Robotics are often used in different industries around the world. They usually help with various tasks. Healthcare is one of the interesting examples where robots can be useful.
The Diligent Robotics
An example of a company working in the field of robotics in healthcare can be Diligent Robotics. The company was started in 2017 by two founders: Andrea Thomaz and Vivian Chu. The core product is the robot assistant to support nurses. The robot is called Moxi and is especially designed to perform routine and simple tasks. It can be for example delivering needed medications or supplies. Furthermore, Moxi can also open various types of doors by itself. The company is working closely with hospitals and nurses to provide the best value. The main goal is to enable nurses to focus more on the patients and have more time with them. The robot has a special arm to better operate. Also, it is equipped with AI that helps it learn how to move around and do the tasks. Robot implementation takes about 12 weeks due to company information. One of the first hospitals that started to use it full-time is in Dallas. What is interesting company describes that it offers the robots in a model called “robot-as-a-service”.
The robot from Diligent Robotics
Raising funds
In 2016 Diligent Robotics managed to win the National Science Foundation with the reward of 750 thousand dollars. This money helped in the creation of the robot prototype. In 2020 the company received 10 million dollars in funding. With these funds further development and work were possible. Recently, Diligent Robotics raised 30 million dollars. It will be especially used in deployment, issues solving, and further scaling. Now the company has several investors including Ubiquity Ventures, Grit Ventures, DNX Ventures, True Ventures, and more.
An American startup based in California has been working on aerial transportation of people for almost a decade. A decade of work is finally starting to give hope for a service launch in the near future. Especially as more and more information about the project’s development has been coming to light in recent months and tests. Joby has been working for years to develop its own production of lightweight electric aircraft that could serve as air cabs. The vehicles would be fast, quiet, and able to carry at least a few people. Although development is still ongoing, at this point it can be admitted that many of the goals have been met. The planes are able to take off horizontally, thus eliminating the need for runways, can carry a pilot and four passengers, and have a top speed of over 320 kilometers per hour. According to the organization’s calculations, air travel can prove to be up to an hour faster than ground transportation when driving through urban traffic jams. As demo inventors provide a simulation of driving thru New York City by car and flying over it in their proposition. In addition to the machines themselves, the challenge for the project is to obtain permits to fly in urban areas and to reach customers. With help come companies that have the resources and know-how. Because of that, the recently established partnership with Japanese airlines and Korean SK Telecom gives hope that entering the Asian markets within the next few years is reasonable and at least remotely possible. By partnering with Uber, the company hopes to make ordering its services as easy as regular cab and take advantage of the already existing huge base of customers. Although the idea seems genuinely futuristic we have to remember that the future is now and the development of new technology is quicker than ever. Especially when it comes to solutions to improve our everyday life.
It seems like there has been an introduction of new hygiene products using advanced technology. I recently read two articles which I found quite interesting, so I would like to share and ask your opinion about these.
First, let’s take a look at Dyson. Dyson is renowned for home appliances like vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, and hair dryers. Now, they introduce the world with their new product, the Dyson Zone, which is a headphone with an air purifier. It means whenever people use one’s headphones, they also take the advantage of inhaling purified air. Of course, as a headphone, you can take calls and listen to music with a noise-canceling function. They started inventing this 6 years ago, so it’s not designed only for coronavirus. It will be out on the market this fall.
Dyson explained that they considered every option, from shoulder to head, but they finally chose a headphone as it is the most natural known way of wearing a device. They also mentioned that the weight distribution mattered since the device is packed with large batteries and mechanics. The filter they used is like an N95 mask and it uses static electricity to pull small particles toward it to improve its filtration efficiency. Since all the motors and air channels create noise, Dyson engineers used active noise cancellation to silence any sounds that couldn’t be eliminated mechanically.
Another product is the so-called ‘disinfection robot’ from the Korean company, KT.
Korean company KT recently launched the AI disinfection robot combining the latest disinfection technology and AI robot. They are planning to lead the robot service market by promoting its own customized ‘robot service platform’ business.
The AI disinfection robot provides plasma, UVC sterilization, and air cleaning functions. Depending on the customer’s preference and the size of the space, it is possible to choose between small/medium- and large-sized.
In the existing quarantine activities, it was common to wear protective clothing and evict people and then spray the disinfection fluid. However, instead of spraying disinfectant that is harmful to the human body, KT’s AI disinfection robot adopted an eco-friendly plasma method that sterilizes more than 99.9% of viruses while being harmless to the human body.
