The safety driver in Uber's autonomous car that killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona earlier this year was watching Hulu on her phone right up to the crash, local police claim. The incident - which grounded Uber's self-driving car fleet as the company began an investigation into the safety of its vehicles - was "entirely avoidable" law enforcement have suggested.
Researchers are always looking for ways to make controlling robots more natural for human operators. MIT is making strides in controlling robots using brainwaves and hand gestures. This could mean robots will one day need nothing more than a thought from a human operator to control them.
Researchers from the University of Tokyo have developed a flying robot meant to be used indoors called DRAGON. That stands for Dual-Rotor embedded multilink Robots of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformation." They really wanted to use that DRAGON name.
Most cameras record at an ordinary 30fps, though 60fps and even 120fps have become increasingly popular. Despite the availability of slow motion recording on some smartphones and digital cameras, though, most users record videos at the default "regular speed" rate. This is a problem for times when there's fast-moving action, but NVIDIA may have developed the solution.
MIT scientists and researchers are tackling an issue that poses a difficult challenge for drone operators and designers of the future. Engineers at the school are working on shrinking down drone technology and have built prototypes that are the size of a bumblebee. While tiny cameras and sensors have been developed for these tiny drones, one thing still perplexes researchers - the computer chip brain of the drone.
A new study warns that slow movements on the San Andreas fault line could trigger bigger earthquakes. The research was detailed in a newly published study out of Arizona State University, where a pair of geophysicists found that so-called "slow earthquake" activity can result in larger -- and potentially destructive -- earthquakes.
Facebook researchers have been developing a machine learning technology that can add eyes to a selfie in which the subject is blinking. The company detailed the technology on its Research website recently, explaining that in-painting is used to remove the closed eyelids and replace them with what appears to be the subject's own eyes.
A group of researchers led by Ph.D. candidate Joshua Stewart from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and scientists from the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered what they say is the first known manta ray nursery in the world. The manta ray nursery was discovered at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.
Thanks to popularity both in academic circles and commercial markets, AI research and technology have grown exponentially in the past few years. Now AI and neural networks can not only beat humans in games, they can also craft sometimes disturbing works of fiction. But one thing that AI have not yet been able to do sufficiently is to actually explain their “thinking” in plain language. IBM’s Project Debater can and it can be impressive or scary, depending on which side of the AI debate you’re on.
Addiction gaming is a real condition, the World Health Organization has decided, though not everybody agrees with the conclusion. The WHO released the latest version of its International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11, today, and among the changes from the previous iteration is that "gaming disorder" has been added to the section on addictive disorders.
A study out of the University of Illinois, Chicago, warns that kids and teens -- especially teens -- are using "alternative medicine" in growing numbers. The research was recently published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, which reports that despite warnings from officials that kids shouldn't use supplements, teens are increasingly using things like melatonin.
The engineers at MIT have developed a smart electrical outlet that can learn what appliances are plugged in and tell dangerous electric spikes from spikes that are benign. MIT says that nuisance trips are things like your vacuum turning off unexpectedly or a lamp going off when your AC unit turns on. Those trips often happen when a detector installed inside the wall senses something that could be an arc-fault.