Group items tagged

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google's search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo

a portable speaker with voice assistant tech

voice search and intelligent personal assistance will occupy center stage at the company's splash show

The 5 feet, 300 pound scooting robot is stacked with quite the resume of capabilities and because it delivers real-time data to a secure monitored location, it will minimize threats for human security officers that take on these dangerous jobs.

this venture gets some backing as security companies are looking for more innovative solutions to counter their turnover rates, some as high as 400%, Knightscope reports.

hese autonomous patrol units are doing the jobs that may be too dangerous for people and doing them better, backed with day and night 360-degree video capture, infrared and thermal scanning, proximity sensors, radar for real-time 3D mapping, and optical character recognition, allowing the K5 to never forget a face. Knightscope confirmed though that K5s are NOT intended to replace law enforcement, instead “to help and assist officers, improve response times and keep them out of harm’s way if possible.”

Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands.

In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked.

She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text.

Experience a world première: On Saturday, 8 October 2016 ETH Zurich is organising the very first Cybathlon! Individuals with physical disabilities will compete side by side in six demanding disciplines, using the latest assistive technologies.

There are races for athletes with powered arm and leg prostheses, for those wearing a robotic exoskeleton and for powered wheelchairs. There’s also a race for cyclists using electrical muscle stimulation and even a brain-computer interface race.

Cybathlon provides a platform for the development of novel assistive technologies that are useful for daily life. Through the organisation of the Cybathlon we want to remove barriers between people with disabilities, the public and technology developers.

As personal digital assistant apps such as Google Now become widespread, so does the idea of algorithms that can not only meet but anticipate our needs

eBay lets you shop at only one store at a time and promises delivery “in about an hour,” while Google lets you shop at multiple stores and pick your own delivery time window.

customers won’t be ordering stuff from eBay anymore. Instead, they’ll let their phones do it.

Though characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear are wonderfully realistic and lovable, the relationship that kids have with them is largely one-sided. Kids can hear these characters talk—not only through movies, but games, toys, and other movie merchandise—but they can’t engage them.

It was this idea that inspired Jacob to team up with his former Pixar colleague, Martin Reddy, and launch a new company, ToyTalk. The San Francisco-based outfit develops mobile games that let kids have conversations with animated characters—dialogues that can last for hours

Known as PullString, it’s equal parts speech recognition engine and script writing tool, and it’s quite a departure from other speech rec tools developed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It’s tailored specifically to kids, whose sentence structure, pitch, and vocal tone have posed challenges for traditional tools.

Last week, Japan’s ominously named robotics company Cyberdyne announced new technologies it’ll start rolling out at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in September: Two robots, one exoskeleton. One robot shuttles unwieldy luggage, another cleans the facility, and the exo assists with heavy lifting.

Japan’s government actively funds robotics R&D, with aims to triple the nation’s robotics market to $22 billion in the next six years, and is keen on showing off some impressive technology at Tokyo’s Summer Olympics in 2020

unable to separate reality (or as "real" as the online world can be, cartoon or otherwise) and the fictional world of advertising.

Dr. Domingos' recent article in the Wall Street Journal paints a utopian scenario where consumers are able to wrest control of the personal information stolen by big business and use it to create "digital models".

we really need to ask if creating millions of digital models to remove us even further from face-to-face interaction is the right thing to do.