Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 221

We all know what happens when Skynet is turned on, and it feels like we continue to get closer each week - with Google now teasing its new AI, after it learned "highly aggressive" behavior.

Google had its AI technology in a wolfpack hunting game scenario, where the AI had to gather fruit - with the concept of the game based around cooperation, but it went bad. AI were represented by colored squares that moved on a grid collecting fruit squares of differing colors.

As they collected fruit, the AI collected points - while the fruit squares would regenerate. But then the AI began to change, as they were capable of damaging the other AI players in the game with laser beams. The AI was fine when there were plenty of fruit squares, but when the fruit squares became scarce - the AI started attacking other AI, just like we would against other gamers in a video game.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, called TRAPPIST-1. The system is named after The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile, which first discovered three of these planets.

At their press event, NASA has confirmed that three of those planets are located in the habitable zone. All of the seven planets could have liquid water, meaning there is a chance that some form of life might have developed on them. Scientists believe that the highest chances of finding extraterrestrial life are the three planets in the habitable zone.

The discovery also sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system.

NASA has announced that they will hold a news conference at 1 PM Wednesday, February 22nd, to "present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets." NASA's announcement didn't reveal any further details.

There are thousands of known exoplanets that scientists discovered in the past two decades. Scientists believe that exoplanets are our best chance to find an extraterrestrial life.

There is special interest in planets that orbit in a star's habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface.

After a postponed launch on Saturday, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday at 9:39 EST.

SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the first commercial launch from Kennedy's historic pad. The first-ever launch from Kennedy's Pad 39-A was Apollo 4. Lifting off on November 9th, 1967, it was the first test flight of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the moon. The SpaceX CRS-10 launch of a Dragon spacecraft is the first from Pad 39-A since the final space shuttle mission on July 8th, 2011.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is now on its way to International Space Station where it will arrive on Wednesday, February 22nd. Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the ESA (European Space Agency) will use the station's robotic arm to capture it.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch its tenth Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station on Saturday, February 18th.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is targeting liftoff on the company's Falcon 9 rocket at 10:01 AM from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft will carry supplies and hardware needed for the scientific research of the Expedition 50 and 51 crew members.

After a two-day trip, the spacecraft should arrive at the Station where Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) will use the station's robotic arm to capture it.

The world is quickly stumbling into the world of fully autonomous everything, and it looks like factories are going to really win with robots if the results of a Chinese factory are anything to go by.

Changying Precision Technology Company (CPTC) replaces 600 human workers with robots, and saw a gigantic 250% increase in productivity, while they also noted an 80% decrease in defects. Factory workers can't be happy with that, as I don't think that even with the best training, they could provide a 250% productivity boost overnight like their robotic overlords did.

CPTC has 60 human workers remaining, which will be sliced down to just 20 in the coming months. Now we've all got to sit back and think: where will we all be in 10-20 years, and is your job truly safe from robotics or a fully advanced AI-based system?

Amazon is making big moves to take over the skies with drone deliveries, teasing its purported Prime Air delivery service during the Super Bowl this year.

The company ran what would've been a very expensive ad spot, showing a couple sitting on the couch - with the man licking the Doritos' dust from his fingers, with the woman then gives a sarcastic reply to Amazon Echo. She says: "Alexa, reorder Doritos from Prime Air", with Echo replying with: "Ok, look for delivery soon" and then a drone comes into focus... beautiful, convenient - and the future of me being even lazier.

Amazon makes note that the Prime Air drone delivery isn't a real thing... yet, but expect that drone deliveries - and what should end up as Prime Air, will be the future of Amazon's delivery dominance in the future.

After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings, and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is planned for September 2017.

Cassini already sent some impressive images of the Saturn's atmosphere, and now it has shown us detailed images of Saturn's rings.

The views are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, giving scientists an eagerly awaited opportunity to observe features with names like "straw" and "propellers." Although Cassini saw these features earlier in the mission, the spacecraft's current, special orbits are now providing opportunities to see them in greater detail. The new images resolve details as small as 0.3 miles (550 meters), which is on the scale of Earth's tallest buildings.

While the Chinese are still banned from the Space Station, that hasn't stopped the country from developing a strong space exploration program. Last year, China had the highest number of launches in space so far, and now they are developing new plans for further space exploration, including sending spacecraft to Mars and Jupiter.

Their plan is to send its first probe to Mars by 2020, said Wu Yanhua, Vice Director of the China National Space Administration. The second probe should bring back samples that will help them get a better understanding of the environment on the Red Planet.

China also plans to launch a large modular space station in 2023, and if the International Space Station finishes its work in 2024, as planned, China will be the only country with a permanent station in space.

If there was something that could change the world, it would be a cancer-detecting app on your smartphone - all powered with AI. We know that artificial intelligence is something that will be a part of our future, but now a group of researchers from Stanford are coming out with some exciting things.

The researchers published their findings in the latest issue of Nature this week, training a neural network with 129,450 photos that displayed to the system over 2000 different types of skin conditions. Mixing one of Google's own image recognition algorithms, the researchers trained the neural network to identify both malignant, and benign skin lesions.

The team also worked with 21 human dermatologists, showing the experts the same, common and deadly forms of skin cancer, and asked what treatment they would recommend. Comparing their answer to the AI, the humans performed at the same level. Sebastian Thrun from Stanford's AI Lab wrote in a blog: "We realized it was feasible, not just to do something well, but as well as a human dermatologist. That's when our thinking changed".

