If you thought robot dogs were the coolest animatronic animals out there, prepare to think again. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, a company better known for its high-end motorcycles, has unveiled a hydrogen-powered, ride-on robo-horse. The bizarre device was unveiled at the Osaka Kansai Expo on April 4 as part of Kawasaki's'Impulse to Move' project. Dubbed the CORLEO, this two-seater quadruped is capable of galloping over almost any terrain. The company calls it a'revolutionary off-road personal mobility vehicle' which swaps out the familiar wheels for four robotic legs. To steer, all you need to do is move your body and the machine's AI vision will pick out the best route to take.

Kawasaki, the renowned Japanese company, best known for speedy motorcycles like the legendary Ninja series, has recently astonished its fans with the debut of a new product unquestionably one of the strangest electric vehicles in existence. In 2017, the company operated a human-like robot with two legs. The robot is currently being developed in the shape of a goat with four legs in order to rectify its shortcomings. Scientists hope that it can be used extensively for agricultural purposes. For the first time in Japan, a goat-shaped robot Bex with four legs was developed by a private company Kawasaki.

In this paper we propose Discretely Indexed flows (DIF) as a new tool for solving variational estimation problems. Roughly speaking, DIF are built as an extension of Normalizing Flows (NF), in which the deterministic transport becomes stochastic, and more precisely discretely indexed. Due to the discrete nature of the underlying additional latent variable, DIF inherit the good computational behavior of NF: they benefit from both a tractable density as well as a straightforward sampling scheme, and can thus be used for the dual problems of Variational Inference (VI) and of Variational density estimation (VDE). On the other hand, DIF can also be understood as an extension of mixture density models, in which the constant mixture weights are replaced by flexible functions. As a consequence, DIF are better suited for capturing distributions with discontinuities, sharp edges and fine details, which is a main advantage of this construction. Finally we propose a methodology for constructiong DIF in practice, and see that DIF can be sequentially cascaded, and cascaded with NF.

Who said that robot goats should have all the fun, especially when you can ride on a robot goat or let it carry your bags for you. Boston Dynamics' Spot robot had become quite popular in the past few years, especially when the quadruped robot got assigned tasks related to COVID-19 countermeasures. Spot has been famously or infamously labeled as a robot "dog" simply because of its four legs and smaller stature, especially compared to its larger and more nightmare-ish predecessor BigDog. For all its versatility, there are still some things it can't do, so Kawasaki took inspiration from a different animal to design a robot that could carry not only things but also people on its back. A goat is probably the last animal you'd think of as an inspiration for a human-friendly robot, especially since they're often portrayed in a negative light.

Move over, Spot, there's a new quadruped robot in town. Unveiled at last week's International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Bex is a four-legged robot that's inexplicably modeled after an Ibex, a species of wild goat that's native to parts of Eurasia and Africa. Bex came out of the company's Kaleido program, which has seen it work on bipedal robots since 2015. Partway through that project, Kawasaki's engineers decided to build a robot that could both move quickly across level ground and navigate tricky terrain. As you can see from the video spotted by Gizmodo, Bex features a set of wheels on its knees, allowing it to move faster on smooth surfaces than the glacial pace it plods along when walking.

With Japan's first commercial quantum computer going into operation last month, more global competitors are entering the race to gain an advantage by mastering the next-generation technology, with Germany emerging as a strong contender. In Kawasaki, a city in the Tokyo metropolitan area, sits a commercial quantum computer made by IBM at the Kawasaki Business Incubation Center. Toyota Motor, Hitachi and Toshiba are among the companies that are using the device. Quantum computers are expected to break the limitations of conventional computing. In 2019, Google startled the world by using the technology to solve a problem in 3 minutes and 20 seconds that would have required 10,000 years by a conventional computer.

Taking another full step forward Kawasaki has showcased a new hybrid powertrain that will find its way onto future Kawasaki motorcycles. Kawasaki intends to use the hybrid technology to the fullest with a system that can utilize pure internal combustion engine power, pure electric power, or a combination of both. Kawasaki says that the motorcycle could use pure-combustion power for highways, electric for inter city and combination of both for dynamic courses and race tracks. Aimed at the European market, where many major cities and the entirety of the UK have said stringent anti-combustion laws will be put in place by 2030, this new technology could present an amicable solution. Still in the nascent stages of development, the Kawasaki hybrid motorcycle could still be some time away, but brings with it the promise for a more sustainable way to keep the combustion motor around.

AI Daily Roundup starts today! We are covering the top updates from around the world. The updates will feature state-of-the-art capabilities in artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Fintech and human-system interactions. We will cover the role of AI Daily Roundup and their application in various industries and daily lives. The International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University, Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, the City of Kawasaki, and Fujitsu Limited have announced that they will conduct a joint field trial of AI-based technologies to optimize disaster evacuation center management in Kawasaki City, Japan, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic with a drill on Monday, August 31.

Taku Toguchi knew he wanted a career in artificial intelligence as far back as when he was a teenager. Now 36, the college dropout and serial entrepreneur has joined the ranks of Japanese founders building fortunes in AI, thanks to a stock-market rally that turned his company into one of the nation's most richly valued. AI inside Inc., which went public in December and specializes in digitizing handwritten documents, has been among the biggest beneficiaries of surging investor optimism toward companies that use AI and other technologies to enable remote working. While some analysts have questioned whether the stock's almost ninefold gain is sustainable, AI inside has ambitious plans to expand outside Japan and into other business lines. "It feels like we're being hugely recognized," Toguchi said in an interview.

With headlines everywhere focusing on disposable plastics and air travel emissions, it's clear that our individual, everyday purchasing choices--from what we eat to how we get around--impact the world around us. But how about what we wear? According to the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, apparel manufacturing produces 20% of the world's water waste and up to 10% of its carbon output and sends more than 21 billion tons of textiles to landfills each year. But it's also a $2.4 trillion dollar industry that employs more than 60 million people worldwide. Considering this scale and impact, the industry is at a crossroads, devising disruptive technologies, rethinking business models, and searching for innovation at every step -- design, production, distribution, and reuse.