Rise of the machines: Here are the best robots we saw at CES 2018

Robots always have a big presence at CES, but this year that presence was bigger and more noticeable than ever before. The CEA dedicated a massive chunk of showfloor space at the Las Vegas Convention Center exclusively to robotics companies this year, and as such, there were tons of amazing bots on display. Here’s a quick roundup of some of our favorites. Enjoy!

Laundroid

This one is something we can all get behind. It’s a robot that folds your clothes for you. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, despite being relatively simple for us humans, folding laundry is actually an immensely difficult task for robots. To manage this feat, Laundroid uses advanced AI and an array of cameras to analyze each individual garment, determine its shape/size/orientation, and then figure out how to fold it properly. It’s not particularly quick, but it’s impressive nonetheless. Unfortunately, it also costs $16,000.

Motobot 2

When the Motobot project was first announced in 2015, Yamaha’s goal was to create a machine that would be capable of “visualizing data about human motorcycle operation, further quantifying the relationship between rider input and machine behavior, and then using the resulting know-how to build even better vehicles.” Now that we’re in 2018, Yamaha has not only achieved that goal, but also created a second generation of the bot. This time, the Motobot’s goal is to defeat seven-time MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi in a timed lap around a track. That’s a pretty epic matchup if you ask us.

Root

Robots that teach you how to code are a dime a dozen these days. Most are just a slightly different take on the same exact idea, but Root is special. Of all the coding robots we have ever seen, it’s arguably one of the best. Why? Well, in addition to being outrageously simple and intuitive to use, it is also designed to teach you more than just the basics. It’s a full-spectrum, interactive coding teacher that can take you from beginner (or intermediate) to seasoned pro — all at your own pace.

Scrabble bot

Chessbots are so 1996. Here in 2018, we have robots that can play Scrabble — and when we say “play,” we don’t mean move digital pieces inside a computer simulation. I mean actually picking up letter tiles (or in this case, blocks) with robotic arms, and placing them on a physical board. The robotic movement is really the easiest part though. The hard part is analyzing all the letters on the board, running through all possible letter combinations, guessing which pieces the opponent likely has, and playing a word that not only earns a high point value — but also sets up future moves.

Loomo

Loomo is the latest contraption from Ninebot — the company that acquired Segway in 2015. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a robotics company that owns Segway, because, well, it’s basically just a robot brain that rides around on two self-balancing wheels like some sort of dystopian mall cop. It’s actually kind of nifty, though. You can spin the robot’s head and ride it around like a normal Segway, then hop off, spin the head back around to wake up the robot, and have it follow you around autonomously while you’re not riding. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t want one.

Forpheus

If you followed DT’s CES 2018 coverage at all, you’ve probably seen this one before. The robot, which was created by an industrial automation company called Omron, is designed to showcase the company’s robotics and artificial intelligence technology by playing ping pong. Here’s how it works: After you serve the ball, the robot uses cameras and machine vision algorithms to track the ball and predict its trajectory. The robot then uses its robotic arms to swing the paddle and hit the ball back to you. This all happens in real time, and it’s nothing short of amazing. We actually got a chance to play against it for a few minutes, so if you’d like to read more about an epic man-vs-machine ping pong battle, you know where to go.

ARMAR-6

ARMAR-6 is a humanoid warehouse robot designed by the UK’s online supermarket Ocado. Unlike most robots, it doesn’t have a super specific set of skills, and is instead designed to be a multi-purpose assistant for human workers. “The ultimate goal is for the robot to use machine learning and computer vision to scan its surrounding environment and identify tasks it could help with,” an Ocado executive told Digital Trends. “So, for example, if it observes a technician attempting to change a panel and requiring a set of tools, it will come and offer its assistance — either by holding the panel for the engineer or grabbing the various tools that are needed.”  Future iterations of the bo will also be equipped with Alexa-style speech recognition systems, allowing conversations between the robot and the humans it works with.