The AI robot function was also faithfully implemented. By applying technologies such as safe autonomous driving and automatic charging based on lidar and camera sensors, the robot moves on its own and unmanned disinfection activities of the entire space are possible at all times. In addition, by utilizing the strengths of KT, a nationwide network operator, it provides customer care services such as remote monitoring with 24-hour intelligent control. You can control the robot, check status information, check the quarantine schedule, and even check the result report with a smartphone app.
As you can guess, the robot service platform means not only providing robot products but also providing services based on digital platforms such as AI networks, autonomous driving, and remote control. Their main goal is to continue to introduce new robot services that solve social problems and innovate customer experience through their robot service platform.
Instead of preventing pollution as its source and pandemic from happening, they are developing a way to live with it.
Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and the biggest shareholder of Twitter, will no longer join the social media service’s board of directors, the company said late Sunday. On Tuesday, Twitter announced that the billionaire would be appointed to its 11-person board for a term that expires in 2024. The invitation to join the board followed Mr. Musk’s accumulating a 9.2 percent stake in the company, making him its largest shareholder.
However, Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, tweeted late Sunday that the situation had changed. On Saturday morning, Mr. Musk — who is a heavy Twitter user with more than 81 million followers — told the company he would no longer become a board member, Mr. Agrawal said.
By not joining Twitter’s board, Mr. Musk will also no longer be bound by a previous agreement he had signed with the company. Under a “standstill” agreement last week, he had pledged not to purchase more than 14.9 percent of Twitter’s stock and not to take over the company. That suggests Mr. Musk could now keep adding to his stake in the company.
When Twitter revealed in an S.E.C. filing on Monday that Mr. Musk had bought the stake in the company, the news was greeted with fanfare. As a prolific Twitter user, Mr. Musk’s investment appeared to be a vote of confidence in the company, sending its stock soaring that day by more than 25 percent.
Mr. Musk’s purchases of Twitter stock also came at a delicate time for the company. Twitter has been going through a transition since Jack Dorsey, a company founder, stepped down as chief executive last year. Mr. Agrawal, the chief technology officer, was appointed in his place.
All week I was trying to come up with a topic for a new article. I was thinking which issues bother me, what I would like to know more about and something like this. Apparently, the answer was at my Netflix account.
I am sure, all you have heard about “Rick and Morty” show and most of you have watched it. If you haven’t then it is your problem. Go watch five seasons and come back to reading this draft.
“Rick and Morty is the animated science-fiction sitcom featuring the adventures of genius scientist Rick Sanchez and his hapless grandson Morty Smith. Part of Rick and Morty’s appeal is its exaggerated use of obscure scientific concepts and futuristic technology that always seem to have a tinge of truth”.
That is why while watching it, I end up thinking about the possibility of it becoming a reality and how some of Rick’s inventions would influence the business world. I hope it is not that obvious that I just really want to share this information and do not really know how to connect it with capitalism.
First of all, there is a thesis that Rick is a part of a philosophical trend – technopoly. “Our starting point will be Neil Postman’s conception of “technopoly,” which he defines as a “totalitarian technocracy,” meaning that technology comes to define and determine our societies at an ever increasing rate and intensity”. It is kind of similar to Marx’s point that we can divide society and its level of development by tools that people are using for work but not art, music or literature. That shows Rick’s attachment to its technologies even though he has no ambition to win some awards or especially help humanity.
“Our sense of meaning and purpose provided by traditional systems of value such as family, religion, community, or national identity has been transformed by technique. As a result, technology is becoming an end in itself. We have started to invent things just for the sake of inventing them”. When Rick turns himself into a pickle he says: “The reason anyone would do this is, if they could, which they can’t, would be because they could, which they can’t.”
Thus, there are technologies which might become reality in some time or with much more effort. For instance, a freeze gun from the pilot episode. Scientist form the article claims: “It is probably the easiest thing to make. It’s simple: a high-powered liquid nitrogen gun”. Then the question comes to mind – if we can, why not – following the tendency from the 19th century – to invent for inventing. “Rick’s thing works sort of too fast and too localized for modern technology, but I can’t really say what might stop someone in the future from inventing a liquid nitrogen gun that could basically freeze someone almost instantly.”
I can not say that it would radically change our world, but it could have influenced on transportations of the products that were supposed to be delivered frozen. At the same time, we still do not need this cooling process to be localized that much in our case. Besides, it would only slightly influence the military world and its market because it is a gun that can freeze people instantly, but ice has a tendency to melt , so in some time most likely the soldier will survive and keep bringing harm to your land. All in all, it would be the same trend – invent for inventing. Even though it would be nice to have a freezing gun for self defence and for fun, obviously.
