Lifeboat Foundation

Google and Amazon were quick to put drones to use delivering orders.

But new research suggests delivery is just one small way drones are going to replace humans. The tiny airborne vessels will soon clean windows on skyscrapers, verify insurance claims and spray pesticide on crops.

The global market for drones, valued at around $2 billion today, will replace up to $127 billion worth of business services and human labour over the next four years, according to a new research by consulting firm PwC.

Continue reading “Drones will take $127bn worth of human work by 2020, PwC says” »

Besides it not being a true space vehicle, XS-1 will be notable because it’ll be a drone, a robot space ship.

It will launch itself to the edge of space (basically 100 kilometers up there) and release its payload into LEO. It’s being called a plane because it’ll take-off and land like a plane on every mission.

DARPA’s toy will then be refueled and launched again. DARPA wants its space plane to be so reliable it can fly “10 times in 10 days.” DARPA expects the cost of a space plane flight to come to a measly $5 million compared to the $450 million once spent to launch a space shuttle.

Continue reading “DARPA Robot Space Plane will replace the Space Shuttle” »

Movidius’ Myriad 2 vision processing chip (Photo: Movidius)

The branch of artificial intelligence called deep learning has given us new wonders such as self-driving cars and instant language translation on our phones. Now it’s about to injects smarts into every other object imaginable.

That’s because makers of silicon processors from giants such as Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Technologies Inc. as well as a raft of smaller companies are starting to embed deep learning software into their chips, particularly for mobile vision applications. In fairly short order, that’s likely to lead to much smarter phones, drones, robots, cameras, wearables and more.

Continue reading “AI-On-A-Chip Soon Will Make Phones, Drones And More A Lot Smarter” »

Nice; let’s hope they hit the right target.

“I need a stealth bomber that’s going to get close, and then it’s going to drop a whole bunch of smalls – some are decoys, some are jammers, some are [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] looking for where the SAMs are. Some of them are kamikaze airplanes that are going to kamikaze into those SAMs, and they’re cheap. You have maybe 100 or 1,000 surface-to-air missiles, but we’re going to hit you with 10,000 smalls, not 10,000 MQ-9s. That’s why we want smalls.”

SAMs stands for “Surface-to-Air Missile,” and they’re one of the reasons that the Air Force has invested so much in stealth technology over the years: if a missile can’t see a plane, it can’t hit it. The problem is that the economics don’t quite work that way: it’s easier to make a new, better missile than it is to make an existing airplane even stealthier, and modern Air Force fighters serve for around 30 years each—longer if they’re bombers. Missiles are generally cheaper than airplanes, so anyone who wants to protect against aerial attack just needs to invest in a lot of missiles.

Continue reading “Air Force wants swarms of small ‘kamikaze’ drones to defeat missiles” »

Lung Biotechnology, a biotech firm, commissioned 1,000 medical drones that’ll deliver transplant organs to a network of hospitals pending FAA and FDA approval.

I am so glad to see this from Bill. Until we drastically improve the under pinning technology to an advance mature version of Quantum Computing; AI is not a threat in the non-criminal use. The only danger is when terrorists, drug cartels, and other criminals uses AI such as drones, robotics, bots, etc. to attack, burglarize, murder, apply their terror, etc.; and that is not AI doing these things on their own.

Munger, Gates on future of AI

Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman shares his thoughts on American Express, Costco and IBM’s future working with artificial intelligence. And Bill Gates, explains why it will be a huge help.

SpaceX has just published a stunning 360-degree video of its most recent feat: landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the ocean. If you ever wanted feel like you’re standing under a spaceship that’s landing without the awful side effect of being burned to shreds, here’s your chance.

To be honest, we thought we had seen every angle of this historic moment by this point. We watched it happen live. We watched it in 4K. We saw photos that were taken from just about every conceivable and terrifying angle.

But SpaceX has never released a 360-degree video, so you’ve definitely never seen anything quite like this. Watching the rocket descend from above from the perspective of the ship is extremely surreal, especially when you hear the landing rockets kick in. So sit back, throw your phone in a headset if you have one, and hit play. This will hopefully be just the first of many more to come. (Now if only they had filmed 360-degree videos of the ones that blew up.)

Continue reading “SpaceX releases 360-degree footage of the Falcon 9 sea landing” »

Here is a concept: imagine you’re consumer & you can’t justify the expense of a 3D printer; however, once in a blue moon you need to make an object for business or for personal reasons. Would it be nice is there was an online 3D Print Service that you could send your design into and have the product or prototype built, and the item drone to your office or front door. And, all you pay is a monthly service fee for the entire service including drone shipping for a given area range. With this type of technology, I believe it can be done and interactively online as well.

What is OnShape?

Nice

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— SLANTRANGE, pioneers of a smarter approach to aerial remote sensing and analytics for agriculture, today announced its $5 million Series A equity financing from a consortium of investors led by The Investor Group, a leading San Diego based investment firm. The funding will accelerate the development and scaling of SLANTRANGE’s proprietary drone sensor and analytics technology to help farmers improve operations amid a rapidly transforming business landscape.

“Farmers are continually seeking ways to improve crop yields with minimal risk. Drones offer an exciting solution, but historically haven’t been built for the precise needs of the agriculture industry,” said Mike Ritter, CEO of SLANTRANGE. “SLANTRANGE delivers on the promise of drones with an intelligence system that combines hardware and software to bring farmers crop information they need to make better operational decisions. This investment enables us to scale our technology and team to meet the soaring demand we’re seeing from the agricultural community in the United States and beyond.”

Continue reading “SLANTRANGE Secures $5M to Scale Sensor and Analytics Technology for Agricultural Drones” »