Editors’ Recommendations

• I played ping pong against a giant robot, and it was awesome
• A mirror that tells it like it is? Here are the wackiest gadgets from CES 2018
• Don’t call it a gimbal — Freefly Movi is a ‘cinema robot’ for iPhone shooting
• Yamaha shows off the improved Motobot at Tokyo Motor Show 2017
• Totally tubular tech: 20 of the coolest products at CES 2018

New Nova miniseries will explore puzzling science mysteries

The Boston public access station WGBH has partnered with PBS for another short series in its long-running Nova family of programs. Nova Wonder will follow three researchers exploring big scientific mysteries. The first of the miniseries’ six episodes airs on PBS on Wednesday, April 28th, with a new one every week.
Each episode tackles a different complex question: Do animals have a secret language? Which AI technologies could surpass human abilities? How ethical is it to grow life in a lab? The show will go deep in the sea and peer into outer space to find answers.

But more notable is the refreshingly young and diverse trio of hosts who practice leading scientific methods and technologies. mathematician and statistician Talithia Williams uses data models to analyze environmental and human biological info, while computer scientist Rana el Kaliouby specializes in emotion recognition tech and neuroscientist André Fenton specializes in the biology of memory.

“What is so unique about NOVA Wonders—and what distinguishes it from the original NOVA series—is the emphasis on unanswered questions,” said Julia Cort, Executive Producer, NOVA Wonders. “We’re riding along with researchers who are pushing the envelope on our knowledge about the universe and ourselves. They don’t have all the answers, but the thrill is in the journey and trying to solve a mystery for the very first time.”

Source: Broadcasting Cable

Aereo-like NYC nonprofit Locast streams local TV for free

A nonprofit is bringing local broadcast television to the online masses for free, but who knows how long that will last. The organization, Sports Fans Coalition, launched the streaming site Locast.org on January 11th, letting anyone in New York City’s five boroughs watch content from 15 local channels without paying a dime — at least until the lawsuits start flying.

That’s because a similar service, Aereo, tried to snag over-the-air TV broadcasts and stream them as their own $8 per month subscription service. The Supreme Court deemed that illegal for violating copyright law back in 2014, and Aereo shut down. Locast may run afoul of that argument since it’s technically live-broadcasting other channels’ content without their approval. But it’s otherwise different, only providing local channels to users in New York City, streaming content for free (though they encourage minimal donations to cover costs) and operating as a nonprofit. The Locast team believes the site performs a public service:

“You wouldn’t guess it from the size of your cable or satellite bill, but over-the-air broadcast was always supposed to be free to the public. Even if you try to get that over-the-air signal using a regular indoor antenna, that often doesn’t work if you live in a basement apartment or somewhere else the signal can’t reach,” states Locast’s site. “You deserve unfettered access to your local broadcast. We’re here to give it to you.”

In the Sports Fans Coalition’s view, Locast operates like a traditional relay station, sending over-the-air broadcast signals only to New Yorkers. David Goodfriend, cofounder of the new service, told Bloomberg that Locast should be able to legally retransmit broadcasts thanks to a part of US federal copyright law that permits nonprofits to do so without the approval of stations or owners. This section was added in the 1970s to assist folks living in places with bad reception, Bloomberg pointed out. Locast is just gathering broadcasts using an antenna in Long Island and retransmitting them online.

Goodfriend is a law professor at Georgetown, former executive at Dish Network and was a legal adviser to the FCC. In fact, while there, he urged the agency to eliminate a rule barring local broadcasting of NFL games that weren’t sold out, Bloomberg reported: In other words, he’s not walking into this issue blindly, and ‘expects an angry call from lawyers at CBS or NBC any day now.’

Source: Locast.org

Oculus VR’s Rift Core 2.0 update is now available to everyone

Oculus VR recently made one of its biggest updates to its virtual reality user experience available to everyone, not just those on its test platforms. The Rift Core 2.0 update improves performance and stability of the Rift VR experience, but perhaps more crucially has several quality-of-life upgrades that should make the VR experience of Oculus Rift users much more satisfying.

