A.I./Robotics

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…

Artificial intelligence (AI) could help doctors predict breast cancer risk earlier and tailor care options to individual patients based on risk. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new technique using a deep-learning model that predicts if a patient is likely to develop breast…

These days, nearly all the artificial intelligence-based products in our lives rely on “deep neural networks” that automatically learn to process labeled data. For most organizations and individuals, though, deep learning is tough to break into. To learn well, neural networks normally have to be quite large and need massive datasets. This training process usually…

A research collaboration led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories is hoping to implement artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the capabilities to hypersonic vehicles like long-range missiles. Along with researchers from Sandia, several universities have signed on to form Autonomy New Mexico, an organization patterned on the U.S. Department of Defense,…

While single stream recycling is convenient for consumers, it has become a burden for recycling companies, as employees have to sift through piles of recycled items to determine what is plastic, paper or metal. This process includes newspapers, plastic bottles and other recycled items moving quickly through a conveyor belt where human workers will manually…

Bad news for ophiophobes: Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new and improved snake-inspired soft robot that is faster and more precise than its predecessor. The robot is made using kirigami — a Japanese paper craft that relies on cuts to change the properties…

Advanced robotics sensitive touch or next-generation wearable devices with sophisticated sensing capabilities could soon be possible following the development of a rubber that combines flexibility with high electrical conductivity. The new smart composite material, developed by researchers at the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, shows properties that have not previously…