All in all, there are a lot of technologies that influence the business world, but there are also some that actually make no sense and bring no real impact. There are also different ways you can treat these technologies – you might accept their increasing influence in our daily life and be as Rick, who even outrages it and seeks to replace most things in his life with technologies. At the same time you can reject all of it and become an unemployed Jerry. If you care about my opinion, then I would offer you to pick that side which brings you the biggest amount of utility and joy – it doesn’t matter your awareness of modern technologies is on the level of Elon Musk or Morty Smith as long as it makes you happy.
“Ethics and Technology: An Analysis of Rick and Morty” – https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0155 received January 29, 2021; accepted April 20, 2021/ Open Philosophy 2022; 5: 1–16
Amazon set up a new goal for the next five years. They plan to put 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit. These satellites will be loaded on three new heavy-lift rockets, which are still in development» as a part of Amazon’s project Kuiper.
The rockets will be made by Arianespace, Blue Origin – which was founded by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos – and United Launch Alliance.
The main goal of project Kuiper is to provide high-speed , low-latency broadband to customers including households, businesses, government agencies, disaster relief operations, mobile operators, and other organisations “working in places without reliable internet connectivity».
Very much like Elon Musk’s Starlink, users will connect to the internet via a terminal that communicates with the satellites. Amazon says its experience in shipping and making products like Echo and Kindle will be useful in producing and distributing these.
“Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world,” said Dave Limp, senior vice-president for Amazon Devices & Services, in a statement announcing the deal.
The value of this type of low-earth orbit satellite internet has already been demonstrated in Ukraine, where the United States Agency for International Development said, in conjunction with SpaceX, it had helped ship a total of 5,000 Starlink terminals to the country’s government.
But, as low-earth orbit becomes increasingly congested, astronomers have complained that the light reflected from these satellites as they pass overhead increasingly disrupts the view of the night’s sky.
At a first glance blockchains might seem as a perfect solution in transition from the Fiat currency, creators say that thanks to encryption and carefully validated ledger, each transaction is secure. However, the next case shows that even blockchains can be hacked, you just need to know how.
Sky Mavis is a Vietnamese-based company, they are the creators of Axie Infinity an NFT game which involves Pokemon-like cards, where players go into teams and combat with their opponents. The characters are so-called “Axies” which can be customly created, sold and traded for fiat and crypto currencies. The popularity of the game is booming; only last August the player count reached 1.8 million users.
However, on Tuesday March 22nd Sky Mavis revealed that hackers were able to steal 173,600 Ethereum, which is roughly 600 million USD. The attack was focused on Sky Mavis’ blockchain “Ronin” which acts as an intermediary between the Axie Infinity and Marketplaces which allow users to change game currency into real funds. It has been revealed that hackers have utilized private security keys in order to compromise the nodes which are responsible for validating currency transfers, this allowed them to stay hidden and not raise any alarm for the security team, the loss was only discovered when another attempt to steal 5,000 Ethereum was tried to be carried out. Media already calls this event as the largest “decentralized” theft in history as of yet. Sky Mavis now has received 150 million dollars in funding in order to compensate all of the affected players and compensate them for the loss.
This case shows flaws and imperfections of the blockchain system, if it is the future of our world, then companies need to stress the importance of security to avoid situations as mentioned above to happen in the future.
Just over a week before “giving serious thought” to building his own social media platform, Elon Musk went on to become the biggest Twitter shareholder through an acquisition of a 9.2% stake in the social media platform.
Following this acquisition Musk has stated he plans to answer questions some of the employees may have following this acquisition, and intends work on resolving freedom of speech problems present on the platform. Additionally on the 5th of April Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, announced that Musk has been appointed on the board of directors, and expressed his excitement to working together to improve the platform.
I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.
A frequent request from Twitter users over the years has been for an edit feature to be added to Twitter. Following the acquisition of his stake Musk launched a poll raising the question whether or not such feature such be added, following over 4.4m votes, 73.6% voted in favour. Before its conclusion Agrawal responded to the poll saying the consequences will be crucial, and to vote carefully, showing that Musk’s actions already hold some weight.
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://t.co/UDJIvznALB
It’ll be interesting to see where this combination takes both of these parties as these are still the early stages of his involvement, and what the long term plan is for Musk following what seems to be a u-turn on his thoughts of starting his own social media platform, which the poor performance of Parler and Trump’s Truth Social may have made him reconsider. Let’s also see how this works out for Twitter in the long run, as the news increased its valuation, but as seen before with Tesla, a single Tweet from Musk can cause the market to change quickly.
