letter that was issued this week. To be clear, the statement reads, “We are not criticizing the use of existing technologies by governments and their law enforcement agencies to protect themselves and uphold their laws. The letter simply promises to refrain from turning robots into weapons, but it leaves open the potential that the machines might work with soldiers or police officers for surveillance and reconnaissance.

Notably, the US company Ghost Robotics, which also manufactures quadrupedal bots and has concentrated on military and government sales, is not among the signatories of the letter. The US Space Force, US Air Force, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are all testing the company’s bots to monitor bases and the US border with Mexico. Jiren Parikh, the CEO of Ghost Robotics, has stated that the company never tries to limit customers’ usage, despite the fact that Ghost Robotics’ machines have also been equipped with firearms by arms manufacturers.

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Robotics has evolved to become one of the best technological innovations in no time. Right from education to healthcare, all sectors rely on robotics in one form or the other. If you are interested in robotics and would want to be updated with the latest happenings, we have got you covered. In this article, we will talk about the top 10 robotics science experts to follow for recent updates. Keep reading!

Dieter Fox

This brilliant mind works as a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington and is also a senior director of Robotics Research at Nvidia. Well, there’s more to add to his kitty. He is the head of the UW Robotics and State Estimation Lab RSE-Lab and leads the Robotics Research Lab in Seattle.

Melonee Wise

Melonee Wise is the co-founder of Unbounded Robotics and the CEO of Fetch Robotics. Fetch Robotics is into providing collaborative robots for the warehouse and logistics industry. What is worth a mention is the fact that Wise had led a team of engineers developing next-generation robot hardware and software.

Takeo Kanade

Meet Takeo Kanade – one of the world’s foremost researchers in computer science and robotics. This Japanese computer scientist works as a professor at Carnegie Mello University. Kanade specializes in areas such as computer vision, multi-media, manipulators, autonomous mobile robots, medical robots, and sensors. Additionally, Takeo has published hundreds of papers, thus throwing light on the knowledge held within.

Hiroshi Ishiguro

Hiroshi, the Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, is also an integral part of the Department of Systems Innovation at the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, Japan. A few of his many innovative robotic projects include the construction of his mechanical doppelganger using silicone rubber, pneumatic actuators, powerful electronics, and hair from his scalp.

Prof. John J. Leonard

This robotics expert is well-known in the industry for his research on the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots. The fact that he is one of the pioneers in robotics who has formulated the problem of SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) in the mobile robotics research community, cannot go unnoticed. For his immense contribution to the field of robotics, he has received many awards. Well, why not? Indeed deserving he is!

Sachin Chitta

Sachin Chitta gained huge popularity as the founder and CEO of Kinema Systems which was focused on the world’s first deep-learning-based solutions for robotic depalletizing for logistics. Today, he enjoys the position of “Director of Robotics Research at Autodesk”. With the kind of knowledge and industry experience that he has, Chitta is one of the top 10 robotics science experts to follow for recent updates.

Marc Raibert

Yet another brilliant robotics expert that you cannot miss following is Marc Raibert. Raibert is widely recognized for his immense contribution to the robotics domain with Boston Dynamics. He is the Founder, former CEO, and currently the Chairman of Boston Dynamics.

David Hanson

Well, who doesn’t know David Hanson? The one and only robotics expert who focused on developing robots with the world’s most human-like appearances. What makes him stand apart from the rest is the fact that he is known for integrating figurative arts with robotics engineering and facial expression mechanisms of artificial intelligence. His immense contribution to robotics gives him all the valid attention.

Steve Cousins

Steve Cousins, the founder, and CEO of Savioke is someone with truckloads of robotics knowledge. Right from the creation of the open-source software known as Robot Operating System (ROS) (a standard tool among robotics researchers) to working on robotics projects, Steve has done it all. Worth following him, right?

Prof. Masayuki Inaba

With a clear focus on key technologies of robotic systems and the research infrastructure to develop advanced robots, Inaba has made it to the list of top 10 robotics science experts to follow for recent updates. As of now, he is a professor at the Department of Creative Informatics and the Department of Mechano-Informatics at the graduate school of Information Science and Technology of Tokyo University.

