Goto

Collaborating Authors

 skydiver


Is fear contagious?

Popular Science

Fear isn't just personal--it spreads through sight, smell, and even subconsciously. Horror movies may be scarier in a crowded movie theater. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. We've all felt it: heart racing, palms sweating, stomach clenching--the iron grip of fear. Whether it's the sudden threat of an out-of-control vehicle or the nervous wait before a job interview, we all have felt fear's sudden grip.


Skydiver: A Spiking Neural Network Accelerator Exploiting Spatio-Temporal Workload Balance

Chen, Qinyu, Gao, Chang, Fang, Xinyuan, Luan, Haitao

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are developed as a promising alternative to Artificial Neural networks (ANNs) due to their more realistic brain-inspired computing models. SNNs have sparse neuron firing over time, i.e., spatio-temporal sparsity; thus, they are useful to enable energy-efficient hardware inference. However, exploiting spatio-temporal sparsity of SNNs in hardware leads to unpredictable and unbalanced workloads, degrading the energy efficiency. In this work, we propose an FPGA-based convolutional SNN accelerator called Skydiver that exploits spatio-temporal workload balance. We propose the Approximate Proportional Relation Construction (APRC) method that can predict the relative workload channel-wisely and a Channel-Balanced Workload Schedule (CBWS) method to increase the hardware workload balance ratio to over 90%. Skydiver was implemented on a Xilinx XC7Z045 FPGA and verified on image segmentation and MNIST classification tasks. Results show improved throughput by 1.4X and 1.2X for the two tasks. Skydiver achieved 22.6 KFPS throughput, and 42.4 uJ/Image prediction energy on the classification task with 98.5% accuracy.


Vermont farmer returns prosthetic leg that skydiver lost during jump

FOX News

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. WEST ADDISON, Vt. – A Vermont skydiver who lost his prosthetic leg during a jump has it back, thanks to a farmer who kept an eye out for it and spotted it in a soybean field. Double amputee Chris Marckres, of Hyde Park, went for a jump Saturday at Vermont Skydiving Adventures in West Addison and lost one of his prosthetic legs after leaping from the plane. "I think my adrenaline was so high and I was just so excited, I didn't realize I had lost it," Marckres told NECN and NBC10 Boston.


'The world's first drone jump' is every skydivers' dream

#artificialintelligence

As the drone industry continues to grow, aerial enthusiasts are flying -- and leaping -- to new heights. Latvia-based company Aerones completed "the world's first drone jump" last week with their 28-propeller drone. Skydiver Ingus Augstkalns, who came up with the daring idea, used the top of a 393-foot communications tower as a launch pad. Augstkalns clung to handlebars suspended from the bottom of the aircraft as he rose to over 1,000 feet before letting go and deploying his parachute. "Emotions are fantastic," Augstkalns said in a statement.


Powered prosthetics turn mundane tasks into monumental feats

Engadget

Lukas Kalemba was walking home with some friends after a night of partying and drinking in Dortmund, Germany, in 2003. While crossing a bridge along the way, he stopped to rest but lost his balance and fell over. In an attempt to break his fall, he instinctively reached out and grabbed a wire that stretched across. It kept him from falling 20 feet to the ground immediately but the wire sent a high-voltage current through the left side of his body, causing irreparable damage to his leg. Kalemba became an above-the-knee amputee when he was 19 years old.