Engineers have developed a low cost, low power technology to help robots accurately map their way indoors, even in poor lighting and without recognizable landmarks or features. The technology uses WiFi signals, instead of light, to help the robot 'see' where it's going.
Machine learning happens a lot like erosion. Data is hurled at a mathematical model like grains of sand skittering across a rocky landscape. Some of those grains simply sail along with little or no impact. But some of them make their mark: testing, hardening, and ultimately reshaping the landscape according to inherent patterns and fluctuations […]
Researchers have proposed a novel system inspired by the neuromodulation of the brain, referred to as a 'stashing system,' that requires less energy consumption. Computer scientists have now developed a technology that can efficiently handle mathematical operations for artificial intelligence by imitating the continuous changes in the topology of the neural network according to the […]
Recently developed 'smart skin' is very similar to human skin. It senses pressure, humidity and temperature simultaneously and produces electronic signals. More sensitive robots or more intelligent prostheses are thus conceivable.
Biomedical engineers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) training strategy to capture images of mouse brain cells in action. The researchers say the AI system, in concert with specialized ultra-small microscopes, make it possible to find precisely where and when cells are activated during movement, learning and memory.
Collective behavior and swarm patterns are found everywhere in nature. Robots can also be programmed to act in swarms. Researchers have developed collectives of microrobots, which they can move in every formation they wish.
Researchers have developed a technique that enables a robot to learn a new pick-and-place task with only a handful of human demonstrations. This could allow a human to reprogram a robot to grasp never-before-seen objects, presented in random poses, in about 15 minutes.
A new way of using artificial intelligence to predict cancer from patient data without putting personal information at risk has been developed. Swarm learning can be used to help computers predict cancer in medical images of patient tissue samples, without releasing the data from hospitals.
Using nanotechnology, scientists have created a newly designed neuromorphic electronic device that endows microrobotics with colorful vision. The newly designed artificial vision device could have far-reaching applications for the fields of medicine, artificial intelligence, and microrobotics.
With their superior properties, topological qubits could help achieve a breakthrough in the development of a quantum computer designed for universal applications. So far, no one has yet succeeded in unambiguously demonstrating a quantum bit, or qubit for short, of this kind in a lab. Scientists have now succeeded in integrating a topological insulator into […]
Roboticists and economists have developed a method for estimating the probability of jobs being automated by future intelligent robots and suggesting career transitions with lower risks and minimal retraining effort.
Medical imaging is an important part of modern healthcare, enhancing both the precision, reliability and development of treatment for various diseases. Artificial intelligence has also been widely used to further enhance the process. However, conventional medical image diagnosis employing AI algorithms require large amounts of annotations as supervision signals for model training. To acquire accurate […]
Researchers have developed a machine learning model that could better measure baseball players' and teams' short- and long-term performance, compared to existing statistical analysis methods for the sport. Drawing on recent advances in natural language processing and computer vision, their approach would completely change, and could enhance, the way the state of a game and […]
Researchers have demonstrated a more effective way to support learning and increase engagement at science-focused museum exhibits. They used artificial intelligence to create a new genre of interactive, hands-on exhibits that includes an intelligent, virtual assistant to interact with visitors. When the researchers compared their intelligent exhibit to a traditional one, they found that the […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of modern technology. Making AI 'emotionally intelligent' could open doors to more natural human-machine interactions. To do this, it needs to pick up on the user's sentiment during a dialog. Physiological signals could provide a direct route to such sentiments. Now, researchers from Japan take things to the […]
Using lessons learned from the eye-imaging technology optical coherence tomography (OCT), engineers have demonstrated a LiDAR system that is fast and accurate enough to potentially improve the vision of autonomous systems such as driverless cars and robotic manufacturing plants.
