Skip to main content

Home/ Advanced Concepts Team/ Group items tagged Advanced

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Alexander Wittig

TED 2016: $5m AI X Prize announced at conference - BBC News - 2 views

  •  
    Get cracking, ACT AI team ;) A new X prize designed to advance artificial intelligence has been announced at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference. The X Prize was set up to push the boundaries of technology to solve issues such as climate change. The winner, which will be announced at TED in 2020, will win $5m (£3.4m).
Nicholas Lan

Advancing Aeronautics: A Decision Framework for Selecting Research Agendas | RAND - 1 views

  •  
    possibly some of you might find this interesting. methodology for selecting research agendas particularly with respect to NASA from the RAND corporation "Develops a unified decisionmaking approach for selecting aeronautics research agendas that quantifies the social and economic reasons for the research, balances competing perspectives, and enables transparent explanation of the resulting decisions."
pandomilla

Amoeboid Robot Navigates Without a Brain - Technology Review - 2 views

  •  
    A new blob-like robot described in the journal Advanced Robotics uses springs, feet, "protoplasm" and a distributed nervous system to move in a manner inspired by the slime mold Physarum polycepharum. Watch it ooze across a flat surface, The Blob style: Skip to 1:00 if you just want to be creeped out by its life-like quivering.
Luís F. Simões

NASA Turns to 3D Printing for Self-Building Spacecraft | Space.com - 4 views

  • SpiderFab Concept CREDIT: Unlimited Tethers
  •  
    CubeSats + 3D printing... for space. I'm surprised this isn't an ACT project :) more info: SpiderFab: Process for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures
  •  
    $100,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense .... I can answer for 0$ ..... NO Infact the question is just stupid: a) spacecraft self-construction exist: then it is a no brainer to decide wether it makes business sense b) it does not: then there is no business
Aurelie Heritier

Lighter-than-air material could drastically change tech - 4 views

  •  
    Aerographite. This post was originally published on Mashable. German scientists have developed a sturdy material called Aerographite made mostly of air, opening up huge implications for the future development of electronics. The jet-black, non-transparent porous carbon material - which was created by scientists at Kiel University and Hamburg University of Technology - was detailed in the July edition of scientific journal Advanced Materials .
Joris _

New DARPA challenge wants unique algorithms for space applications - 4 views

  •  
    "On March 28, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will kick of another one of its highly successful challenges this time looking for teams or individuals to develop unique algorithms to control small satellites on-board the International Space Station. " Will the ACT participate?
  •  
    That would be wrong on so many levels...
  •  
    Could not find out what the prize money is? Also does not seem clear to me how three cubes can catch an object "flying" in the opposite direction... But the approach is nice to see
Thijs Versloot

Wall crawling gecko robots also work in space #ESA - 2 views

  •  
    The cooperation took place through ESA's Networking/Partnering Initiative, which supports work carried out by universities and research institutes on advanced technologies with potential space applications.
  •  
    really nice, especially since it is an idea that started in the team, led to an Ariadna study by Carlo Menon, RF in biomimetics who then got a research position at simon fraser univ, where he created his own biomimetics group menvra (http://menrva.ensc.sfu.ca) there, struggling as an italian in a canadian university doing space and not having access to the US space market ... the NPI was the first contract he got for a space resaerch project ... its fantastic to see his student now making headlines with this idea
Guido de Croon

