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Forget delivery drones, meet your new delivery robot
Amazon, Google and Wal-Mart are waiting for the day when they can deliver goods with flying drones. Meanwhile, a small Estonian robotics start-up sees more opportunity on the ground.
Starship, created by the founding engineers of Skype, Ahti Heinla and Allan Martinson, is aiming to send robots on sidewalks with medium-size packages or grocery bags to suburban homes.
Sharing the sidewalks with robots has all sorts of scary implications. But here's why it could work.
The idea is that fleets of Starship robots will gather packages at a central loading hub. Then customers order a delivery when it's convenient for them with an "Uber-like app," said Starship COO Allan Martinson. You order your package, it comes within 20 minutes and then the robot automatically returns to the hub after the package has been claimed.
The robot uses GPS, sensors and cameras to travel on sidewalks at the same pace as a person and can make it up and down curbs and small stairs. It will stop when there is an obstacle or pedestrian in its path. If someone tries to mess with the robot, a human operator at a central control center can scare the thief away via a speaker and call the police. The robot has a microphone on it for two-way communication.
The engineers also said they put a lot of effort into making the robot "cute" so pedestrians would accept it.
The last mile is the most cumbersome and expensive part of delivery, especially in suburbs when drivers go from house to house, getting out of the van, knocking on doors and so forth. UPS even went so far as to eliminate left turns from delivery routes to shave off precious seconds and dollars.
"This part of delivery can be done using a robot," said Starship CEO Ahti Heinla. "This is not rocket science. This is simpler to do than a self-driving car from a technological standpoint."
Heinla said they are talking to "all of the companies you would think of" in the logistics industry and that "there is certainly a lot of interest," but he declined to name specifics.
Starship hopes to sell its robots to major logistics companies. The cost of the robot is currently less than $2,000. Heinla said Starship robots would cost less than a dollar for each delivery and in the future when scaled, this last mile could be essentially free.
"If this new technology is really feasible, FedEx and UPS will both be at the forefront of using it and developing it," said Donald Broughton, senior transportation analyst at Avondale Partners. But he said these robots would face the same regulatory and safety hurdles as delivery drones.
"God forbid a drone or a robot hits a toddler, or kills a cat or a dog," Broughton said. "The liability is just too high."
The founders claim Starship robots are far safer than delivery drones because the robot only weighs 20 pounds and moves slowly. Heinla also said the operators could always take over control of the robot if need be.
Unlike Amazon, Google, etc., which are working with the FAA on flying regulations, Starship is entering new territory with ground robots. Some countries and states do not yet have rules in place about use of autonomous robots. But the founders are confident they can persuade regulators to be open to the idea of sharing sidewalks with their "friendly" robots.
"It's almost impossible to get hurt by it," said Martinson. "But, of course, it's designed not to crash into anything."
Starship has two pilot programs planned for the U.K. and the U.S. next year. The founders envision the robots delivering parcels, laundry, pizza and many other things.
Investors fund the year-old company, but the CEO declined to comment on specifics.
Source: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/02/forget-delivery-drones-meet-your-new-delivery-robot.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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