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Robots running in the wild? Can the new algorithm really adapt to an unpredictable environment

If a four-legged robot walking like a newborn foal, without stumbling is making you stand in awe, here is the news. They are up for an upgrade. The robots are running in the wild, quite literally! A research team from California developed a new robotic algorithm to give these legged robots a push. They can now walk and run and move around avoiding both stationary and moving objects. They have shared the code on GitHub for Robotics enthusiasts. Locomotive robotics, as a discipline has not only promoted stable, faster, and more efficient robotic movement but also enable a variety of walking and running behaviors. To make robotics practically viable, it is important that the tasks are optimized and the inability to integrate the sensory perceptions a robot depends on, has been a major stumbling block. While the current approach to training robots depends on proprioception or vision ie., it relies on either external sensing systems like lidar, cameras, and eyeballs or internal sensing that involves touch and force sensing, but cannot synchronize both. The new robotic algorithms, the researchers say train robots to identify asynchronous inputs from both visions to match them reasonably to decide quickly by anticipating changes in their environment ahead of time. Random delays ranging from 0.04 to 0.12 seconds were introduced to test the robots to evaluate their performance.

At the testing stage, they could achieve robots bypassing random obstacles such as sandy surfaces, gravel, grass, and bumpy hills covered with litter, poles, benches, moving boxes, and people, independently and swiftly. It could also navigate the office space bypassing boxes, desks, and chairs. The research paper will be presented at the Kyoto Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), which will be held between Oct 23 to 27 of 2022 in Kyoto, Japan. Experts believe, the algorithm will help engineers design robots for deploying for rescue operations, that need gathering critical information from dangerous terrains.

The algorithmic system the senior researcher Xiaolong Wang and his team developed can combine data gathered from real-time images taken by the camera mounted on the robot’s head with sensor data from its legs. Having tested the moves in similar environments with random delays, it was found that the walking robot learned the moves, committing fewer mistakes, giving hope for better adaptation to the real world. The robots could identify objects moving in random directions at random speeds just because they have acquired the ability to understand the environment better.

Wang says, “The problem is that during real-world operation, there is sometimes a slight delay in receiving images from the camera, so the data from the two different sensing modalities do not always arrive at the same time.” They call it Multi Modal Delay Randomization (MMDR), wherein the inputs from proprioceptive and visual states are intentionally placed out of order to train them on Reinforcement Learning policy. Further explaining Wang says, “In one case, it’s like training a blind robot to walk by just touching and feeling the ground. And in the other, the robot plans its leg movements based on sight alone. It is not learning two things at the same time.”

In the concluding remarks, highlighting latency as a critical gap, they say, the MMDR technique fairly addresses this issue for vision-guided quadruped locomotion control. And, both in simulation and on a real bot, the technique has proven to give reasonable outcomes, as robots have shown generalization and adaptation abilities towards unpredictable situations. Sounding optimistic about taking the technique further, the researchers say, “Right now, we can train a robot to do simple motions like walking, running, and avoiding obstacles. Our next goals are to enable a robot to walk up and down stairs, walk on stones, change directions and jump over obstacles.” The developments, they opine, are not only an achievement for quadruped robotics but any branch of robotics that depends on visual robotic control.

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Nao robot had to be taught only Tai Chi moves for it to move like a Tai Chi instructor

Tai Chi, a moving meditative art, may soon be a skill you can master with ease with a cute and friendly robot teaching you all the moves. The Tai Chi instructor is a 2 feet tall Nao robot a highly sophisticated robotic system, that is custom programmed for specific functions. Zhi Zheng, an assistant professor at RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering custom designed Tai Chi skilled Nao robot primarily to assist older adults in coping with mental and physical disorders as part of her assistive technology research. Unlike the earlier robotic systems, which are confined to a specific environment, the Nao robot can adapt to different environmental settings providing insights into how people interact with robots in such diverse settings.

