Hal Hodson

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“Social Interactions Are A Key Part Of Negotiating Our World”

February 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Figuring out the final 5% of the autonomous-vehicle question will likely be more challenging than getting to that point, but there’s now a critical mass of technologists working on the remaining issues. From Hal Hodson at New Scientist:

SOME day soon, driverless podcars will cluster around our cities, waiting to pick us up on demand. There will be no steering wheel, no brake pedal; once seated, you can take a nap or watch a movie. This public facility will reduce traffic and carbon emissions. Not having to own a car will make transport cheaper for everyone.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.

Why are self-driving cars taking so long to show? For starters, essential technological and social changes needed to make them work might still be decades away. But they are on their way, thanks to some of the world’s largest companies. Google has been fine-tuning its autonomous cars for years, amassing hundreds of thousands of kilometres of test drives on Nevada’s roads. Last week the developers of the taxi app Uber announced a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute to develop technology for a self-driving taxi fleet.

“It’s a very big deal,” says Nidhi Kalra, an analyst at the RAND Corporation. “Nearly every auto-maker is pursuing this technology.”

Autonomous cars will confront the same problem that faces all robots designed to operate around people: social interactions are a key part of negotiating our world.•

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“Workers Start By Strapping Their Feet On To Foot Pads At The Base Of The Robot”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Someday the workers will mostly be robots, even the human ones. A South Korean shipbuilding firm is experimenting with encasing employees in exoskeleton suits that will allow them veritable superpowers. Just make sure to recharge your batteries. From Hal Hodson at New Scientist:

“AT A sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing.

It was all part of a test last year by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, at their facility in Okpo-dong. The company, one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, wants to take production to the next level by outfitting staff with robot exoskeletons that give them superhuman strength.

Gilwhoan Chu, the lead engineer for the firm’s research and development arm, says the pilot showed that the exoskeleton does help workers perform their tasks. His team is working to improve the prototypes so that they can go into regular use in the shipyard, where robots already run a large portion of a hugely complex assembly system.

The exoskeleton fits anyone between 160 and 185 centimetres tall. Workers do not feel the weight of its 28-kilogram frame of carbon, aluminium alloy and steel, as the suit supports itself and is engineered to follow the wearer’s movements. With a 3-hour battery life, the exoskeleton allows users to walk at a normal pace and, in its prototype form, it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.

To don the exoskeleton, workers start by strapping their feet on to foot pads at the base of the robot.”

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“The Semi-Autonomous Arms Extend Out In Front Of The Body From The Hips”

October 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

A step forward in performance-enhancing limbs has been recorded at MIT. From Hal Hodson at New Scientist:

“IF YOU fancy an extra pair of hands, why not take a leaf out of Dr Octopus’s book? A pair of intelligent arms should make almost any job a lot easier.

The semi-autonomous arms extend out in front of the body from the hips and are strapped to a backpack-like harness that holds the control circuitry. The prototype is the handiwork of Federico Parietti and Harry Asada of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who suggest that one of the first uses could be to help factory workers, or those with tricky DIY tasks to perform.

‘It’s the first time I’ve seen robot arms designed to augment human abilities. It’s bold and out of keeping with anything I’ve ever seen to attach two arms to a human,’ says Dave Barrett, a roboticist and mechanical engineer at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts.

So how are the arms controlled? Parietti and Asada designed the limbs to learn and hopefully anticipate what their wearer wants. The idea is that the algorithms in charge of the limbs would first be trained to perform specific tasks.”

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