The Mercedes-Benz high-performance division, AMG, has been innovating the sport/race industry in the automotive world since its beginnings. Creating the most hardcore versions of, almost all, Mercedes models, setting the best lap times around famous German racetracks – Nurburgring Nordschleife and others, and pushing the boundaries of how fast the road-legal cars can go. They have enabled us with a lot of amazing technologies, that all of the other manufacturers use for their sports cars as well.
The EQS model. Picture from: https://newsbeezer.com/swedeneng/the-mercedes-eqs-electric-car-can-now-drive-itself-on-certain-roads-in-germany/
And this time, it’s no different. Mercedes-Benz is on a crusade to fight the self-driving cars with Tesla and others, with a lot of success. Their newest electric model called EQS has been approved to drive completely on itself on certain roads at speeds below 60 km/h. A major breakthrough for the autonomous technology and car industry, and a great way for them to collect valuable data. So there is that.
The self-driving AMG car. Picture from: https://news7h.com/mercedes-amg-allows-self-driving-gt-4-door-coupe-to-relax-on-the-road/
However, the AMG division wanted to get their hands on it and develop something on self-driving technology. As their main goal is to maximize race track performance, they decided to develop a car that will be able to do stuff out of a video game. Imagine, how many hours you have spent racing against AI in games like Forza or Gran Turismo. This could be the same situation. The car can accelerate, brake and steer itself following the most optimal line through the course without the help or interaction from any of the car’s occupants. In the video released by the AMG youtube channel, there is a racing driver present in the driver’s seat, however, they say that the car can be completely empty and still do that.
From the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA6SvyJSGpI&t=824s
It uses a lot of GPS trackers to have the car’s exact position at all times in real-time, processes it through a powerful computer located in the trunk of the car which then decides on the output and performs, as said before – steering, braking, accelerating by itself. The car is limited to “only” 170 km/h, as the engineers say they do not want to go fast on the straights (as it is pretty easy) but teach the car the fastest way around the corners.
Obviously, it’s all in a controlled environment thought on a very specific track for a long time and is meant to create more buzz around the Mercedes’ self-driving tech. I see two sides to this story. One, it’s created to help drivers learn the best possible line through the track. In this sense, it’s going to be very useful, if there are no other cars on the track which could be endangered by it. The second one is that it’s totally useless, as we will not race as in video games, against AI drivers for fun. Also, it’s, hopefully, not going to be used for races only with autonomous cars, as it’s going to be boring and the ethical part could easily be questioned.
FYI, Croatian startup-car-manufacturer Rimac Automobili also will try to do something very similar with their newest electric car called the Nevera.
I am really looking forward to your opinions on this topic. Do you also feel it’s boring or do you think it’s cool? Let me know in the comment section down below.
In the world of digital environment, we are used to share the most important moments via Social media: photo of your new-born in Facebook, birthday video in Instagram, new summer outfit in Tik Tok or expressing your mind about another rising American pop-star in Twitter. However, who would expect that social media will influence the outcome of the actual war out there?
Russian full-scale invasion to Ukraine started 24 Feb, at around 05 am. Since that time, for 42 days Ukrainians are fighting for their future. Soldiers are defending our borders, volunteers – host refugees, gather donations and food, doctors – save lives, and every other Ukrainian – is fighting at the informational battlefield. Thankfully, Ukraine Is being heard. Terrifying pictures of Bucha, Irpin or Mariupol genocide; videos of launched missiles and destroyed cities has reached the appropriate audience and led to a series of at least some pleasant events.
On the other hand, russian “informational army” does not stay in one place. Except disgusting lies and accusations, they tried to reach a new level – DeepFakes. In mid March, on the third week of the war, the whole world observed another video of The President of Ukraine – Volodymyr Zelenskiy, where he announced about the surrender of Kyiv. “I ask you to lay down your weapons and go back to your families. This war is not worth dying for. I suggest you to keep on living, and I am going to do the same.” This video reached almost 5m views.
Luckily, the deep fake was expected long before, with a help of counterintelligence. The first “bell” was the fact that the video was not posted on any of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s official channels (Telegram, Twitter, Instagram, etc). In addition to this, deep fake was not made qualitatively due to the shortage of time and knowledge of russian deep fake specialists. The head of Zelenskiy’s was too big, and way more “pixalated” than his entire body. Moreover, the voice did not sound natural.
The usage of deep fakes was not oftenly observed in political issues but as of now each of us should filter all the information even more carefully than even before.