Zhi Zheng specializes in assistive therapy techniques for elderly people and applies robotics and virtual reality technology in her research that pivots on human-machine intelligence. As part of the larger interdisciplinary team entailing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in designing assistive technologies designed to identify and treat mental health disorders, particularly in elderly people. As quoted in the RIT journal, she says, “My major research direction is for individuals with developmental disorders. Many core technologies are transferable to other populations such as older adults with mild cognitive impairment.” The Intelligent Interaction Research Lab, which was instrumental in designing the Noa robot, essentially takes funded and technology-mediated initiatives which include gerontology, particularly for chronic conditions like Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Optimizing the robot for a specific task is a relatively easy job compared to building the system from scratch. The programs that go into the control unit determine the tasks the robots can perform, in this case, it was teaching the robot the Tai Chi moves. “We don’t have to build our robot hardware because there are good commercial platforms available. How it behaves solely depends on how we design the control programs. The central part of our research is how we control the robots to do the cognitive and physical instruction properly” Zheng said. The team could teach Tai Chi to the NAO robot using motion tracking cameras for physical movements and programming for meditative breathing.

For elderly people who exhibit general reluctance towards physical exercise and find it expensive to hire an instructor, Zhen thought, Tai Chi would be a fitting solution. When a feasibility study was held in 2020, her team found that older people found the robot charming, and they could understand its commands with ease. The experiment included 20 participants whose facial expressions were recorded for analyzing the emotional response and were convinced of the feasibility of robot-led sessions. Since then, the project has got a tremendous push to include community-based field studies. Zhen opines, “There is a big difference. Everything in the lab is controlled, and people can be nervous and cautious. That does not really reflect their natural reactions. Now the field is trying to understand and study what if we move the technology out of the engineering building to a community center, for example. People are relaxed, and their reactions will be more natural using new technology. Technology has to be easily controlled by a non-expert—that relates to our interface design. We want our robot to be operated by a leader or a social worker at the community center—because technology is designed to serve people. It has to fit in the community.” Having more than 20 years of experience in teaching and practicing Tai Chi, coupled with her experience in the study of human-robot interactions, she could better combine psychology with human-centred AI applications, a key area RIT research is focussed on. Therefore, if and when an NAO robot teaches Tai Chi, do not hesitate to groove into its graceful moves, alone or in a group.

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The top robot companies pledge not to weaponize their robots that harm the human race

Several robot companies pledge not to facilitate the weaponization of their all-purpose robots and have urged other firms to do the same. Let’s not weaponize general-purpose robots, a statement that Boston Dynamics and five other robotics companies made in an open letter. Robot companies do not harm humans.

This is something that many of us were already tremblingly waiting for. Other top robot companies are encouraged to follow the same suit. The six top robot companies including Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree, claim that while advanced robots could have a significant positive impact on our daily lives at work and home, they could also be employed for evil intent. The companies agreed to refrain from turning their “advanced-mobility general-purpose robots” software that powers them into weapons. Additionally, they pledged to make every effort to prevent their clients from using their products as weapons.

Six of the top robotics companies pledge in an open statement that they would resist anyone that added weapons to their general-use technology.

The open letter, which was first reported by Axios, stated that adding weapons to robots that are widely accessible to the public, remotely or autonomously operated, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues.

We also urge everyone in the robotics community—organizations, creators, researchers, and users—to make identical commitments not to create, approve, support, or facilitate the connection of weapons to such robots.

Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree Robotics all signed the letter.

The co-signers also agreed to analyze requests for the purchase of their robots to prevent any potential weaponization and to look into potential future weaponization-related technological aspects.

To be clear, the letter stated that “we are not criticizing existing technologies that nations and their governmental institutions utilize to defend themselves and maintain their laws.”

Boston Dynamics expressed its concern about plans to weaponize commercially accessible robots in a statement to Axios, saying that such advances would further erode public confidence in the technology.

According to the statement, “the public has to know they can trust it for this technology to be widely embraced throughout society.” Therefore, we require a policy that forbids bad actors from abusing it.

According to NPR, emergency rooms have utilized Boston Dynamics’ “Spot robot,” a dog-like automaton, to inspect circumstances. According to the business, the robot was not intended for surveillance or to take the place of actual police personnel.

The backlash against Spot’s use in public has previously occurred. A US$94,000 lease for Spot with Boston Dynamics was terminated by the New York Police Department in 2021 as a result of public outrage about excessively violent police force displays that violated people’s privacy.

The six robotics companies wrote in their open letter that they are “excited about a bright future in which humans and robots work side by side to tackle some of the world’s challenges” and that they are “convinced that the benefits for humanity of these technologies strongly outweigh the risk of misuse.”