Will robots be smarter than humans by 2029? - 2 views

  •  
    Nice discussion about the singularity. Made me think of drinking coffee with Luis... It raises some issues such as the necessity of embodiment, etc.
  • ...9 more comments...
  •  
    "Kurzweilians"... LOL. Still not sold on embodiment, btw.
  •  
    The biggest problem with embodiment is that, since the passive walkers (with which it all started), it hasn't delivered anything really interesting...
  •  
    The problem with embodiment is that it's done wrong. Embodiment needs to be treated like big data. More sensors, more data, more processing. Just putting a computer in a robot with a camera and microphone is not embodiment.
  •  
    I like how he attacks Moore's Law. It always looks a bit naive to me if people start to (ab)use it to make their point. No strong opinion about embodiment.
  •  
    @Paul: How would embodiment be done RIGHT?
  •  
    Embodiment has some obvious advantages. For example, in the vision domain many hard problems become easy when you have a body with which you can take actions (like looking at an object you don't immediately recognize from a different angle) - a point already made by researchers such as Aloimonos.and Ballard in the end 80s / beginning 90s. However, embodiment goes further than gathering information and "mental" recognition. In this respect, the evolutionary robotics work by for example Beer is interesting, where an agent discriminates between diamonds and circles by avoiding one and catching the other, without there being a clear "moment" in which the recognition takes place. "Recognition" is a behavioral property there, for which embodiment is obviously important. With embodiment the effort for recognizing an object behaviorally can be divided between the brain and the body, resulting in less computation for the brain. Also the article "Behavioural Categorisation: Behaviour makes up for bad vision" is interesting in this respect. In the field of embodied cognitive science, some say that recognition is constituted by the activation of sensorimotor correlations. I wonder to which extent this is true, and if it is valid for extremely simple creatures to more advanced ones, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. This being said, if "embodiment" implies having a physical body, then I would argue that it is not a necessary requirement for intelligence. "Situatedness", being able to take (virtual or real) "actions" that influence the "inputs", may be.
  •  
    @Paul While I completely agree about the "embodiment done wrong" (or at least "not exactly correct") part, what you say goes exactly against one of the major claims which are connected with the notion of embodiment (google for "representational bottleneck"). The fact is your brain does *not* have resources to deal with big data. The idea therefore is that it is the body what helps to deal with what to a computer scientist appears like "big data". Understanding how this happens is key. Whether it is the problem of scale or of actually understanding what happens should be quite conclusively shown by the outcomes of the Blue Brain project.
  •  
    Wouldn't one expect that to produce consciousness (even in a lower form) an approach resembling that of nature would be essential? All animals grow from a very simple initial state (just a few cells) and have only a very limited number of sensors AND processing units. This would allow for a fairly simple way to create simple neural networks and to start up stable neural excitation patterns. Over time as complexity of the body (sensors, processors, actuators) increases the system should be able to adapt in a continuous manner and increase its degree of self-awareness and consciousness. On the other hand, building a simulated brain that resembles (parts of) the human one in its final state seems to me like taking a person who is just dead and trying to restart the brain by means of electric shocks.
  •  
    Actually on a neuronal level all information gets processed. Not all of it makes it into "conscious" processing or attention. Whatever makes it into conscious processing is a highly reduced representation of the data you get. However that doesn't get lost. Basic, low processed data forms the basis of proprioception and reflexes. Every step you take is a macro command your brain issues to the intricate sensory-motor system that puts your legs in motion by actuating every muscle and correcting every step deviation from its desired trajectory using the complicated system of nerve endings and motor commands. Reflexes which were build over the years, as those massive amounts of data slowly get integrated into the nervous system and the the incipient parts of the brain. But without all those sensors scattered throughout the body, all the little inputs in massive amounts that slowly get filtered through, you would not be able to experience your body, and experience the world. Every concept that you conjure up from your mind is a sort of loose association of your sensorimotor input. How can a robot understand the concept of a strawberry if all it can perceive of it is its shape and color and maybe the sound that it makes as it gets squished? How can you understand the "abstract" notion of strawberry without the incredibly sensible tactile feel, without the act of ripping off the stem, without the motor action of taking it to our mouths, without its texture and taste? When we as humans summon the strawberry thought, all of these concepts and ideas converge (distributed throughout the neurons in our minds) to form this abstract concept formed out of all of these many many correlations. A robot with no touch, no taste, no delicate articulate motions, no "serious" way to interact with and perceive its environment, no massive flow of information from which to chose and and reduce, will never attain human level intelligence. That's point 1. Point 2 is that mere pattern recogn
  •  
    All information *that gets processed* gets processed but now we arrived at a tautology. The whole problem is ultimately nobody knows what gets processed (not to mention how). In fact an absolute statement "all information" gets processed is very easy to dismiss because the characteristics of our sensors are such that a lot of information is filtered out already at the input level (e.g. eyes). I'm not saying it's not a valid and even interesting assumption, but it's still just an assumption and the next step is to explore scientifically where it leads you. And until you show its superiority experimentally it's as good as all other alternative assumptions you can make. I only wanted to point out is that "more processing" is not exactly compatible with some of the fundamental assumptions of the embodiment. I recommend Wilson, 2002 as a crash course.
  •  
    These deal with different things in human intelligence. One is the depth of the intelligence (how much of the bigger picture can you see, how abstract can you form concept and ideas), another is the breadth of the intelligence (how well can you actually generalize, how encompassing those concepts are and what is the level of detail in which you perceive all the information you have) and another is the relevance of the information (this is where the embodiment comes in. What you do is to a purpose, tied into the environment and ultimately linked to survival). As far as I see it, these form the pillars of human intelligence, and of the intelligence of biological beings. They are quite contradictory to each other mainly due to physical constraints (such as for example energy usage, and training time). "More processing" is not exactly compatible with some aspects of embodiment, but it is important for human level intelligence. Embodiment is necessary for establishing an environmental context of actions, a constraint space if you will, failure of human minds (i.e. schizophrenia) is ultimately a failure of perceived embodiment. What we do know is that we perform a lot of compression and a lot of integration on a lot of data in an environmental coupling. Imo, take any of these parts out, and you cannot attain human+ intelligence. Vary the quantities and you'll obtain different manifestations of intelligence, from cockroach to cat to google to random quake bot. Increase them all beyond human levels and you're on your way towards the singularity.
Luís F. Simões

