These four-foot-tall robots could change the way warehouse workers do their jobs

Tech Insider | Leanna Garfield | Feb 2, 2016

Locus Robotics

The Locus robot can zip around a clothing warehouse larger than the size of six football fields. It can also work for 24 hours, without a break for lunch or a salary.

The new bot, created by Locus Robotics, just launched in its first warehouse: a Devens, Massachusetts space owned by Quiet Logistics, a warehousing company that fills online orders for both small startups and megabrands like Zara and Bonobos. The robots transport items that have been picked off the shelves by humans, and bring them to the front of the warehouse to be sealed and delivered.

"We developed a system where the robots do all the walking," Locus Robotics CEO Bruce Welty tells Tech Insider. "As retailers continue to exceed expectation around next-day shipping, they're going to look to technology to help them provide an even faster turn-around."

The bots work alongside humans and do all the normal grunt work. Warehouse workers usually walk 12 to 16 miles each day. With the robots, they don't have to.

The robots now meet the human workers in the middle of the warehouse. As soon as someone completes an order online, the bot's system knows exactly where to go in the 275,000-square-foot warehouse.

Each bot (which doesn't look anything like a human) has a platform for arms and a two-foot-diameter base with wheels for feet. It zips around at about 4.5 mph, or the equivalent of a fast walk. If stray boxes or wires stand in its path, its vision technology can "see" in real-time to avoid them.

Locus Robotics

Since the robots are able to move faster than humans without tiring, Welty says the system will boost warehouse productivity by up to 800%. The bots will also not be subject to human error, which means that they can get the order right nearly every time.

As a way to increase productivity and speed, many online retailers have been using robots, conveyor belts, and cranes to fulfill orders for the past decade. Amazon has exclusive rightsto Kiva Systems' robots, but Welty says Locus' robots are smaller, and more lightweight and versatile.

Unlike Kiva's bots, the Locus robots can be incorporated into the warehouses' existing infrastructure. The warehouse doesn't need to move any shelves or aisles. Locus can program the robot to navigate the warehouse exactly how it is.

Locus Robotics

"The robots are less industrial and easier to work side-by-side with humans," Welty says.

The robots won't replace any human jobs in Quiet Logistics' warehouse, at least for the time being. It will change the nature of many of their responsibilities, however. Since they don't need to roam the warehouse's aisles looking for the items, they can use that time for other parts of the distribution process. They can now do what they do best: add a personal touch.

As more retailers shift online and promise greater shipping speeds, there's a growing need to make sure that the orders are not only delivered on-time but also feel personalized. This can be as simple as stuffing boxes with pretty tissue paper or even handwritten notes from the brands — a job fit best for humans.

Is technology causing us to 'evolve' into a new SPECIES? Expert believes super humans called Homo optimus will talk to machines and be 'digitally immortal' by 2050

Daily Mail | By SARAH GRIFFITHS | PUBLISHED: 06:14 EST, 1 February 2016

If you're under the age of 40, there is a good chance you will achieve 'electronic immortality' during your lifetime.

This is the idea that all of your thoughts and experiences will be uploaded and stored online for future generations.

That's according to a futurologist who not only believes technology will let humans merge with computers, that this will create an entirely new species called Homo optimus.

And, he claims this could occur as soon as 2050.

The predictions were made by Dr Ian Pearson as part of the lead up to The Big Bang Fair 2016.

He believes that within the next 35 years, humans will 'live' online, and our pets could even 'talk' to us, like real-life Furbies.

He also claims transhumanism – the idea we can make people technologically better – will be the norm by 2050.

'With optimised genomes and bodies enhanced by links to external technology, people could be more beautiful...more intelligent, more emotionally sophisticated, more physically able, more socially connected, generally healthier and happier all round.'

As humans embrace technological advances and gradually become androids, we could gradually see Homo sapiens being replaced by Homo optimus.

'We can expect our evolutionary process to change in response to technology.

'What's exciting is that it is no longer nature which is forcing changes on us but our own breakthroughs enabling changes we want, ' Dr Pearson explained.

 

Futurologist Dr Ian Pearson claims that in the next 35 years, humans will be able to communicate with computers to evolve better senses, memory and even intelligence. Electronic gold skin and tiny implants between cells could enable a direct link with devices, while we could 'wear' muscle too (illustrated above)

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As humans embrace technological advances and gradually become androids, we could gradually see Homo sapiens being replaced by Homo optimus. This conceptual image shows four stages of human evolution (left to right) showing Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens

WE MAY TURN INTO 'FAIRIES' TO EXPLORE SPACE 

Biotech and nanotech developments will make it possible to develop small brains with far greater capabilities, so the rest of the body could be scaled down accordingly.

There are big advantages in being tiny for space travel, Dr Pearson explained, because it is a lot easier to accommodate and transport tiny people.

'It is not frivolous to suggest that most space travellers will be rather like fairies, and wings would make it easy to get around in zero gravity too,' he said.

'This could give rise to some weird and wonderful future forms and creations – from changing video displays on our faces to controlling our own dreams - our (evolving) imaginations are the only limit.'

Dr Pearson believes that with a full link between the human brain and a computer, people could move their mind into an improved android body.