After a longer break, SpaceX recently launched their Falcon 9 rocket and successfully returned it to Earth. Their second this year's launch is scheduled for January 30th.

However, this time they won't even try to land the rocket. Musk himself confirmed this on Twitter explaining that the problem is heavy payload that the Falcon 9 rocket has to carry.

The January 30th launch will involve a Falcon 9 rocket carrying communication satellite EchoStar 23 that will be placed in the elliptical orbit at 35,000 kilometers from Earth. In order to deliver it to the required height, it will take a lot of fuel and great speed. In addition, the satellite is 5.4 tons heavy meaning that the Falcon 9 won't have any extra fuel for a landing attempt.

GOES-16, the first spacecraft in NOAA's next-generation of geostationary satellites, has sent the first high-resolution images from its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument.

The GOES-16 is the latest step in a new age of weather satellites that should help us monitor the weather conditions.

The first image shows view of the Moon as it looked above the surface of the Earth on January 15.

Boeing has unveiled its new spacesuit for future passengers of its CST-100 Spaceliner spacecraft, which they'll wear to and from low-Earth orbit destinations, such as the International Space Station.

Boeing explains their new Starliner spacesuit as it: "provides greater pressurized mobility and is about 40 percent lighter than previous suits. Its innovative layers will keep astronauts cooler as well. The touchscreen-friendly gloves allow astronauts to interact with the capsule's tablets while the boots are breathable and slip resistant".

"Zippers in the torso area will make it easier for astronauts to comfortably transition from sitting to standing. In addition to protecting astronauts during launch and the return to Earth, the suit also helps connect astronauts to ground and space crews through the communications headset within the helmet", they continued. Adding: "The suit's hood-like soft helmet sports a wide polycarbonate visor to give Starliner passengers better peripheral vision throughout their ride to and from space".

Google it utilizing the near unlimited power of artificial intelligence in order to reduce the amount of data consumed with images online, using new image compressions technology called RAISR (Rapid and Accurate Super Image Resolution).

Google's Alphabet subsidiary has been tapping AI to save data on high-res images, but and it's already here - except, it's limited to Google+ for now. Using the new RAISR technology, up to 75% of mobile data can be saved - all without any change in the image quality. How does RAISR work? The technology takes the image, analyzes it, and creates duplicates of the images using fractions of the pixels from the original image.

The company talked about RAISR in a recent write up, where it explained: "Doing so reduces the data cost of each image by up to 75 percent. The technique is currently being applied to more than a billion images a week, and the company says doing so has reduced users' total bandwidth by about a third".

Don't worry guys, Skynet is going to be born and we're not going to be slaves to the machines... if the founders of LinkedIn and eBay have anything to do with it, that is.

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's founder and the Omidyar network - a philanthropic investment firm set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, are both donating $10 million towards the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund. The $20 million investment will be used by researchers to handle the ethical problems that will stirred up by AI.

Hoffman said: "There's an urgency to ensure that AI benefits society and minimises harm. AI decision-making can influence many aspects of our world - education, transportation, healthcare, criminal justice and the economy - yet data and code behind those decisions can be largely invisible".

CES 2017 - Every year CES gathers many interesting startups and this year was no different. One of the most interesting things that caught our eyes is a little spider-robot that appeared to be dancing.

The robot, named STEMI Hexapod, is a product of a Croatian startup that wanted to create a learning experience in a fun and easy way. The robot comes in parts that you can then put together on your own. You will also need an app that will let you control the robot's movement by tilting the phone.

The mannequin challenge has been spreading through social media for the last couple of months, and so far we have seen many recordings of the challenge.

The latest footage, published by astronaut Thomas Pesquet, shows one of the best challenges we have seen so far, and also the only one that hasn't been recorded on Earth.

The video shows astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station 'frozen' in everyday poses. The only female astronaut aboard the ISS appears as if she is taking photos of her colleagues.

According to scientists and experts at NASA's Langley Research Center, we could be one step closer to colonizing mars with their new 'The Mars Ice Home'.

The inflatable tube is lined with a shell of water ice, using materials found on Mars - with the water protecting the inhabitants from cosmic rays, and could even be repurposed as rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Lander.

Right now, NASA's impressive Mars Ice Home is a concept with some issues, as experts have said it would take around 400 days to fill the shell with enough water from Mars. Robots could help, inflating and pumping the shelter while the human astronauts are on their journey from Earth to Mars. The Ice Home will continue to evolve, but this is an exciting new step.

Tesla has announced alongside Panasonic, that they will start production of solar cells in a factory on American soil - in Buffalo, New York.

The two companies have settled on an agreement for Panasonic to pay the capital costs for the manufacturing, while Tesla has made a "long-term purchase commitment" to Panasonic - but no official figures have been thrown around. The production factory in question is under development by SolarCity Corp., a solar power company that Tesla owns.

The announcement said that the photovoltaic cells and modules that are used in solar panels for non-solar roof products and solar glass tile roofs that Tesla will soon be making. Production kicks off mid next year, with Tesla creating 1400 jobs in Buffalo, and 500 more jobs in manufacturing as it expands its operations in Buffalo.

The Cassini space probe was launched in 1997, and after a long trip, it entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Since then, Cassini has been sending valuable data and photos of the Saturn.

The newest image, taken on December 18th, is one of the highest-resolution views ever taken of Saturn's moon Pandora. The spacecraft captured the image during its closest-ever flyby of Pandora, during the third of its grazing passes by the outer edges of Saturn's main rings.

The image was taken at a distance of approximately 25,200 miles (40,500 kilometers) from Pandora.