Although Oculus initially made the Rift Core 2.0 update available through its Public Test Channel in December, with some additional tweaks brought to bear, it’s now made it accessible to all Rift users. While Oculus Home will still be the default setting for those stepping into Oculus’ virtual world, users can now easily enable the new update through the settings menu, according to RoadToVR.

For first time users who haven’t tried out Rift Core 2.0 yet, they can expect some nice performance upgrades and a newly customizable Home space that lets you tweak your VR surroundings as you see fit. It also introduced Dash, a new in-app menu that makes it easier to run applications and change apps (including SteamVR games) while within VR. Beyond that though, this January update fixes a few niggling issues brought to light by beta testers over the past few weeks.

‘Locking’ items in the Home space will now be possible, meaning users won’t knock their finely placed objects and VR household items once placed down. The update also makes it easier to access your VR applications from within Home and it now has a more interactive wishlist feature, so when games and VR apps you want go on sale, you can find out about it via VR notifications.

An out-of-VR improvement that has been much requested since the Oculus Rift first went on sale is the installation customization feature. Now users can decide where their VR titles are installed, rather than in a default C: drive location. That should make it easier to install VR apps on specific drives or partitions, for those who prefer to separate out their software.

For those who are concerned about how long they’re spending in VR, or want to brag about the number of hours, each Oculus application now has its own playtime tracker, so you can much more easily estimate how far you’ve gone to becoming an entirely virtual entity.

For more information and links to where you can provide your own feedback on the update, check out the Oculus blog post.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Oculus Rift vs. Oculus Go — is it still better to be tethered to a PC?
• Oculus adds desktop functionality and revamps Home in Rift Core 2.0 update
• VR and pose: How to take a screenshot in VR with the Oculus Rift
• Google Daydream View 2 vs. Oculus Go — which will be the better VR experience?
• A Facebook news feed in VR could help make the technology mainstream

A sneaky extension for Chrome, Firefox prevents its removal, hijacks browser

Internet security firm Malwarebytes recently discovered that a pair of extensions will not only hijack Chrome and Firefox, but will block any attempts to remove them from these two browsers. The version found in Chrome is a forced extension resulting from web pages that trick visitors into installing the extension via a JavaScript-based popup. The Firefox version stems from advertisements pretending to be an official manual update requirement warning posted by Mozilla. 

“Tiempo en colombia en vivo” is the name of the invading Chrome extension. Malwarebytes doesn’t provide any specifics about what this extension actually does to Chrome but presumably, it completely hijacks the browser to push technical support scams, drive click numbers on specific websites, or completely hijack web searches. The company’s listing says it could spy on your web browsing activities too. 

It’s essentially force-installed by hijacking the browser on websites supporting the extension. If you try to leave the page, a popup appears asking to add an extension for exiting the page. If you select cancel, another popup will appear with an additional tick box that says “Prevent this page from creating additional dialog.” Check the box, hit “OK,” and the browser goes full screen with a popup revealing the name of the extension that is supposedly distributed through the Chrome Web Store. 

Thinking it’s legit, Chrome users install the extension. But the problems only get worse for there. When Chrome users attempt to access the in-browser extensions section, they are directed to a fake extension page that doesn’t list the installed, offending extension. Because this page is internal, disabling JavaScript doesn’t fix the problem. The only way to regain control is to add “–disable-extensions” after chrome.exe in the shortcut command line (which disables all extensions), or rename the “1499654451774.js” file in the extensions folder. 

Meanwhile, the Firefox extension takes a different route. Victims will see a web-based advertisement warning that Firefox requires a manual update. Taking the bait, they inadvertently install the offending extension, which prevents them from accessing the internal “about:addons” page by closing the tab. To remove the extension, you can restart Firefox in safe mode. Extensions are not active in this state, thus you can remove any add-on before restarting the browser. 

