Lifeboat Foundation

This is a fictional story about a man realizing for the first time, under rather unusual circumstances, that he has a deep desire not to age and die.

It’s been a few months already, yet that day still feels like yesterday. I am still not convinced that I didn’t lose my mind that day, and even if I didn’t, it’s changed my thinking quite a bit.

I was in a green grove in the local cemetery, sitting on a bench. As it is the piece of nature closest to home, I used to go there quite often. A small group of men, all at least in their 40s and wearing black suits and ties, had passed by just as the bells in the nearby church began ringing.

The state of artificial intelligence (AI) in smart homes nowadays might be likened to a smart but moody teenager: It’s starting to hit its stride and discover its talents, but it doesn’t really feel like answering any questions about what it’s up to and would really rather be left alone, OK?

William Yeoh, assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, is working to help smart-home AI to grow up.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Yeoh a $300,000 grant to assist in developing smart-home AI algorithms that can determine what a user wants by both asking questions and making smart guesses, and then plan and schedule accordingly. Beyond being smart, the system needs to be able to communicate and to explain why it is proposing the schedule it proposed to the user.

The British government is preparing to launch its first commercial rocket from the country by 2021, and has upped its funding and partnerships with American companies to do so, reports CNBC.

The details: Lockheed Martin has already been allotted the largest chunk of UKSA’s (United Kingdom Space Agency) funding, receiving over $30 million “to develop an orbital launch site for small rockets in Melness, Scotland.” The company told CNBC, “[t]he launcher will be a flight-proven, dedicated small sat vehicle.” Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit also locked in a deal with UKSA “to launch its LauncherOne rocket from Cosmic Girl,” and plans to be the first to launch a commercial rocket from the island in the next three years.

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Often only a few years separate the tinfoil hats from the millionaires to be. I was writing the piece on the Youbionic arm and thinking of how we will use 3D printing to augment human beings. Clearly augmenting the human body with mechatronics would be a good idea. The flesh is weak but stepper motors are strong! Oh how we will eeck, ooow, brrrr whine in our old stepper augmented age. Machines could very well fill the gaps once our bodies start failing us. But, will old people homes really be filled with Borg grandmas?

Continue reading “Joris Column: Printcrime, augmenting humans, nanoconvergence and Segway polo” »

As heat and humidity soared and New Yorkers slowed their famously fast strides to cope, a small miracle happened in Midtown: A single-family house was assembled in three days.

The tiny 22-square-meter (237-square-foot) prototype, on display on United Nations Plaza, is designed for a family of four. It’s self-sustaining, producing drinkable water from the air, energy from the sun and food from a vertical vegetable garden embedded in the exterior walls. And at an expected price of about $35,000, it may provide an affordable answer to a global housing shortage.

“In this climate, this home would produce enough food for a family of four for about 260 days” out of a year, said Anna Dyson, a professor of architecture and forestry and environmental studies at Yale University. “In better climates — in Africa, for example — it could actually produce a surplus of food.”

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LG will build its next artificial intelligence (AI) research lab in Toronto, it announced Wednesday.

The South Korean electronics company said the Canadian lab is an extension of its newly expanded Silicon Valley AI Lab in Santa Clara, California. It also has AI labs in South Korea, India and Russia.

“Early implementations of AI in connected devices today are setting the stage for tomorrow’s smart cities, smart homes, smart businesses and smart devices, all with capabilities that no one has even dreamed of yet.” said LG President and Chief Technology Officer Il-pyung Park.

Humanity will one day make it to Mars. But can we make it livable?

Humanoid Robot torsos, legs, and arms are about where they need to be. But the robot hands are not quite where they need to be yet if we really want them to take all the jobs. The government is dumping a lot of money into robotic hand’s for amputees, which i’m sure they plan to eventually put on the humanoid robots, but it should be pushed along faster.

Imagine, for a moment, the simple act of picking up a playing card from a table. You have a couple of options: Maybe you jam your fingernail under it for leverage, or drag it over the edge of the table.

Now imagine a robot trying to do the same thing. Tricky: Most robots don’t have fingernails, or friction-facilitating fingerpads that perfectly mimic ours. So many of these delicate manipulations continue to escape robotic control. But engineers are making steady progress in getting the machines to manipulate our world. And now, you can help them from the comfort of your own home.

Continue reading “Robots Can’t Hold Stuff Very Well, But You Can Help” »

Current solar cells are able to convert into electricity around 20% of the energy received from the Sun, but a new technique has the potential to convert around 60% of it by funneling the energy more efficiently.

UK researchers can now ‘funnel’ electrical charge onto a chip. Using the atomically thin semiconductor hafnium disulphide (HfS2), which is oxidized with a high-intensity UV laser, the team were able to engineer an electric field that funnels electrical charges to a specific area of the chip, where they can be more easily extracted.

Continue reading “Breakthrough could triple the energy collected by solar to 60% efficiency” »