Ever since the première of “Steamboat Willie” in 1928, The Walt Disney Company has pushed the envelope of imagination. Mickey Mouse is still more popular worldwide than any single human actor. In fact, from that one cel an entire world… Read More ›
Business
New Battery Technology Is Accelerating Autonomy And Saving The Environment
If the robotics world had a celebrity it would be Spot Mini of Boston Dynamics. Last month at the Robotics Summit in Boston the mechanical dog strutted onto the floor of the Westin Hotel trailed by hundreds of flickering iPhones…. Read More ›
The Latest Target For Automation: Window Washers
Three and half years ago, I stood on the corner of West Street and gasped as two window washers clung to life at the end of a rope a thousand feet above. By the time rescue crews reached the men… Read More ›
Exclusive Interview With Nic Radford Creator Of Aquanaut, The Shape-Shifting Subsea Robot
It has been two years since OceanOne, “the robotic mermaid,” first discovered the seventeenth century shipwreck La Lune, the prized frigate of King Louis XIV’s navy. Professor Oussama Khatib of Stanford, the inventor of the swimming humanoid, heralded in then a new age of… Read More ›
The Legal Dilemma Of Intelligent Machines
Walking into XPONENTIAL 2018, I was dumbfounded by the keynote speech by Professor Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina. To paraphrase, ‘In the future, we will no longer need two pilots, planes will have just one captain and… Read More ›
Navigating The Future of Work
Several years ago, Canary Pete’s political cartoon flooded email inboxes and social media pages. The humorous illustration showed a middle-aged executive walking into a typical job interview, with the exception that he had to build his own office chair (since he was… Read More ›
Drones As First Responders
In a basement of New York University in 2013, Dr. Sergei Lupashin wowed the room of one hundred leading technology enthusiasts with one of the first indoor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) demonstrations. During his presentation, Dr. Lupashin of ETH Zurich attached… Read More ›
Lessons Learned When Robots Fail
Pundits are already speculating that the fatal crash by Uber’s autonomous taxi will set the driverless car industry back decades. As the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) deconstructs the accident to report on the technological breakdown, it is clear that… Read More ›
SXSW 2018: Protect AI, Robots, Cars (And Us) From Bias
As Mark Hamill humorously shared the behind-the-scenes of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” with a packed SXSW audience, two floors below on the exhibit floor Universal Robots recreated General Grievous’ famed light saber battles. The battling machines were steps away from a twelve… Read More ›
Making Unmanned Systems More Energy Efficient
Last Tuesday, I chaired a UJA Tech Talk on “The Future Of Autonomous Cars” with former General Motors Vice-Chairman, Steve Girsky. The auto executive enthusiastically shared his vision for the next 15-25 years of driving – a congestion-free world of… Read More ›