A.I./Robotics

By Kayla Wiles Roads always seem to need repairs. Luna Lu is giving concrete the ability to “talk” and even heal itself. Her lab at Purdue University is developing technology that would allow concrete-paved bridges and highways to reveal more accurately when they need repairs and to come equipped with materials that respond to potential…

Written by Rob Matheson, MIT News Office Artificial intelligence has become a focus of certain ethical concerns, but it also has some major sustainability issues. Last June, researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst released a startling report estimating that the amount of power required for training and searching a certain neural network architecture…

Digital Science, a technology company serving emergent needs across the research sector, is pleased to announce a partnership with Beijing-based technology company Zhipu.AI to conduct data challenges and collaborate in building a COVID-19 information portal. Zhipu.AI, a spin-out from Tsinghua University, aims to build an advanced artificial intelligence engine that can support and empower the…

By Ville Leppälä Virtual reality and eye tracking have been used in research for decades but until recently, the research community hasn’t been able to fully benefit from merging the two technologies. As a result of continued improvements in VR hardware and the underlying technologies that deliver a positive user experience, researchers are now able…

Access the Springer Nature virtual issue Over the years the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine has become increasingly important. A growing number of disciplines and branches of medicine are using AI in some capacity or other, they include radiology, genomics, oncology and cardiology, to name a few. AI assists researchers to solve complex…

Sandia National Laboratories robotics experts are working on a way to intercept enemy unmanned aircraft systems midflight. They successfully tested their concept indoors with a swarm of four unmanned aircraft systems that flew in unison, each carrying one corner of a net. Acting as a team, they intercepted the flying target, trapped it in air…

A joint project between Monash University and Eastern Health’s Turning Point, are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline the coding of national suicide-related ambulance data to help paramedics respond more effectively and ultimately prevent potential suicide rates. Ambulances are often the first point of contact in a crisis, making ambulance clinical records a unique data…

Predicting the future is hard – predicting the future of technology is even harder. In the last 10 years, everything from entertainment to travel has been upended by the likes of Airbnb, Spotify, and Instagram – none of which even existed a decade ago – while Netflix was still delivering DVDs by mail. Now, as…

For the first time, MIT researchers have enabled a soft robotic arm to understand its configuration in 3D space, by leveraging only motion and position data from its own “sensorized” skin. Soft robots constructed from highly compliant materials, similar to those found in living organisms, are being championed as safer, and more adaptable, resilient, and…

Rice University engineers have created a deep learning computer system that taught itself to accurately predict extreme weather events, like heat waves, up to five days in advance using minimal information about current weather conditions. Ironically, Rice’s self-learning “capsule neural network” uses an analog method of weather forecasting that computers made obsolete in the 1950s.…

A model invented by researchers at MIT and Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) that uses satellite imagery to tag road features in digital maps could help improve GPS navigation. Showing drivers more details about their routes can often help them navigate in unfamiliar locations. Lane counts, for instance, can enable a GPS system to warn…

Artificial intelligence will never replace a doctor. However, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have taken a big step toward the day when AI can help physicians predict medical events. A new approach developed by PNNL scientists improves the accuracy of patient diagnosis up to 20 percent when compared to other…

Chameleons, salamanders and many toads use stored elastic energy to launch their sticky tongues at unsuspecting insects located up to one-and-a-half body lengths away, catching them within a tenth of a second. Ramses Martinez, an assistant professor in Purdue’s School of Industrial Engineering and in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in Purdue University’s College…

When Tesla failed to hit weekly production targets in the first quarter of 2018, chief executive Elon Musk blamed it on “excessive automation.” The robots were slowing things down and “underrated” humans could do better. Musk resorted to pulling all-nighters and sleeping at the factory so that customer deliveries wouldn’t be further delayed. For those…

Researchers are proposing a framework that would allow users to understand the rationale behind artificial intelligence (AI) decisions. The work is significant, given the push to move away from “black box” AI systems – particularly in sectors, such as military and law enforcement, where there is a need to justify decisions. “One thing that sets…

Today microcontrollers can be found in almost any technical device, from washing machines to blood pressure meters and wearables. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS have developed AIfES, an artificial intelligence (AI) concept for microcontrollers and sensors that contains a completely configurable artificial neural network. AIfES is a platform-independent machine…

For environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, infrastructure maintenance and certain security applications, slow and energy efficient can be better than fast and always needing a recharge. That’s where “SlothBot” comes in. Powered by a pair of photovoltaic panels and designed to linger in the forest canopy continuously for months, SlothBot moves only when it must to…

Researchers are hoping to utilize new deep learning techniques coupled with robotics to learn more about the animals that inhabit the seafloor miles upon miles under the surface. A team from the University of Plymouth are testing how a computer vision (CV) system could accurately identify several animals from images taken on the seabed using…

North Carolina State University researchers have developed a new framework for building deep neural networks via grammar-guided network generators. In experimental testing, the new networks—called AOGNets—have outperformed existing state-of-the-art frameworks, including the widely-used ResNet and DenseNet systems, in visual recognition tasks. “AOGNets have better prediction accuracy than any of the networks we’ve compared it to,”…

Machine learning (ML) has found wide application in materials science. It is believed that a model developed by ML could depict the common trend of the data and therefore reflect the relationship between structure and property, which can be applied to most of the compounds. So, by training ML models with existed databases, important properties…