The prototype for Tesla’s long-awaited new humanoid robot, named Optimus, was unveiled last week by billionaire CEO Elon Musk of the electric car company. The most recent anti-weaponization pledge was not signed by Tesla.

Ghost Robotics, which teamed with the Department of Homeland Security in February to deploy robots that patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, was another firm that declined to sign the promise.

There are no laws prohibiting the use of killer robots in warfare as far as conflict is concerned. According to CNBC, nations developing these techniques, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, objected to a United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons’ decision to reject a ban on the use and development of so-called slaughter bots last year.

The agreement the businesses signed “does not rule out future cooperation or collaboration with militaries or the defense sector,” the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots claims. Last year, the organization referred to Hyundai’s ownership in Boston Dynamics and mentioned how the automaker’s Hyundai Rotem division develops autonomous weapon systems, tanks, and other kinds of armored vehicles.

he Campaign to Stop Killer Robots noted on its website that “this vow appears to apply solely to ‘advanced mobility general-purpose robots and accompanying software'” after the announcement on Thursday.

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China creates a dangerous robot, a drone that drops a robodog with a huge gun anywhere

A video showing a Chinese-made drone carrying a dangerous robot has begun to circulate on social media, and it appears to be a scene from a futuristic war film. As seen in the viral video that a four-legged robot was dropped by a drone that carried a huge gun around.

Although it’s not immediately clear whether the video was shot as part of a Chinese military practice or more likely as an attempt to demonstrate how the pairing will work, even without that information, the scene may provide a glimpse of the robot technology that could be used on future battlefields. China creates a dangerous robot, the one-minute video was first published on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo by a user who was either connected to or standing in for the regional defense business that, according to reports, produces the drone being used to launch the robot weapon, a robodog.

The customized semiautomatic assault rifle that the robot appears to be holding has been the standard service rifle for China’s paramilitary organizations and the People’s Liberation Army since 1995.

The drone is seen in the prologue of the video approaching the rooftop of a building in a plain urban setting while carrying a small, armed robot dog underneath its frame. The drone releases the robodog before taking off, operating as a sort of robotic dropship, and landing on the roof. The dangerous robot soon unfolds from its folded state and starts traversing its new environs with what appears to be a Chinese QBB-97 light machine gun attached to its back (known as a Type 95 LGM in the United States).

The 5.8x42mm QBB-97 shares around 70% of its components with the QBZ-95 assault rifle used by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Its longer, heavier barrel with a folding bipod and capacity for sustained bursts of automatic fire is what most distinguish it from the assault rifle.

Although the machine gun version is compatible with the 30-round box magazine used by its assault rifle cousin, the drum magazine seen in the video can carry up to 80 rounds. The QBB-97 is competent, albeit somewhat constrained, a weapon that can shoot up to 650 rounds per minute, however it is unclear how firing it from a robodog would operate.

According to the defense business, the drone, which Kestrel calls the Red Wing, may sneak behind enemy lines and launch a “surprise strike” by dropping the robot dog. And those robots with four legs are designed to resemble dogs.

“War dogs flying overhead, air assault, Red Wing”, according to an English translation of the caption for the video, “Forward heavy-duty drones deliver combat robot dogs, which can be directly inserted into the weak link behind the enemy to launch a surprise attack or can be placed on the enemy’s roof to occupy the commanding heights to suppress firepower.

The drone-robodog combination was designed with the intention that it may be used during assault operations, particularly in metropolitan areas, at the very least it can be inferred from the additional color provided by this description. In these circumstances, which frequently consist of big buildings and intricate structures that are challenging to breach, it appears that the corporation believes this skill could be most useful. The Weibo account has also posted further videos of several robodogs in related locations, indicating that the business specialized in technology made with these settings in mind.

The caption adds, “And ground soldiers launch a three-dimensional pincer attack on the enemy within the building.”

China’s robots frequently make the rounds on English-language social media, but nowadays they follow a somewhat darker route than when they used to wear goofy little hats and dance together. It is also simple to understand why movies of murderous robots draw so much interest on the internet given the rising tensions of the so-called “New Cold War,” which pits the United States and its allies against Russia, China, and Iran.

