Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: robotics/AI

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has made a historic touchdown on the asteroid Bennu, dodging boulders the size of buildings to collect samples from the surface for several seconds before safely backing away Tuesday evening.

The meticulous descent took 4.5 hours and by 6.12pm the spacecraft made touchdown where its 11-foot robotic arm acted like a pogo stick and bounced on the asteroid’s surface to collect dirt and dust before the craft launched back into space.

The crucial minutes in the mission started around 5.38pm when the spacecraft extended its arm and cameras toward the asteroid’s surface. By 6pm OSIRIS-REx made matchpoint burn, the spacecraft’s key final maneuver performed by firing its thrusters to match Bennu’s spin to center itself exactly over the landing spot.

Read more | >

Head Image Caption: Street level view of 3D-reconstructed Chelsea, Manhattan

Historians and nostalgic residents alike take an interest in how cities were constructed and how they developed — and now there’s a tool for that. Google AI recently launched the open-source browser-based toolset “rǝ,” which was created to enable the exploration of city transitions from 1800 to 2000 virtually in a three-dimensional view.

Google AI says the name rǝ is pronounced as “re-turn” and derives its meaning from “reconstruction, research, recreation and remembering.” This scalable system runs on Google Cloud and Kubernetes and reconstructs cities from historical maps and photos.

Read more | >

Adobe injects more AI into its tools.

The latest version of Adobe Photoshop comes with new neural filters — AI-powered filters that let you change someone’s age or expression with a few clicks. A whole suite of machine learning neural filters will eventually be available, including ones for colorizing photos, removing defects, and more.

Read more | >

Facebook on Monday unveiled software based on machine learning which the company said was the first to be able to translate from any of 100 languages without relying on English.

The open-source artificial intelligence software was created to help the massive social network deliver content better in 160 languages to its more than two billion users around the world.

“This milestone is a culmination of years of Facebook AI’s foundational work in ,” research assistant Angela Fan said in a blog post.

Read more | >