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AutonoMusings - Robots That Have Your Back

Welcome to this week's AutonoMusings. With a surprise leadership change at Zoox, and open questions a
AutonoMusings
AutonoMusings - Robots That Have Your Back
By Joshua Ouellette • Issue #17 • View online
Welcome to this week’s AutonoMusings.
With a surprise leadership change at Zoox, and open questions about the future of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, much of the news this week was about autonomous vehicles, but AI also grabbed headlines with deep-fake technology that can give anyone killer dance moves. Pro-tip: If a video shows me dancing well, it’s a fake.
On to the news!
- Josh

Everybody Dance Now - YouTube
Everybody Dance Now - YouTube
Robotics News
A telepresence robot that has your back
Researchers have developed a telepresence robot designed to be worn like a backpack. The remote “operator” can see what the “surrogate” sees via the robot’s binocular vision. The operator can assist the surrogate by using the robot’s humanoid arms and hands to manipulate items or move the surrogate’s limbs for them.
We have been looking for a good remote whiteboarding solution…
spectrum.ieee.org  •  Share
Marble begins mapping sidewalks in Dallas
San Francisco-based Marble has begun mapping sidewalks in Dallas, paving the way for its fleet of autonomous robots to begin delivering goods this fall. The bots, each roughly the size of an electric wheelchair, will use sidewalks and crosswalks to make their deliveries of groceries, food, medicine, and other items to customers in the Big D. 
We are getting closer to seeing how robotic delivery via roads and robotic delivery via sidewalks shake out in real-world applications.
www.govtech.com  •  Share
This Week in Autonomous Vehicles
Zoox slammed the brakes on CEO Tim Kentley-Klay last week, bringing his tenure to a close “without a warning,” the ousted executive tweeted. The company hasn’t explained the change, but personality conflicts during the company’s $500M fundraising campaign may have been the root cause. Original tweet here. His original tweet is available here.
We’ll see if the company remains as unapologetically ambitious without Kentley-Klay at the helm.
www.bloomberg.com  •  Share
Shortly after scuttling its autonomous truck project, Uber again finds itself at a crossroads. According to the New York Times, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is weighing whether to sell its AV arm, seek outside development partners, or continue developing self-driving technology on its own. Given Uber’s goal of going public in 2019, the issue likely hinges on how investors will balance the potential of autonomous Ubers against the $100M to $200M per quarter spent on the project.
This could be a make-or-break decision for the company.
www.nytimes.com  •  Share
AVs should look down for the ground-penetrating down-low
Boston startup WaveSense uses a downward pointing radar sensor to read a “subterranean geographical fingerprint” comprising rocks, roots, soil density, and infrastructure hardware to help autonomous vehicles determine their location. WaveSense believes the technology will be cost-effective enough to provide a secondary positioning reference when poor weather impacts GPS and vision-based systems.
Whether or not using underground features for navigation ends up being practical or necessary, the concept is neat.
www.wired.com  •  Share
Forbes used their crystal ball to look past today’s choice of working from home or working from the office and sees Level 5 AVs as a way for workers to increase their productivity during commutes. Would that free up time for them to invest more heavily in their personal lives by decreasing time at the office, or would that newfound productivity simply be a bonus for employers?
If I’m going to write AutonoMusings in the back of an autonomous Lyft, the ride will need to be much smoother than the one most human drivers deliver.
www.forbes.com  •  Share
Will robots charge e-powered AV Electric Vehicles?
Austrian researchers have supercharged a system for charging electric vehicles. As a bonus, it is fully operated by an autonomous robot. The researchers at Graz University of Technology claim the system can charge an EV “within a few minutes” under certain conditions—speeding up a process that can sometimes take a half a day.
Charging EVs is a problem that a robot might provide a “nice-to-have” solution for today. My bet is that cleaning AVs will be the related problem that robots will be really useful for tomorrow.
futurism.com  •  Share
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Joshua Ouellette

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