Given that Atlas can do backflips and is now highly nimble, Boston Dynamics is, of course, the name most intimately link with America’s prospective robot insurrection. However, Boston Dynamics is not the company creating the robot killers of the future for the American military. Boston Dynamics even committed to stopping producing deadly devices only last week

The Multi-Utility Tactical Transport (MUTT), introduced in 2016, is an example of a less agile robot-controlled death machine that the U.S. military is developing on its own.

While MUTT may be more maneuverable, Ghost Robotics also produces a Spot-like robot for the American military. Of course, its quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) aren’t yet being shown off with potent weapons.

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Increasing use of cloud-based technologies is giving space to more cloud robotics companies

Increasing utilization of cloud-based technologies and cloud-based artificial intelligence robotics technology has brought about the creation of cloud robotics, therefore increasing demand in the global cloud robotics market. Cloud robotics is utilized generally in logistics, monitoring, training, and entertainment. To improve the elements of robots, scientists have upgraded their physical features and included remarkable virtual developments of cloud computing. It is not an easy task to run a cloud robotics company. But it is amazing to see the rising number of companies specializing in cloud robotics. These companies are seen to work on innovative technologies. Here is the list of the top 10 cloud robotics companies to look out for in 2023.

INVOLI

The company was founded in 2017, in Switzerland. INVOLI serves in building infrastructure that enables the drone revolution, ensuring their safe consolidation into today’s aviation world and avoiding collisions with aircraft. It offers an online platform, which collects data from a network of scaled-down control towers gathering maximum information on the position of every flying object in the sky, manually or automatically. Its technology enables everybody to see the air traffic encompassing them and take the most appropriate measures.

Freedom Robotics

It was founded in 2018, and headquartered in San Francisco. Freedom Robotics integrates development and management tools in its cloud-based robotics management software (RMS) to help prototype, create, operate, and scale robot fleets.

Covariant

It was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Berkeley, Calif. Covariant is creating AI called the “Covariant Brain” to make robots smarter. Covariant is competing directly with other cloud robotics start-ups such as Kindred and RightHand Robotics. Its technique is to use a variety of AI methods to train its robots, including reinforcement learning. It merges that with an off-the-shelf robot arm, a suction gripper, and a simple 2D camera system.

Salty Cloud, PBC (Public Benefit Company)

It was founded in March 2017, in the USA. The company offers next-generation security automation technology to assist organizations around the globe to protect their cyber adversaries. Today, the company provides three security & risk automation tools to the public. It continues to find ways to provide free versions of its tools for educational institutions, state & local governments, and non-profits. One such offering is Dorkbot, the web vulnerability scanning service.

Automation – Workflow Automation

This company leverages robots (physically and virtually) for automating specific tasks. It utilizes the power of cloud computing and process automation to create and modify cloud robotic solutions. The company develops software robotics solutions, lean strategies, artificial intelligence (AI), and low-code applications, as well as cloud services. It allows the automation of long workflows and processes that run across multiple systems and organizational extremities.

Bright Machines

It was founded in 2018, in the USA. The company aims at making manufacturing smarter and more efficient. It merges intelligent software with flexible factory robots and machine learning to help customers deliver the next-generation products

Soar Robotics

The company offers independent operations at scale for urban and industrial applications with seamless connectivity and cloud intelligence. It uses hyper-realistic visual and physical simulation environments to safely test hardware by recreating real-life scenarios in virtual worlds. It helps in executing custom applications for proprietary use cases.

RosHub – Robotic Fleet Management

It is an US-based start-up. It develops connectivity solutions for robot fleets. The company is also involved in prototyping, testing, and applying robotic solutions in unstructured public spaces. It allows the link of an open-source ROS (robotics operating system) that is combined efficiently with the support of existing tools and APIs.

Graphcore

It was founded in 2016. The company is situated in the United Kingdom. The company’s IPU accelerators and popular software together make the fastest and most ductile platform for current and future machine intelligence applications, which lowers the cost of AI in the cloud and data centre, and improves performance and efficiency by anything around 10x to 100x. Graphcore systems shine at both training and reasoning.