Evolution of AI Interplanetary Trajectories Reaches Human-Competitive Levels - Slashdot - 4 views

  • "It's not the Turing test just yet, but in one more domain, AI is becoming increasingly competitive with humans. This time around, it's in interplanetary trajectory optimization. From the European Space Agency comes the news that researchers from its Advanced Concepts Team have recently won the Gold 'Humies' award for their use of Evolutionary Algorithms to design a spacecraft's trajectory for exploring the Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). The problem addressed in the awarded article (PDF) was put forward by NASA/JPL in the latest edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition. The team from ESA was able to automatically evolve a solution that outperforms all the entries submitted to the competition by human experts from across the world. Interestingly, as noted in the presentation to the award's jury (PDF), the team conducted their work on top of open-source tools (PaGMO / PyGMO and PyKEP)."
  •  
    We made it to Slashdot's frontpage !!! :)
  •  
    Congratulations, gentlemen!
Athanasia Nikolaou

Polymer scientists jam nanoparticles, trapping liquids in useful shapes - 1 views

  •  
    Inserting a droplet of polymer enriched water into oil and manipulating its shape by applying an electric field. The shape remains intact after cease of the forcing. <br /> "Russell (...) points out that the advance holds promise for a wide range of different applications including in drug delivery, biosensing, fluidics, photovoltaics, encapsulation and bicontinuous media for energy applications and separations media."
Thijs Versloot

Does your iPhone have free will? #arXiv - 3 views

  •  
    If you've ever found your iPhone taking control of your life, there may be a good reason. It may think it has free will. That may not be quite as far-fetched as it sounds. Today, one leading scientist outlines a 'Turing Test' for free will and says that while simple devices such as thermostats cannot pass, more complex ones like iPhones might.
  • ...3 more comments...
  •  
    An interesting paper about how you should *NOT* think about free will...
  •  
    I must say that the fact that the outcome of a thought process is not evident to myself in advance sounds like a more plausible explanation than 'free will' being the product of quantum mechanics. The later would not only produce unpredictable decisions but probably also irrational ones...
  •  
    Even if it were the product of quantum mechanics, it's still the result of external interference and not the result of 'free' will. It doesn't matter if the external input is deterministic or random, it's still external and it's not "YOU" that decided stuff.
  •  
    I don't know the inventor of that nonsense that the free will should be the result of QM. It's about the only point I agree with the author of the paper: QM is not necessary and doesn't help. What I meant: all these thought experiments done by typical ultra-naive realists (or ultra-naive physicalists, if you prefer) that cultivate the university departments of physics, computer science etc. are put the cart before the horse. First one has to clarify the role of physical theories and its concepts (e.g. causality) and then one can start to ask how "free will" could perhaps be seen in these theories. More than 200 years ago there existed a famous philosopher named Kant who had some interesting thoughts about this. But authors like Lloyd behave as if he never existed, in fact is view of the world is even pre-Platonic!
  •  
    Henry Kissinger How I'm missing yer And wishing you were here
Thijs Versloot