In recent years, artificial intelligence has become ubiquitous, with applications such as speech interpretation, image recognition, medical diagnosis, and many more. At the same time, quantum technology has been proven capable of computational power well beyond the reach of even the world's largest supercomputer. Physicists have now demonstrated a new device, called quantum memristor, which […]
Static analyzers are tools that help you check your code without really running your code. The most basic form of static analyzers is the syntax highlighters in your favorite editors. If you need to compile your code (say, in C++), your compiler, such as LLVM, may also provide some static analyzer functions to warn you […]
There are different ways of debugging code in Python, one of which is to introduce breakpoints into the code at points where one would like to invoke a Python debugger. The statements used to enter a debugging session at different call sites depend on the version of the Python interpreter that one is working with, […]
You’ve probably heard of Kaggle data science competitions, but did you know that Kaggle has many other features that can help you with your next machine learning project? For people looking for datasets for their next machine learning project, Kaggle allows you to access public datasets by others and share your own datasets. For those […]
We write a program to solve a problem or make a tool that we can repeatedly solve a similar problem. For the latter, it is inevitable that we come back to revisit the program we wrote, or someone else is reusing the program we write. There is also a chance that we will encounter data […]
Sponsored Post In our interconnected world, a decision made thousands of miles away can have lasting consequences for entire organizations or economies. When small changes have big effects, it is unsurprising that companies and governments are turning to machine learning and AI to accurately predict risk. How the Global Community is Applying Machine Learning […]
Have you ever wanted an easy-to-configure interactive environment to run your machine learning code that came with access to GPUs for free? Google Colab is the answer you’ve been looking for. It is a convenient and easy-to-use way to run Jupyter notebooks on the cloud, and their free version comes with some limited access to […]
When you work on a computer vision project, you probably need to preprocess a lot of image data. This is time-consuming, and it would be great if you could process multiple images in parallel. Multiprocessing is the ability of a system to run multiple processors at one time. If you had a computer with a […]
Sponsored Post Search systems are in the process of being revolutionized by Deep Learning and AI applications. To successfully evaluate, build, deploy and scale information retrieval systems, engineers working with search systems must understand the frameworks and algorithms that underpin this technology. Professors Ricardo Baeza-Yates (Northeastern University) has done research on information retrieval and web […]
When we finish a Python project and roll it out for other people to use, the easiest way is to present our project as a command-line program. If you want to make it friendlier, you may want to develop a GUI for your program so people can interact with it with mouse clicks while it […]
After all the hard work developing a project in Python, we want to share our project with other people. It can be your friends or your colleagues. Maybe they are not interested in your code, but they want to run it and make some real use of it. For example, you create a regression model […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor The AI stack defined by Carnegie Mellon University is fundamental to the approach being taken by the US Army for its AI development platform efforts, according to Isaac Faber, Chief Data Scientist at the US Army AI Integration Center, speaking at the AI World Government event held in-person and virtually […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor Advancing trustworthy AI and machine learning to mitigate agency risk is a priority for the US Department of Energy (DOE), and identifying best practices for implementing AI at scale is a priority for the US General Services Administration (GSA). That’s what attendees learned in two sessions at the AI […]
By AI Trends Staff While AI in hiring is now widely used for writing job descriptions, screening candidates, and automating interviews, it poses a risk of wide discrimination if not implemented carefully. That was the message from Keith Sonderling, Commissioner with the US Equal Opportunity Commision, speaking at the AI World Government event held live and virtually in […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor More companies are successfully exploiting predictive maintenance systems that combine AI and IoT sensors to collect data that anticipates breakdowns and recommends preventive action before break or machines fail, in a demonstration of an AI use case with proven value. This growth is reflected in optimistic market forecasts. […]
By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider We already expect that humans to exhibit flashes of brilliance. It might not happen all the time, but the act itself is welcomed and not altogether disturbing when it occurs. What about when Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to display an act of novelty? Any such instance is bound to get our attention; […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor Engineers tend to see things in unambiguous terms, which some may call Black and White terms, such as a choice between right or wrong and good and bad. The consideration of ethics in AI is highly nuanced, with vast gray areas, making it challenging for AI software engineers to […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor AI is more accessible to young people in the workforce who grew up as ‘digital natives’ with Alexa and self-driving cars as part of the landscape, giving them expectations grounded in their experience of what is possible. That idea set the foundation for a panel discussion at AI World […]
By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor Two experiences of how AI developers within the federal government are pursuing AI accountability practices were outlined at the AI World Government event held virtually and in-person this week in Alexandria, Va. Taka Ariga, chief data scientist and director at the US Government Accountability Office, described an AI accountability framework he uses within his agency […]
By AI Trends Staff Advances in the AI behind speech recognition are driving growth in the market, attracting venture capital and funding startups, posing challenges to established players. The growing acceptance and use of speech recognition devices are driving the market, which according to an estimate by Meticulous Research is expected to reach $26.8 billion […]
By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider Are there things that we must not know? This is an age-old question. Some assert that there is the potential for knowledge that ought to not be known. In other words, there are ideas, concepts, or mental formulations that should we become aware of that knowledge it could be […]
Why use a screen when you can project a signal into your eyes? Apple Glasses (quantglasses) rumor suggests the upcoming smart headset, or its successor, could project a screen directly onto your eyeballs, skipping traditional displays entirely.
That’s according to a new patent, which calls the tech a ‘direct retinal projector’ – like AppleInsider (who first noticed the patent), we’ll take the high road and avoid the obvious ‘retina display’ jokes.