Arctoris

Arctoris was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in the United Kingdom. Arctoris collaborates with biotech and pharma companies as well as academic centers, enabling drug discovery projects to be run using advanced robotics. The technology platform can not only be used for screening but has been developed for all laboratory processes on the way from target to hit and lead and beyond, comprising a wide range of techniques in cellular and molecular biology as well as biochemistry/ biophysics.

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Viam Robotics has come out with a unique free version of a cloud-based robotics tool

What a lot of people tell me is ‘hardware is hard,’” Eliot Horowitz, the Viam Robotics CEO and MongoDB co-founder explains. “I have a really big problem with that statement.” Horowitz further describes purchasing a Universal Robotics UR5 robot arm and programming it to play chess. “I don’t feel hardware is hard. I think the hardware is not that hard. But if I urge my hardware designer to go develop a thing in three months, it will work.” A few days earlier Viam unveiled a cloud-based robotics tool.

The release of a company’s public beta version for the robotics platform is an effort to make a sort of one-stop, cloud-based repository for the sorts of tools required to prototype, code, deploy and scale systems. And similarly, like some of the competitors that have sprung up in the past few years, Viam created its system with a kind of hardware agnosticism in mind. But unlike many firms that have focused on a low- or no-code solution designed for non-programmers/roboticists, Horowitz argues that the industry simply is not there. He spots a web design software analogy.

“Dreamweaver was, in some ways, ahead of its time. If you look at Webflow or Squarespace, their approach is the same as what Dreamweaver was following, but Dreamweaver emerged at a time when the backends were not ready for a product of its nature. It was just a product ahead of its time. The e-commerce space was not prepared for no-code. I think robotics lies in the same place. The advantage of a low-code solution, if it worked, would be beneficial. I just feel it is impractical.”

The beta version of the service is currently being offered for free. It promises hardware-agnostic cloud-based robotics tools, developer APIs, and enterprise security. On general availability, the company will offer “consumption-based pricing” for the service.

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Ai-Da’s art is evoking many curious questions. UK’s parliamentarians shoot a few.

Can technology create meaningful art? Maybe yes or maybe not – it depends on whom you ask. People have been having endless arguments over the efficacy and usefulness of AI art generators and the artistic capabilities of robots. But it seems the idea of asking robots themselves about the art it creates hasn’t occurred yet. UK’s parliamentarians have gone on an interesting yet enlightening mission of learning about robotic art, all by engaging the robot in a tete-a-tete. The politicians from the Communications and Digital Committee questioned Ai-Da in UK Parliament about the relationship between artificial intelligence, robots, and the arts. Ai-Da creates her art by capturing images through her eye cameras. The AI algorithms process the image into real space coordinates to be converted into art by the robotic arm. “I do not have subjective experiences despite being able to talk about where I am and depend on computer programs and algorithms that are very not alive. I can still create art,” said Ai-Da during the interaction.

Who is Ai-Da

Named after 19th-century computer scientist Ada Lovelace, it is invented in 2019 by gallerist Aidan Meller in collaboration with Engineered Arts, a British robotics company, and is considered the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist with special abilities in painting and poetry. The drawing intelligence was developed by computer AI researchers at the University of Oxford, and the humanoid robot’s drawing arm is the work of engineers based in Leeds. She had her first solo show, ‘Unsecured Futures’ at the University of Oxford, where her art inspired people to understand the inevitability of a tech-driven future. Ever since that show, she traveled around the world, including presenting her art in a virtual exhibition at United Nations. And, only in April month, she participated in Venice Biennale, with a solo show titled ‘Leaping into Metaverse’.

Ai-Da Is Not Yet Sure of The Impact

When quizzed about its art and the impact it will have on UK’s art industry, Ai-Da was very optimistic about the tech-generated art. Answering Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Featherstone AI artist Ai-Da said, “Role of technology in creating art will continue to grow as the artists find new ways to use technology to express themselves and reflect and explore the relationship between technology, society, and culture.” From the replies, it is quite evident that she understands the kind of change technology can bring in, particularly with the advent of technologies like photography and films. Further, she adds “It is likely that this trend will continue with new technologies. There is no clear answer as to the impact on the wider field, as technology can be both a threat and an opportunity for artists creating art.”

