Spotlight

Today Matthijs Smakman will defend his doctoral thesis titled “Robots in Education: The Morally Responsible Deployment of Robot Assistants”. Conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elly Konijn, his empirically grounded research represents a significant milestone in achieving a morally responsible integration of social robots as educational assistants in primary schools. Previous studies have already indicated that the utilization of social robots yields better outcomes compared to traditional educational technologies.

Figure, an AI robotics company specializing in the development of general-purpose humanoid robots, has raised $70 million in a Series A funding round. This substantial funding will be utilized to accelerate the advancement of Figure 01, the company’s autonomous humanoid robot, establish Figure’s AI data pipeline for autonomous operations, and drive forward with commercialization efforts.

Roberta Nelson Shea, Universal Robot’s Global Technical Compliance Officer, has received the the world’s most prestigious robotics prize, the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award, often described as the Nobel Prize of robotics. She received the award at a ceremony at the Automate Show in Detroit.

A recent survey of CEOs and senior executives by Gartner revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) was the top technology that CEOs believe will significantly impact their industry over the next three years, cited by 21% of survey respondents.

“As AI development affects nearly every aspect of our lives and its influence will further increase in the foreseeable future, member states must take concrete steps to ensure that people’s human rights are safeguarded in the design, development and deployment of AI systems” says Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović in a report released yesterday.

Luxembourg based company emma is making waves in the cloud computing industry with its solution for managing multiple cloud environments. The company provides a platform that allows customers to manage their various cloud deployments through a single tool, offering visibility and control over resources, team members, and spending.

Flying Iron Simulations and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at RAF Coningsby have collaborated in using Microsoft Flight Simulator and 3D printed controls to provide pilots with emergency procedure training.  In a video published by Authentikit, Squadron Leader Mark ‘Disco’ Discombe MBE shares his decision-making process during the simulated failure.

The robotics industry in the Netherlands has expanded fast and must become more commercially focused to bridge funding gap and realize growth prospects, says industry association.

Ford is testing AI technology for automated driving to make the production process even more efficient. For this project, the new cars not only drive themselves off the production line but also to the final checkpoint. Then, they charge themselves and park themselves for transport to the customer.

Stanford and Google researchers have made a new breakthrough n artificial intelligence (AI) by creating “generative agents” that behave in a remarkably human-like way. These agents were programmed to have the ability to communicate with others and their environment, remember and recall information, reflect on observations, and form plans for each day. In essence, they were given the capacity to think and act like humans.