Sony's Project Ace

"Sony AI's research project, Ace, is the first AI system to compete with and beat elite table tennis players under official rules.. "

Wheel Me Up Scotty

An electric motor in the form of a fiber

"In Science Robotics, researchers from MIT Media Lab and collaborators from Politecnico di Bari present Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles, a new class of artificial muscle fibers for robots and wearables."

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More than 300 robots will participate in humanoid robot half marathon

Run Robot Run

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Giddy Up Tidy Up

California robotics startup Figure AI has released a striking new demo of its Figure 03 humanoid robot - powered by the proprietary Helix 02 vision-language-action AI - autonomously tidying an entire living room without any human intervention or task-specific coding.

In the 4K footage, the robot performs a series of complex, interlinked tasks including spraying and wiping surfaces, tossing pillows back onto a sofa, and organising scattered toys Humanoids Daily - all at human pace. What makes this significant is how it learns: Helix 02 did not require new algorithms or specialised programming for the task, instead learning strategies from examples and applying them across different situations.

https://www.figure.ai/

Robot Bricklaying

FBR are based in Western Australia

They design, develop, build and operate dynamically stabilised robots to address global needs.

Read more about them here

https://www.fbr.com.au/

Humanoid Robots at work: where are we ?

A most interesting paper from  Fabrice Noreils from April 8, 2024.

Extract (verbatim)

"A humanoid robot is an extremely complex machine at the intersection of many disciplines such as mechatronics, control algorithms for underactuated dynamic systems, actuators design, energy consumption optimization, autonomous system in terms of perception localization planning and locomotion...

In addition, all algorithms must be carried out by on-board computers in a very constraint footprint.

Finally, the objective is to put these very complex, therefore fragile, machines in a demanding industrial environment to perform at least as well as a human worker within 2 or 3 years?

This is reminiscent of the enthusiasm and certainties of promoters of autonomous vehicles in the 2010s.

The question we can ask ourselves is the following: is this objective realistic or is it achievable not in 2 or 3 years but within 10 years or more? The aim of this document and its main contributions is to provide some hints by covering the following topics:

1. An analysis of 12 companies based on eight criteria described in section 3. Although these criteria are subjective, they have the benefit of being able to distinguish companies based on their maturity and approach to the market;

2. These humanoids are very complex systems facing technological challenges which are discussed in section 4; 3. Operation and maintenance are critical activities specially when humanoids are deployed at scale. This topic is covered in section 5;

4. Pilots are the last step to test the feasibility of a new system before mass deployment. This is an important step to test the maturity of a product and the strategy of the humanoid supplier to address a market. This topic is addressed in section 6."

Read the full paper here

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.04249v1

or in the ArXiv experimental html format

https://arxiv.org/html/2404.04249v1

Fabrice Noreils undertook his PhD on robotics and Artificial Intelligence at LAAS CNRS, Toulouse France. He was a researcher on task planning and Execution on wheeled exploratory robots and led R&D teams on resources optimization for a LEO constellation of satellites, character animation of small humanoid robots, autonomous navigation of an indoor flying drone and task planning and navigation of a fleet of AMRs in logistics environment. 

Exoskeletons

Opportunities and challenges in the development of exoskeletons for locomotor assistance

A comprehenisive article from Nature.com

Abstract

Exoskeletons can augment the performance of unimpaired users and restore movement in individuals with gait impairments. Knowledge of how users interact with wearable devices and of the physiology of locomotion have informed the design of rigid and soft exoskeletons that can specifically target a single joint or a single activity. In this Review, we highlight the main advances of the past two decades in exoskeleton technology and in the development of lower-extremity exoskeletons for locomotor assistance, discuss research needs for such wearable robots and the clinical requirements for exoskeleton-assisted gait rehabilitation, and outline the main clinical challenges and opportunities for exoskeleton technology.

Read the full article here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-022-00984-1

Dancing Robots and all that jazz...

 I remember back when robots could not dance...lol

Robot Love

run robot run... ;-)



we're getting there...

The Rise of the Machine

The most recent McKinsey Quarterly focuses on the replacement of people by machines / robots.

Somewhat typically the media treats the notion of robots performing boring, poorly paid repetitive jobs as bad for society.

