New Florence. New Renaissance.

Robotic Harvesting

This is the EXPAND R5090, a mechanical tarpaulin that can speed up the harvesting process by 25% according to its creators. It can work in conjunction with the Pellenc Buggy 5000 Shaker to harvest a range of fruit quickly.

The Buggy 5000 Shaker can harvest up to 1200 trees a day and Pellenc claim it harvests up to 99% of the olives on each tree.

Pellenc make a range of other harvesting vehicles. The CV5045 harvesting machine can strip a tree of fruit simply by driving over it. It has a pneumatic sorter that separates the olives quickly and is perfect for high density sites.

Business Insider

Autonomous cars and better suspensions

when autonomy makes everyone a passenger, staring at smartphones (or one another) and not looking out the windows will make car sickness a bigger problem—one that diminishes as ride quality improves.

Here’s how ClearMotion’s system works: A small turbine pump, power pack, and control electronics module gloms on to a conventional monotube or twin-tube damper at each suspension corner. This 48-volt electric pump pressurizes one side or the other of the damper piston and drives the wheel down into a pothole or pulls it up over a bump. As was the case with the Bose suspension, the pump then regenerates much of the electricity it just expended as gravity, or spring energy drives the fluid back through it during rebound. Hence net power consumption from the vehicle remains modest, though ClearMotion isn’t talking specifics yet.

MotorTrend

 

The future of work skills

The need for finely tuned social and emotional skills will rapidly grow. Accompanying the adoption of advanced technologies into the workplace will be an increase in the need for workers with finely tuned social and emotional skills—skills that machines are a long way from mastering. In aggregate, between 2016 and 2030, demand for social and emotional skills will grow across all industries by 26 percent in the United States and by 22 percent in Europe. While some of these skills, such as empathy, are innate, others, such as advanced communication, can be honed and taught. The rise in demand for entrepreneurship and initiative taking will be the fastest growing in this category, with a 33 percent increase in the United States and a 32 percent rise in Europe. The need for leadership and managing others will also grow strongly.

McKinsey & Co.

Subterranean Robots

Announced late last year, DARPA's Subterranean Challenge, new details of which are beginning to emerge, will send robots underground to navigate and map subterranean tunnels and caves.

"We've reached a crucial point where advances in robotics, autonomy, and even biological systems could permit us to explore and exploit underground environments that are too dangerous for humans," said Fred Kennedy, Director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office (TTO).

The challenge aligns with a trend toward the use of robotics in difficult-to-reach areas, including in infrastructure inspection, disaster relief, and mining.

ZDNet

 

Alexa, meet Amelia

IPsoft Inc.’s Amelia is a virtual, text-based customer service agent that accurately resolves requests as much as 90 percent of the time, according to client SEB, a European financial-services firm. It’s close, IPsoft says, to becoming indistinguishable from humans.

Amelia, whose avatar is based on Lauren Hayes, a model, answers customer questions and processes transactions (opening accounts, moving money) through a chat window in a browser or on a mobile app. Customer service agents monitor interactions and guide the AI through any tricky conversation trees for future reference.

Bloomberg

 

Biomimicry and Robotics

ZDNet has a gallery of 11 bio-inspired robots that walk, wiggle, and soar like the real things including RoboBird “which is a flapping robot bird designed to look like a falcon. (They also have a hawk version.)

By mimicking a bird of prey in look and movement, and the flying robot effectively scares off smaller birds without the aid of potentially harmful netting or noise-emitting devices.”

 

Fasting apps

Monthly Google searches for “intermittent fasting,” which has become a catchall term for various forms of the practice, have risen tenfold over the past three years, to as many as 1 million. That’s about as many as “weight loss” gets, and more than “diet.” Now comes the next step, as businesses try to turn various forms of the craze into profit.

BusinessWeek

Gmail evolves

Gmail is getting a long due overhaul

Wired describes some of the new features

The Snooze feature will help you declutter your inbox by hiding messages for a set amount of time. For example, if you're reading your mail on your phone at home and notice messages requiring the sort of lengthy response that benefits from a full keyboard, you can snooze the messages until morning.

automatically generated Smart Replies from the mobile version of Gmail, first introduced in 2016, to the full web version. This feature uses artificial intelligence to draft simple replies to emails.

Nudges will remind you about emails that you haven't responded to.

 

Robotic Piece-picking Speeds up

RightHand Robotics, which makes software and intelligent grippers for piece-picking robots used in the supply chain industry, just helped set a world record that probably didn't have you on the edge of your seat.

Robot workstations equipped with the company's technology successfully picked up and placed 131,072 items over the duration of this year's MODEX show, the supply chain industry's largest event in North and South America.

ZDNet

The unsung heroes at the National Hurricane Center

I wrote a case study on the NHC in The New Polymath in 2010. There was much to admire:

“They reach out to a wide range of data sources in hostile circumstances. They apply multiple, conflicting models to the data. They present the data in multiple formats depending on the sophistication of the audience. And they keep improving their forecasts year on year.”

I had a chance to visit the Miami center last week to get an update. It was good to see the “platforms” for data capture continue to expand and modernize. For example, the GOES-16, which went live last year is the first of 4 next-gen geostationary satellites planned. (click on images to enlarge)

It was good to see their track forecast accuracy continue to improve

It was good to see their “products” evolve – such as a new forecast for the time when it is too late to be making preparations for a tropical storm or hurricane outside.

But it was especially nice to meet the brave, smart folks at the center

Here is Warren Madden, a meteorologist in the CARCAH unit (Chief, Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination, All Hurricanes). He has flown over 1000 hours including missions into Hurricanes Rita, Ivan, Wilma and Floyd. He talked about the planes the Hurricane Hunters fly into storms including the WP-3D Orion and the G-IV Gulfstream. He explained the role of dropsondes - temperature, pressure and humidity sensors, low powered telemetry transmitter, GPS receiver and battery in a cardboard tube with a parachute. They drop several of these sondes during each sortie. As the sonde descends the GPS receiver tracks the position and velocity and allows for deduction of wind speed and direction in the storm.

Jack Beven, Senior Hurricane Specialist. who signs off on many storm advisories like one during Hurricane Irma last year, told us about the role of satellites and supercomputers in the forecasting process.

Phil Manougian was our tour guide and chockful of information and trivia. He is a NOAA Commissioned Corps Officer. Did you know that is one of 7 Federal Uniformed Services? (others are Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Public Health Service)

Dennis Feltgen, the Communications and Public Affairs Officer, was our host. I was impressed by how much complex science and technology at use at the NHC has to be distilled for the benefit of the lay person, under extreme stress of an approaching hurricane. Also made me appreciate how tough it must be to protect his colleagues from the media rush while they are trying to analyze the mountains of data,  often of multiple storms approaching simultaneously. 

We also met other colleagues in the Tropical Analysis & Forecast Branch which produces marine forecasts for an  an area which covers 14,000,000 square nautical miles and the National Weather Service branch co-located there which produces warnings and forecasts for South Florida and the adjacent waters. 

Can machines replace these brave souls? I asked Madden about drones, and he explained their battery life and payload capacity at this point is still pretty limited. I asked Beven about machine learning and while computers are indispensable at the NHC, they still need plenty of human interpretation. 

As I wrote in Polymath "While most of the attention goes to hurricanes when they make landfall and cause chaos, this team’s contribution is even more valuable in reducing the “false positives” – not needing to evacuate areas unless absolutely necessary."  

I left very proud of these humble, geeky public servants!