The first fatal accident involving an automated vehicle took place in Florida. From the point of view of technology, the Tesla vehicle couldn’t tell the difference between the side of a white truck and the very bright Florida sky. The real cause of the problem, however, was that the human driver wasn’t paying attention, so… Read more »
Way before the internet of things, we quit getting up and walking to the TV to change the channel. We’ve had electric pencil sharpeners to save us from the effort of turning a crank and electric paper towel tearing machinces to save us from… Not really sure what that was supposed to save us from…. Read more »
The most exciting thing about new technologies in industry is that machines can communicate with one another as well as with humans, workpieces, and so forth. This provides opportunities for machine learning, for increased flexibility and speed, and for many new capabilities we haven’t even dreamed of yet. The most frightening thing about new technologies… Read more »
3-D printing, also called additive manufacturing, creates objects bit by bit, extruding molten plastic (and sometimes other things) onto a foundation with a 3-axis deposition head in painstaking layers that eventually build an object. To keep that molten plastic molten, the building is generally done in an oven. And this one feature has been the… Read more »
Human beings teach one another quite naturally. Other animals don’t teach, but they do learn from one another by copying behaviors that lead to positive results, like getting food. Machines can learn, in a very specialized sense of the word “learn,” but they never teach one another. Until now. Google is teaching robots to teach…. Read more »