'This would allow people to have multiple expistences and identities, or to carry on living long after their biological death,' he wrote in the 'Future Human Report.'

While this technology could be available as soon as in 2050, it may become cheap enough to be widespread by 2070.

Plus, by the end of the century, there will likely be several types of humans, including human-machine hybrids, and people living in android bodies, as well as 'smart creatures'.

Dr Pearson continued that anyone under the age of 40 today will have a good chance of electronic immortality, meaning they could essentially 'upload' their personality so it can continue posting after their death. In the film Transcendence (pictured) the character played by Johnny Depp uploads his consciousness onto a computer

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Research from academics and experts, collated by Dr Pearson for The Big Bang Fair, suggests humans will be able to directly communicate with electronics and we could clone teeth, fix surfaces and edit genes to make them self-replace (illustrated above)

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WHAT THE FUTURE COULD LOOK LIKE - FROM SKIN TO MUSCLE TIGHTS

Research from academics and experts collated by Dr Pearson for The Big Bang Fair suggests:

• We will be able to connect directly with technology through 'electronic skin' or tiny implants between our skin cells.
• Electronic 'support tights' will boost leg strength with wearable polymer gel muscles 1cm thick.
• Smudged make-up will be a thing of the past with smart make-up applied on top of a membrane on the skin surface to give a flawless, changeable look.
• Nanotechnology will monitor and repair our bodies from the inside, making self-replacing teeth a possibility.
• Technology will be used to enhance pets and wildlife, with the potential to hear our pets talk or to increase their IQ, and to create real versions of kids-craze Furbies. 

'We will certainly technologically advance some of our pets and even wildlife too and we might create entirely new species such as real Furbies,' Dr Pearson continued.

The predictions mean futuristic characters such as Dug the talking dog in Pixar's Up and the human-robot hybrids popular in hit TV shows like Humans could be a reality.

The Big Bang Fair – the UK's largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) for young people - will give access to technologies shaping these developments, from a sensor placed on the skin that allows people to hear music using bone conduction, to robot orchestras.

'We will certainly technologically advance some of our pets and even wildlife too and we might create entirely new species such as real Furbies,' Dr Pearson continued

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'It's the young people who come to the fair who will help drive through the innovations our experts are predicting,' said Paul Jackson, chief executive of EngineeringUK, organisers of The Big Bang Fair.

'Today's young people will not only get to experience 'wearing' muscles or owning smart-pets, they will decide what these look like.'

The Big Bang Fair is free and runs from 16 to 19 March at the Birmingham NEC.

AI Politics: How An Artificial Intelligence Algorithm Can Write Political Speeches

By Menchie Mendoza, Tech Times | January 26, 5:43 AM

Soon, the speeches that we hear from political figures may be the product of an AI machine that has been specifically designed to write political discourses.

There seems to be a formula to writing speeches. For instance, political speeches sound similar and tend to have a standard format. Arguments in these political discourses seem to be repeated as well. Speeches also seem to use familiar phrases that show the speaker's certain political affiliation or ideology.

Valentin Kassarnig of the University of Massachusetts Amherst took all of these into consideration and made an AI machine to rival human speech writers.

"In this report we present a system that can generate political speeches for a desired political party," wrote Kassarnig. "Furthermore, the system allows to specify whether a speech should hold a supportive or opposing opinion."

Kassarnig said that in order to start training a machine-learning algorithm, he first built a database of around 4,000 political speech nuggets that he got from 53 Congressional floor debates in the United States. He gathered more than 50,000 sentences out of the speeches, with each sentence having 23 words on average. He also divided the speeches into categories depending on the political party (Democrat or Republican) and whether the speech is for or against a certain topic.

After trying various database analyzing techniques, Kassarnig decided to use a method based on the n-grams approach, which focuses on analyzing sequences of words or phrases.

First, he studied and tagged each word based on what part of speech it is (noun, adjective, verb, etc.).

Next, he turned to 6-grams and tried to determine all the words that can appear after the five previous ones, which include the probability of their appearance.

When these steps are accomplished, the process of creating speeches will automatically follow.

In his report "Political Speech Generation," Kassarnig also indicated the use of two underlying models from where he based the probabilities in the word sequencing. The language model handles the grammatical correctness of the speech while the topic model is aimed at achieving textual consistency.

He added that he also used both the manual and the automated approaches when evaluating the quality of AI machine-generated speeches. After performing an experimental evaluation, Kassarnig learned that in essence, generated speeches are good when it comes to correct grammar and the way the sentences would transition.

If you're curious to know whether a machine can actually generate good speeches, here is one example of a speech with a Democratic tone that was generated automatically by the AI algorithm.

"Mr. Speaker, for years, honest but unfortunate consumers have had the ability to plead their case to come under bankruptcy protection and have their reasonable and valid debts discharged. The way the system is supposed to work, the bankruptcy court evaluates various factors including income, assets and debt to determine what debts can be paid and how consumers can get back on their feet. Stand up for growth and opportunity. Pass this legislation."

While the AI algorithm shows huge potential in generating decent political speeches, Kassarnig is not liiting the potential of the algorithm to just politics. Instead, he suggests that the algorithm can also produce other types of texts, including news articles and blog posts.