Face up to The Future - Humans Need not Apply. 

This process began a long time ago, as articulated by Nikolai Kondratiev* and his theory of cycles or waves. In the 1990's we saw dramatic increases in connectivity and global cross fertilisation delivered by the emergence of the internet. The next decade saw the banking collapse and the inequities of society in plain sight. The concept of the war sub-contractor operating as a 'business'.

This decade is all about dissatisfaction, a growing body of knowledge and awareness of Government ineptitude, inefficiency, a lack of accountability, increasing violence towards the citizen., and inexplicably a seemingly complete lack of grasp of comptech. Of course there are some exceptions in some Governments - nonetheless citizens are beginning to push back; in some cases via direct confrontation but in many others just by doing.

 “You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
R. Buckminster Fuller

A Gutenberg Replay?

One factor in the mass adoption of the Gutenberg press was the reaction of town councils, they allowed the press to reside temporarily before moving 'the problem' elsewhere.

 Elizabeth Eisenstein in her seminal work "The Printing Press as an Agent of Change" said:-

"The Printing Revolution occurred when the spread of the printing press facilitated the wide circulation of information and ideas, acting as an "agent of change" through the societies that it reached." (Eisenstein (1980)

We are now living in the age the technocrat, no doubt this will prove to be a critical development / driver in this context. Digital nomads, as agents of change, spreading tech religion, 'heresy' promulgated at the speed of light.

Examples of novel thinking recently realised are:- 

• Uber - a company with the most trips but no taxis
• AirBNB - a company with the most stays but no rooms
• Cryptocurrency - units of money outside the control of government
• Cloud computing - distributed high end computing at a fractional cost
• The rise of Open Source (everything?)

All of this aided and abetted by the global democratisation of capital.

• Kickstarter
• Indiegogo
• Social impact bonds
• Peer-to-peer lending
• Micro finance
• Pop up crypto funding via Monero, Ethereum, Bitcoin - you are your bank!

The combination of fractionalisation of computing power, the decoupling of money from State control and the sharing economy represent a remarkable convergence.

We now have those who do not really want to or need to own it - just use it

- a hybrid anarchist / capitalist / socialist.

Ultimately this will lead to the decline of the brand, of mass consumerism, of the nation state as we know it today- The Robot Future Cometh

McKinsey Point to Manufacturing, food service & retailing

"Almost one-fifth of the time spent in US workplaces involves performing physical activities or operating machinery in a predictable environment: workers carry out specific actions in well-known settings where changes are relatively easy to anticipate. Through the adaptation and adoption of currently available technologies, we estimate the technical feasibility of automating such activities at 78 percent."

"A service sector occupies the top spot: accommodations and food service, where almost half of all labor time involves predictable physical activities and the operation of machinery—including preparing, cooking, or serving food; cleaning food-preparation areas; preparing hot and cold beverages; and collecting dirty dishes. According to our analysis, 73 percent of the activities workers perform in food service and accommodations have the potential for automation, based on technical considerations."

You May be Sceptical.. but

Domino's is bringing robotic pizza delivery to New Zealand. The pizza chain today announced that it will trial a battery-powered delivery robot in the capital city of Wellington

*
Whilst academic economists cannot agree on long wave theory (and this is not surprising since they cannot agree how to operate economies) and in this context it is useful to quote George Bernard Shaw:-

"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."

It is evident that we progress through different 'ages':-

• the agrarian revolution
• the industrial revolution
• the computer revolution
• the information / internet revolution
• the smart phone revolution

The computer / internet / mobile developments are revolutionary and are changing every facet of business and how we communicate locally and globally. This revolution is only beginning.

Read the McKinsey report here:-
Where machines could replace humans—and where they can’t (yet)
By Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi

Quo Vadis?

Ps: I know; lets all take up art  pass the time painting, sell the works to the indolent rich for outrageous prices, become indolent rich... buy from the creatives who become indolent rich - the ultimate loop..

References:
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/Where-machines-could-replace-humans-and-where-they-cant-yet?xid=nl_daily)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press#Gutenberg.27s_press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eisenstein

postscript#1

Drawing robots 5RNP by Patrick Tresset, Variation media art fair 2015
from Natalianne Boucher on Vimeo.