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Category: robotics/AI

Fujitsu is building a robot that uses 3D laser sensors to detect motion without the need for athletes to wear any special suits. The robot will be ready for the Olympics in 2020 in Japan, and will precisely score gymnasts based on measurements taken by the sensors.

Japan is making sure the 2020 Olympics will be a technological festivity. They even may be spending a staggering $8.1 million for an artificial meteor shower.

In addition to the “fireworks,” Fujitsu, in partnership with the Japan Gymnastics Association, is developing the ultimate judge to end all biases in the Olympics: a robot programmed to precisely score gymnasts at the Olympics with absolute fairness by using 3D laser sensors capable of measuring 76,800 points of motion per frame up to 30 times per second.

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An Israeli medical imaging company has signed a deal with a Utah-based healthcare provider that could change the way we diagnose certain conditions. Zebra Medical Imaging is teaming up with Intermountain to work on a neural network that will compare fresh X-rays with the “millions” stored in its own database. The eventual aim of the project is to offer up suggestions to radiographers and other medical professionals and eliminate costly misdiagnoses.

For instance, let’s imagine that you’ve gone to hospital for some unknown condition and you get an X-ray. Rather than handing the slide to a doctor, who could miss a small shadow or other minor clue, the image would be handed to the computer. It would use deep learning to trawl an anonymized patient database looking for any anomalies that you might be suffering from. The current system will work on bone health, cardiovascular analysis and lung conditions, although who knows where the possibilities will end.

As deep learning technology gets more powerful, smaller and significantly cheaper, the potential for AI to assist doctors becomes more realistic. IBM has spent the last few years pushing Watson, its homegrown supercomputer, as a system to aid decision making for patients. At the same time, companies like LG are trying to shrink medical imaging technology to end the days of bulky hospital equipment being available for a chosen few. All in all, the idea of a medical tricorder is going from fantastical to plausible in less time than you’d expect.

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Capitalism, at least as we know it, will probably not survive through the next decade. UBI might delay it, but the outcome is inevitable.

Submitted by Paul Rosenberg via FreemansPerspective.com,

It’s really just a matter of time; the working man’s deal with his overseers is half dead already. But there’s still inertia in the system, and even the losers are keeping the faith. Hope dies slowly, after all.

Nonetheless, the deal is collapsing and a new wave of robots will kill it altogether. Unless the overseers can pull back on technology – very fast and very hard – the deal that held through all our lifetimes will unwind.

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#TheDAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) is the hottest new form of investment built on revolutionary (Transparency, Democracy, Decentralization).

Our own Robin Hanson has been an inspiration:

“The slogan is vote on values, bet on beliefs. What you need are discreet decisions and then you need an outcome that you care about.”

Built from open-source code written by Ethereum-based startup Slock.it, The DAO has raised millions worth of ETH based on a business model of allowing those who buy voters rights tokens to cast a vote on funding proposals they want to support.

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Your next pair of Adidas shoes may be put together by robots — the German sports retailer has said it will start selling its first robot-produced shoes in a new, state-of-the-art factory in its home market starting 2017.

The announcement came as Adidas unveiled its prototype “Speedfactory”, a state-of-the-art, 4,600 square-meter facility on Tuesday, meant to automate shoe production, which is largely done manually in Asian factories at the moment.

The new production site in the southern German city of Ansbach is still under construction, but it represents a return to local production for Adidas, which stopped manufacturing shoes in its home market more than two decades ago in favor of Asia.

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More information on ANTs.

In the minuscule world of nanotechnology, big steps are rare. But a recent development has the potential to massively improve our lives: an engine measuring 200 billionths of a metre, which could power tiny robots to fight diseases in living cells.

Life itself is proof of the extreme effectiveness of nanotechnology — the manipulation of matter on a molecular or atomic scale — in which DNA, proteins and enzymes can all be considered as machinery. In fact, researchers have managed to make micro-propellers using tiny strands of DNA. These strands can be stitched together so freely and precisely that the practise is known as “DNA origami”. However, DNA origami lacks force and operational speed (it takes time measurable in seconds), reducing its robotic function.

But we have now produced nano-engines that can be operated with beams of light to work pistons, pumps and valves. Made from bound together by a heat-sensitive chemical, our machines are strong, fast and simple to operate, making them extremely practical for future applications.

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