The ‘direct retinal projector’ also tracks where you’re looking so that it can use mirrors to accurately reflect a light field – aka the content that would be displayed on a traditional screen – right into the wearer’s pupils. Yes, this sounds as intense to us as it does to you. The tech as described in the patent sounds like a complex arrangement of controllers, scanning mirrors, an ellipsoid mirror, and a projector, though the patent details plenty of configurations that could include other elements of the eventual design. Most importantly: these potential systems are for AR and/or VR, suggesting Apple is keeping both possibilities open for future Apple Glasses.
Perhaps the most important rumor we heard in 2021 is that noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts the Apple Glasses may arrive in the first half of 2022, finally ending our extended speculation on Apple’s biggest new product since the Apple Watch.
Zombies or enemies flashing right before your eyes and the dizzying feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff using virtual reality and augmented reality (AR and VR) are no longer exclusive to the games or media industries. These technologies allow us to conduct virtual conferences, share presentations and videos, and communicate in real time in virtual space. But because of the high cost and bulkiness of VR and AR devices, the virtual world is not currently within easy reach.
Recently, a South Korean research team developed moldable nanomaterials and a printing technology using metamaterials, allowing the commercialization of inexpensive and thin VR and AR devices.
Professor Junsuk Rho of the departments of mechanical engineering and chemical engineering and doctoral student in mechanical engineering Gwanho Yoon at POSTECH with Professor Heon Lee and researcher Kwan Kim of the department of material science at Korea University have jointly developed a new nanomaterial and large-scale nanoprinting technology for commercialization of metamaterials. The research findings, which solve the issue of device size and high productioncoststhat were problematic in previous research, were recently published in Nature Communications.
Metamaterials are substances made from artificial atoms that do not exist in nature but freely control the properties of light. An invisible cloak that makes an illusion of disappearance by adjusting the refraction or diffraction of light, or metaholograms that can produce different hologram images depending on the direction of light’s entrance, uses this metamaterial. Using this principle, the ultrathin metalens technology, which can replace the conventional optical system with extreme thinness, was recently selected as one of the top 10 emerging technologies to change the world at the World Economic Forum last year.
In order to make metamaterials, artificial atoms smaller than the wavelengths of light must be meticulously constructed and arranged. Until now, metamaterials have been produced through a method called electron beam lithography (EBL). However, EBL has hindered the commercialization or production of sizable metamaterials due to its slow process speed and high cost of production. To overcome these limitations, the joint research team developed a new nanomaterial based on nanoparticle composite that can be molded freely while having optical characteristics suitable for fabricating metamaterials. The team also succeeded in developing a one-step printing technique that can shape the materials in a single-step process.
Virtual reality, smart clothes and reminiscence therapy are offering respite to patients and carers. One of millions of people who die each year from the neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer’s, for which a cure is not possible. The condition, one of a number of forms of dementia, is caused by rogue proteins that lodge and tangle in the neural networks of the brain, causing irreparable damage to the billions of neurons which transmit the electrical signals that build memories. These cells gradually die, causing memory loss and personality change, eventually halting the brain’s basic functions.
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Despite decades of medical research into treatments to slow the disease’s progressive course or prevent it entirely – the field from which Pfizer notably withdrew in January, after years of setbacks – it is not yet known what causes these proteins to gather, and therefore how to remove or block them. And despite Alzheimer’s being the world’s fifth biggest killer, funding levels for research have lagged shockingly behind those for both cancer and the next biggest area of medical research, cardiovascular disease.
In the meantime, the greatest cost is in providing care and therapy for those suffering from the disease – a global total currently estimated at $818 billion; the equivalent to over one per cent of global GDP. If no effective treatment and preventive solution is found this sum will only increase, as ten million new cases of dementia are diagnosed each year.
UK healthcare start-up, Virtue, applies the latest immersive technologies to the process of ‘reminiscence therapy’. While the traditional approach draws on physical visual stimulus such as photo books, or even involves substantial investment in constructing full-scale sets that recreate nostalgic scenes, Virtue has developed a new type of memory portal using virtual reality.
“It’s only now that the phone in your pocket is advanced enough and VR headsets are reducing in price that we can really democratise access to this type of impactful therapy,” Virtue‘s co-founder and CTO Scott Gorman says. Virtue’s app, LookBack VR, offers a wide variety of 360 VR content and filmic experiences which chime with the memories of the target age group of the patient – arranged by destination, theme, activity or decade. Viewers can choose from experiences ranging from spending time on Brighton beach in the 1970s, to finding themselves in a 1950s tearoom, and can create a personalised playlist or ‘itinerary for time travel’ with the help of their family or carer. Their companion can see their VR headset view on a companion app via tablet, along with a series of suggested questions to help stimulate relevant conversation about that era.