The Dialogue Is Worth Having for More Than One Reason

Despite being a mechanical bot, its work resembles that of many human artists and at times is collaborative. Her work is clearly concerted, across several branches, such as, between artists, scientists, designers, machines, and computers. The paintings she creates can be viewed as an embodiment of the networked, technological, physical, and virtual worlds enriched by creative real-life artists. However, there are enough reasons why the art of the AI artist Ai-Da should be taken with a pinch of salt. The impression one gets of a huge self-portrait with her eyes shut is definitely not amusing and reminds the audience why technology is blind and can prove to be dangerous if employed without regard for the consequences. Meller’s statement, “The greatest artists in history grappled with their period of time, and both celebrated and questioned society’s shifts. Ai-Da Robot, as technology, is the perfect artist today to discuss the current obsession with technology and its unfolding legacy”, suggests it is a part of evolutionary tendency, the milieu of art carries. In the post-humanist era, an era that would challenge the very idea of artist and creativity, hopefully, Ai-Da’s art could defend itself against the winds of reductio ad absurdum.

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Engineers have developed a process that allows soft robots that grow like plants in the light

An innovative, plant-inspired extrusion method that promotes the growth of synthetic materials has been robots created by an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota. The new method will enable researchers to create better soft robots that can travel through challenging terrain, inside the human body.

Robots are evolving every day into highly autonomous machines that can navigate and function on their own in a variety of contexts as the robotics industry grows. Scientists have developed robots that can grow with light just like a vine or any other reaching plant. This robotics creation allows those soft robots to grow like plants. Soft robots like plants are the first time that these concepts are fundamentally demonstrated. These soft robots’ innovative design would enable them to traverse difficult terrain and generally inaccessible spaces, making them ideal for tasks like search and rescue operations, and constructing underground infrastructure.

The novel design, on the other hand, was created by a group of scientists and engineers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. It makes use of a process called photopolymerization, which turns liquid monomers into solid mass using light. As a result, the robots don’t need to drag solid objects behind them and can make a more flexible path.

The paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

In the growing discipline of “soft robotics,” flexible, soft materials are used to create robots rather than rigid ones. Soft-growing robots can generate new material and “grow” while moving. These machines might be employed for tasks that humans can’t perform in remote locations, like constructing or checking tubes below ground or traveling inside the human body for biomedical uses.

Chris Ellison, a professor at the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering and one of the paper’s primary authors, said, “This is the first time these principles have been fundamentally demonstrated.” The competitiveness of our nation and the introduction of new products to the public depends heavily on the development of innovative manufacturing techniques. The usage of robots in hazardous and distant locations is growing, and these are the kinds of places where this study could have an effect.

Similar to how a 3D printer is fed solid filament to make its shaped product, current soft robots drag a trail of solid material behind them and can utilize heat and/or pressure to turn that material into a more durable structure. However, it becomes increasingly challenging to draw the solid material track around bends and curves, making it challenging for the robots to move across terrain with obstacles or twisting roads.

By creating a novel method of extrusion—a technique in which material is forced through a hole to take on a certain shape—the research team was able to find a solution to this issue. The robot can produce its synthetic material from a liquid rather than a solid, thanks to this novel method.

According to Matthew Hausladen, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Science and Engineering, “we were particularly impressed by how plants and fungi develop. “We converted that into an engineering system, taking the premise that plants and fungi add material at the end of their bodies, either at their root tips or at their new shoots.”

Water is used by plants to carry the building pieces that eventually solidify into roots as they spread outward. Using a process called photopolymerization, which turns liquid monomers into solid materials using light, the researchers were able to replicate this process with synthetic material. With the aid of this innovation, the soft robots will be able to go through tight spaces and around curves without having to drag anything heavy behind them.

There are uses for this innovative procedure in production as well. Operations that require heat, pressure, and expensive machinery to produce and shape materials might not be necessary because the researchers’ method merely requires liquid and light.

The involvement of material scientists, chemical engineers, and robotic engineers is “a crucial aspect of this effort,” according to Ellison. “We offered something new to this project by combining all of our various abilities, and I’m sure that none of us could have completed it on our own. This is a fantastic illustration of how scientific collaboration allows researchers to tackle extremely challenging basic issues while simultaneously having an impact on technology.

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