Quantum #teleportation theory to be tested on the #ISS - 8 views

  •  
    A theory-SuperDense quantum teleportation-posed by Hampshire College physics professor Herbert Bernstein will be tested on the International Space Station. Theoretical physicist Bernstein devised the SuperDense scheme more than a decade ago in his investigations of different ways to send a quantum state from one part of a laboratory to a remote station.
  •  
    Anna could you have a closer look into this - we should at least know what they are up to, be able to explain if anybody asks ... I also somehow missed this one in the NIAC study descriptions ... maybe a good moment to have another look at these "This is the second NASA grant for SuperDense quantum teleportation. A grant awarded in 2010 through NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) investigated the viability of the theory and produced the world's first experimental demonstration. Surprising or seminal experiments have marked Bernstein's research career. This is the fourth time a major proposal has become reality; two of his experiments helped found new sub-fields of physics (neutron interferometry and entanglement for quantum information)."
Ma Ru

Probabilistic fluidic modular construction - 17 views

Looks cool... in simulation. And even there it seems to work terribly slow (note how much they have to speed it up).

johannessimon81

Google combines skycrane, VTOL and lifting wing to make drone deliveries - 6 views

  •  
    Nice video featuring the technology. Plus it comes with a good soundtrack! Google's project wing uses a lifting wing concept (more fuel efficient than normal airplane layouts and MUCH more efficient than quadrocopters) but it equips the plane with engines strong enough to hover in a nose up position, allowing vertical landing and takeoff. For the delivery of packages the drone does not even need to land - it can lower them on a wire - much like the skycrane concept used to deliver the Curiosity rover on Mars. Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. Anyways, the video is great for its soundtrack alone! ;-P
  • ...4 more comments...
  •  
    could we just use genetic algorithms to evolve these shapes and layouts? :P
  •  
    > Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. I think apart from coolness using a skycrane helps keep the rotating knives away from the recipient...
  •  
    Honest question, are we ever going to see this in practice? I mean besides some niche application somewhere, isn't it fundamentally flawed or do I need to keep my window opened on the 3rd floor without a balcony when I ordered something from DX? Its pretty cool yes, but practical?
  •  
    Package delivery is indeed more complicated than it may seem at first sight, although solutions are possible for instance by restricting delivery to distribution centers. What we really need of course is some really efficient and robust AI to navigate without any problems in urban areas : ) The hybrid is interesting since it combines the advantage of a Vertical Takeoff and Landing (and hover), and a wing for more efficient forward flight. Challenges lie in the control of the vehicle under any angle and all that this entails also for higher levels of control. Our lab has first used this concept a few years ago for the DARPA UAVforge challenge, and we had two hybrids in our entry last year for the IMAV 2013 (for some shaky images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7XgRK7pMoU ).
  •  
    Fair enough, but even if you consider advanced/robust/efficient AI, why would you use a drone? Do we envision hundreds of drones above our heads in the street instead of UPS vans, or postmen, considering delivers letters might be more easily achievable. I am not so sure if personal delivery will take this route. On the other hand, if the system would work smoothly, I can image that I'm send a mail with the question whether I'm home (or they might know already from my personal GPS tracker) and then notify me that they are launching my DVD and it will come crashing into my door in 5min.
  •  
    I'm more curios how they're planning to keep people from stealing the drones. I could do with a drone army myself and having cheap amazon or google drones flying about sounds like a decent source.
Thijs Versloot