“Our vision is for LookBack VR to become a global platform that can help people with dementia anywhere,” co-founder and CEO Arfa Rehman shares. “We are starting to seek partnerships with organisations and individuals to gather content from around the world.”
UW Medicine interventional radiologist Wayne Monsky first saw virtual reality’s vivid, 3Ddepiction of the inside of a phantom patient’s blood vessels, his jaw dropped in childlike wonder.
A virtual-reality depiction of a catheter navigating blood vessel. With a VR headset, this would be 3D (click on the image to enjoy video)
“When you put the (VR) headset on … you have a giddy laugh that you can’t control – just sheer happiness and enthusiasm. (I’m) moving up to the mesenteric artery and I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” he recalled.
The experience reminds him of “Fantastic Voyage,” the ’60s-era sci-fi film about a submarine and crew that are miniaturized and injected into a scientist’s body to repair a blood clot.
“As a child, and today, I’ve been amazed at the premise that one day you can swim around inside someone’s body. And really, that’s the sensation: You’re in it,” he said. Interventional radiologists use catheters, thin flexible tubes that are inserted into arteries and veins and steered to any organ in the body, guided by X-ray visuals. With this approach, they (and cardiologists, vascular surgeons, and neuro-interventionalists) treat an array of conditions: liver tumors, narrowed and bleeding arteries, uterine fibroids, and more.
Monsky and two collaborators have pioneered VR technology that puts the operator inside 3D blood vessels. By following an anatomically correct, dynamic, 3D map of a phantom patient’s vessels, Monsky navigates the catheter through junctions and angles. The catheter‘s tip is equipped with sensors that visually represent its exact location to the VR headset. It’s a sizable leap forward from the 2D, black-and-white X-ray perspective that has guided Monsky’s catheters through vessels for most of his career.
He recently presented study findings that underscore VR’s value: In tests of a phantom patient, VR guidance got him to the destination faster – about 40 seconds faster, on average, over 18 simulations – than was the case with X-ray guidance.
Imagine piloting a drone using the movements of your torso only and leaving your head free to look around, much like a bird. The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) research, in Switzerland, has just shown that using your torso to pilot flying machines is indeed more immersive – and more effective – than using the long-established joystick.
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“Our aim was to design a control method which would be easy to learn and therefore require less mental focus from the users so that they can focus on more important issues, like search and rescue,” says lead author Jenifer Miehlbradt of EPFL’s Translational Neuroengineering Laboratory led by Bertarelli Foundation Chair Silvestro Micera. “Using your torso really gives you the feeling that you are actually flying. Joysticks, on the other hand, are of simple design but mastering their use to precisely control distant objects can be challenging.”
The scientists wanted to observe how people use their bodies to pilot a flying object, in this case a drone, and determine which movements are most intuitive and natural – approaching the pilot problem from a completely new perspective.
They started by monitoring the body movements of 17 individuals thanks to 19 infrared markers placed all over the upper body as well as their muscular activity. Each participant followed the actions of a virtual drone through simulated landscapes that passed-by as viewed through virtual reality goggles.
The company’s uncrewed spacecraft will fly to the International Space Station, and if successful, will give NASA astronauts another way to get to orbit.
After the InSight lander studied the strongest marsquake ever detected, scientists gave the space robot a negative prognosis because of its dwindling solar power.
Two new studies found genetic mutations that cause severe immune deficiencies are common in some remote populations, leaving them highly vulnerable to viruses.
If regulation of abortion access falls to the states, it will unleash legal havoc over pregnancy-ending medications that are shipped across state lines.
Researchers have created autonomous particles covered with patches of protein “motors.” They hope these bots will tote lifesaving drugs through bodily fluids.
International experts are using earthly policies as models to hash out regulations for orbiting spacecraft, from preventing conflict to limiting trash.
A raft of recent films like Everything Everywhere All at Once highlights the complicated relationships between immigrant Asian women and their mothers.
A growing number of people on the platform claim to have a perceptual condition that lets them smell colors, see music, or taste sounds. But do they really?
Johnny Depp is suing Amber Heard for defamation. As the trial wears on, mocking her testimony has become the latest disturbing thing to go viral on social media.
From the new 'Doctor Strange' to 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' stories of infinite universes serve as metaphors for our many identities, online and off.
The CEO of digital abortion clinic Hey Jane discusses the grim future of reproductive rights in the US and the clinic’s plans to keep providing access.
Time is political by nature—governing everything from election cycles to environmental policies. Could reconfiguring the hours restore humanity's hope for the future?
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