/ News
Meet HitchBOT, the Robot Hitchhiking Across Canada
Canadians who are used to seeing mountains, lakes and other beautiful scenery across their country have had a surprise addition to the landscape this summer, a hitchhiking robot with a “yard sale aesthetic.”
The robot, named HitchBOT, is made of “odds and ends of what you might found around your own house,” co-creator David Harris Smith. The "odds and ends" include a bucket for a body and pool noodles for arms and legs.
Most importantly, the robot has a built-in booster seat, a very strategic part of its design.
“It’s light enough to be picked up and put in the car and it fits in the car,” Smith told ABC News.
Smith, a professor at Ontario’s McMaster University, partnered with Frauke Zeller, of Toronto's Ryerson University, to create HitchBOT as a “participatory artwork” experiment.
The robot began its summer adventure in Halifax last month and will conclude it this week in Victoria, British Columbia. It made its way across Canada purely by the kindness of strangers who picked the robot up and took it on adventures ranging from visiting their own homes to attending a rock concert and even a wedding.
“It’s interesting to see how it inspires people’s creativity,” Zeller said. “We wanted to see whether we can trust technology that’s surrounding us, especially robots and especially as they come into our daily lives, into our houses. And can robots trust human beings?”
HitchBOT’s adventures are largely built on a social media campaign that includes its own Twitter handle, Instagram account and #HitchBOT hashtag.
“We designed that strategy from the very beginning so people would know what it was when they saw it on the side of the road,” Zeller said. “We’ve heard from people that it’s part of their morning routine, that they wake up and check where HitchBOT is.”
HitchBOT was also built with a GPS system, so that followers, and its creators, can track its progress online, and is also programmed with technology similar to a smartphone and speech recognition software so it can communicate with its fellow travelers and scour the Internet for facts about the regions where it travels.
Zaller says she and Smith are in touch with the person who currently has possession of HitchBOT and are assured that, after a busy day of traveling to Seattle on the ferry, HitchBOT will arrive back in Victoria in time for its welcome home reception Thursday night.
What comes next for HitchBOT, Zaller and Smith say, depends on funding, among other factors. The robot, which took a full-time team around four months to build, has been invited by other countries to hitchhike across their lands, and will attend a Silicon Valley ideas conference with its creators next month.
“We definitely plan to continue,” Zeller said.
hitchBOT from hitchBOT on Vimeo.
Source: https://gma.yahoo.com/meet-hitchbot-robot-hitchhiking-across-canada-193042454--abc-news-topstories.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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