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Amazon's 'Safe' New Robot Won't Fix its Worker Injury Problem

WIRED

Since Amazon began bringing robots to its warehouses in 2014, company executives have repeatedly claimed that they improve worker safety. But company records obtained by Reveal showed that between 2016 and 2019 serious injuries occurred more often in Amazon warehouses with robots than those without them, suggesting that robots made employees less safe by causing managers to raise performance quotas. Analysis of filings with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by The Washington Post found that in 2020, serious injuries were roughly twice as likely to occur in Amazon warehouses than those run by other companies. A separate analysis of OSHA data by labor union coalition the Strategic Organizing Center found the same pattern for 2021. Amazon didn't mention that track record late last month when it announced a machine called Proteus, which company officials call their first fully mobile and collaborative robot.


What's coming up at RoboCup 2022?

AIHub

RoboCup 2022 will take place in Bangkok, Thailand, from 13-17 July. The event will see around 3000 participants, from 45 different countries take part in competitions and a symposium. You can see the schedule for the week here. The RoboCup symposium will take place on 17 July. The programme can be found here.


Waymo and Uber are pressuring California to lift its ban on larger self-driving trucks

Fast Company

A group of autonomous vehicle developers are pressuring California lawmakers to introduce a regulatory process that would eventually allow autonomous trucks on public roads. Thirty-five autonomous vehicle leaders including Waymo, Uber, Volvo, and Aurora signed an open letter last week addressed to California Governor Gavin Newsom, arguing that if California does not soon permit testing of autonomous trucks on public roads, it could lose its competitive edge. While California has allowed for the testing of smaller, autonomous vehicles on public roads since 2019, semi-trucks and delivery vehicles weighing more than 10,001 pounds remain prohibited. California figures as an important testing ground for autonomous vehicles for two reasons: Not only is the state an innovation hub for self-driving technology, but it's also the home of several highways that connect multiple key cross-country freight routes. California's plans for allowing autonomous trucking still remain unclear.



When machine learning meets surrealist art meets Reddit, you get DALL-E mini

NPR Technology

An image of babies doing parkour generated by DALL-E mini. An image of babies doing parkour generated by DALL-E mini. DALL-E mini is the AI bringing to life all of the goofy "what if" questions you never asked: What if Voldemort was a member of Green Day? What if there was a McDonald's in Mordor? What if scientists sent a Roomba to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?


DeepMind's AI develops popular policy for distributing public money

New Scientist

Could artifical intelligence make better funding decisions than senators? A "democratic" AI system has learned how to develop the most popular policy for redistributing public money among people playing an online game. "Many of the problems that humans face are not merely technological, but require us to coordinate in society and in our economies for the greater good," says Raphael Koster at UK-based AI company DeepMind. "For AI to be able to help, it needs to learn directly about human values." The DeepMind team trained its artificial intelligence to learn from more than 4000 people as well as from computer simulations in an online, four-player economic game.


Using GPUs to Discover Human Brain Connectivity - Neuroscience News

#artificialintelligence

Summary: Researchers developed a new GPU-based machine learning algorithm to help predict the connectivity of networks within the brain. A new GPU-based machine learning algorithm developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) can help scientists better understand and predict connectivity between different regions of the brain. The algorithm, called Regularized, Accelerated, Linear Fascicle Evaluation, or ReAl-LiFE, can rapidly analyse the enormous amounts of data generated from diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) scans of the human brain. Using ReAL-LiFE, the team was able to evaluate dMRI data over 150 times faster than existing state-of-the-art algorithms. "Tasks that previously took hours to days can be completed within seconds to minutes," says Devarajan Sridharan, Associate Professor at the Centre for Neuroscience (CNS), IISc, and corresponding author of the study published in the journal Nature Computational Science.


Behind the scenes of Waymo's worst automated truck crash โ€“ TechCrunch - Channel969

#artificialintelligence

Probably the most critical crash thus far involving a self-driving truck may need resulted in solely average accidents, but it surely uncovered how unprepared native authorities and legislation enforcement are to take care of the brand new expertise. On Might 5, a Class 8 Waymo By way of truck working in autonomous mode with a human security operator behind the wheel was hauling a trailer northbound on Interstate 45 towards Dallas, Texas. At 3:11 p.m., simply outdoors Ennis, the modified Peterbilt was touring within the far proper lane when a passing truck and trailer combo entered its lane. The motive force of the Waymo By way of truck informed police that the opposite semi truck continued to maneuver into the lane, forcing Waymo's truck and trailer off the roadway. She was later taken to a hospital for accidents that Waymo described in its report back to the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration as "average."


Aurora's Autonomous Tests in Texas Keep Rolling

#artificialintelligence

After lumbering through a gravel parking lot like a big blue bull, one of Aurora Innovation Inc.'s self-driving truck prototypes took a wide right turn onto a frontage road near Dallas. The steering wheel spun through the half-clasped hands of its human operator, whose touch may not be needed much longer. Fittingly for Texas, these Peterbilts are adorned with a sensor display above the windshield that looks much like a set of longhorns. This was the beginning of a 28-mile jaunt up and down Interstate 45 toward Houston in a truck with a computer for a brain, and cameras, radar and lidar sensors for eyes, capturing objects more than 437 yards out in all directions. The stakes for test drives like this one are incredibly high for the future of freight.


Brian Gerkey on the success of Open Robotics and ROS - Channel969

#artificialintelligence

Welcome to Episode 84 of The Robotic Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Be a part of us every week for discussions with main roboticists, modern robotics corporations, and different key members of the robotics neighborhood. Our visitor this week is Brian Gerkey, CEO and co-founder of Open Robotics and certainly one of creators of ROS. Brian tells us concerning the improvement and evolution of the Robotic Working System (ROS) and why open supply software program has performed such a pivotal function within the development of the robotics trade and within the acceleration of robotics analysis in college and company robotic labs around the globe. Now it's time to organize for RoboBusiness and the Discipline Robotics Engineering Discussion board, which run October 19-20, 2022 in Santa Clara, Calif If you want to be a visitor on an upcoming episode of the podcast, or you probably have suggestions for future friends or phase concepts, contact Steve Crowe or Mike Oitzman.