Linked Open Earth Observation Data for Precision Farming - 1 views

  •  
    Lots of Earth Observation data has become available at no charge in Europe and the US recently and there is a strong push for more open EO data. With precision farming, advanced agriculture using GPS, satellite observations and tractors with on-board computers, the farming process is performed as accurately and efficiently as possible. This is achieved by combining data from earth observations with other geospatial sources such as cadastral data, data on the quality of the soil, vegetation and protected areas. This enables the farmer to find the optimal trade-off in maximizing his yield with minimal use of fertilizers and pesticides while respecting environmental protection.
johannessimon81

Norwegian army driving tank using Oculus Rift - 1 views

  •  
    I guess it might also make sense to put a camera on an extension to look around corners without having to advance the vehicle to where it can be shot at... ?: Could the Oculus be used to let humans control humanoid robots? I guess so. Could humans perform experiments using such robots? Probably. Could Oculus be used to control these robots on the ISS? I guess so. --> Finally we eliminated the last need for humans in space!!! :-D (Maybe we could replace humans on Earth with robots that control one another through Oculus Rift...)
  •  
    Even cooler would be to have like a swarm of drones around the tank to act as a sensor array and look around corners for you.
Thijs Versloot

Active Metasurfaces for Advanced Wavefront Engineering #Harvard - 4 views

  •  
    Metasurfaces have been made, but the problem is that they usually are static and for quantum optic applications the question is how to make a rapidly configurable metasurface. for this Harvard has initiated a multidisciplinary team that involves theoretical physics, metamaterials, nanophotonic circuitry, quantum devices, plasmonics, nanofabrication, and computational modeling
  •  
    Reading "wavefront engineering" in the title I thought it had to do with wave manipulation in the sea. Nothing to do though. As I read further in this article, Harvard thrives in forming multidisciplinarity groups. Their practice is to call the best team in each expertise they need to merge. Not one researcher from each discipline, but teams of experienced professors and a series of graduate students. Maybe we could discuss it in the retreat!
Luís F. Simões

Dropship offers safe landings for Mars rovers / Technology / Our Activities / ESA - 2 views

  • “StarTiger is a fresh approach to space engineering,” explains Peter de Maagt, overseeing the project. “Take a highly qualified, well-motivated team, gather them at a single well-equipped site, then give them a fixed time to solve a challenging technical problem.”
  • StarTiger stands for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’ working within the Agency’s TRP Basic Technology Research Programme. It brings team members together on a single site to work on a set challenge, aiming to produce a working prototype by the end of the project’s time limit.
  •  
    StarTiger: similar, yet different from the way the ACT does things. Seems like a very interesting programme.
  •  
    Nice initiative and also a good approach, problem-oriented within a fixed time frame. Could definitely be a highly motivating approach, similar to GTOC... I think the ACT should do this more often, targeted at future technologies and/or missions. The team could be structured around 'problems' instead of 'research areas', this will promote multidisciplinary work as well, plus it will also focus activities more. The problems, or more broadly concepts, are identified by the team and a few get chosen as main activities. Subsequent RF and YGT hiring is then done to strenghten the research team. These projects have a maximum lifetime maybe of 1 year? Thoughts?
  •  
    I'm impressed already by what an innovative group of experts and researchers was able to achieve when resourcefully targeted at coming up with the project's name...
jessyjemy

What happens to your brain on the way to Mars - 1 views

  •  
    This study from NASA shows that cosmic rays have a deleterious effect on the brain, more than expected, resulting in in symptoms similar to dementia (memory loss, decline in problem solving skills, general cognitive functions). A reason more to investigate into hibernation?
Daniel Hennes

V3Solar puts a new spin on PV efficiency - 1 views

  •  
    "V3Solar has developed a cone-shaped solar energy harvester that is claimed to generate over 20 times more electricity than a flat panel thanks to a combination of concentrating lenses, dynamic spin, conical shape, and advanced electronics."
  •  
    Hmm.. that seems counter intuitive... how would it ever be that much better than a flat panel? Rotating the PV will only make sure only parts are illuminated. Operating temperature is a better argument, but that comes at the cost of exposure. Came across this little gem of a webpage, maybe we should outsource our impossibility EM drive work next time? :) https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-v3solars-spinning-solar-panel-cone-spin-cell-coolspin.t1166/
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 108 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page