“If you are kept on a Firefox tab by JavaScript(s) that keep popping up with prompts, and you are unable to close the window in the usual way, you can terminate Firefox by using Task Manager,” the company states. “When you restart Firefox, it will not be able to restore the session for that tab.” 

Believe it or not, Task Manager is your best friend in Windows. Simply type CTRL+ALT+DEL, and you can open the Task Manager window to force-close any browser tab that refuses to close. You don’t need to install anything to escape the clutches of a malicious web page. Even more, Google and Mozilla absolutely do not send warning advertisements on web pages to manually upgrade your browser. Updates are typically performed behind the scenes. 

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best ad blockers for Chrome
• The best Google Chrome extensions to revolutionize your workday
• Twitter to take back those verified badges if users don’t follow its new rules
• The best browsers for surfing the web
• How to clear cookies in your browser

Crumble-proof concrete? Fungi could help it heal itself of cracks

We’re not seasoned construction workers, but finding fungus growing in a wall isn’t good, right? As it turns out, we may be wrong on that, thanks to some pioneering work carried out at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Researchers there have developed a new fungi-based concrete that’s capable of healing itself. While it’s not ready for prime time just yet, it could one day be used for permanently repairing cracks in aging concrete, potentially helping save crumbling infrastructure.

“Our work is to explore a revolutionary self-healing concept in which fungi are used to promote calcium mineral precipitation to heal cracks in concrete infrastructure,” Congrui Jin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton University, told Digital Trends. “The fungal spores, together with their nutrients, will be added into concrete during the mixing process. When cracks appear and water finds its way in, the dormant fungal spores will germinate, grow, and precipitate calcium carbonate to heal the cracks. When the cracks are completely filled and ultimately no more water can enter inside, the fungi will again form spores. As the environmental conditions become favorable in later stages, the spores could be wakened again.”

Jin describes the material as low-cost, pollution-free, and sustainable. It’s also potentially much longer-lasting than other solutions used to temporarily paper over the cracks in aging concrete. Particularly in applications like nuclear power plants, where concrete is used for radiation shielding, it could be of vital importance.

“Nowadays, concrete has been the key construction material for reactor containment and biological shielding structures, which are essential components of the nuclear reactors in service worldwide for power generation,” Jin said. “In addition, cementitious grouts, mortars, and concrete are also often used to provide shielding and encapsulation of various radioactive waste materials from military, research, and power-generation applications. Some waste isotopes, as well as their decay products, will become a serious radiation hazard for hundreds of thousands of years, which requests exceptionally durable storage. Self-healing concrete is [therefore] particularly useful in such applications.”

A paper describing the research was recently published in the journal Construction and Building Materials.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The Netherlands is home to the world’s first 3D-printed concrete bridge
• Our latest weapon in the fight to save dying coral reefs is … a concrete pod?
• A fracture-resistant cement could make mile-high skyscrapers possible
• Cracked screens may be a thing of the past with this self-healing glass
• Meet the tech that revealed a hidden chamber inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid

Xiaomi Mi A1 review

If you’ve been tempted by Xiaomi’s often well-designed smartphones, but put off by the custom MIUI “theme” layered over the Android software; then the Xiaomi Mi A1 is the answer to your problems. There are no software tweaks from Xiaomi because the Mi A1 runs Android One — the Google operating system designed for low- and mid-range phones. It promises regular software and security updates, like a Google Pixel smartphone, plus all the usual Google apps including the Google Play Store pre-installed. In our Xiaomi Mi A1 review, we explain how it’s not just the software that’s a winner, but the hardware too.

There is one glaring flaw we should mention first: The lack of 4G LTE support in the U.S. The Xiaomi Mi A1, even the so-called Global version, won’t connect to GSM 4G networks in the U.S., meaning you’ll have to make do with 3G speeds. Buyers in the U.K. and much of Europe will be fine. We’ve had ours running on the O2 network in the U.K. without issues.

Great specs, low price

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how good the Mi A1 is. First, it costs 210 euros from the Mi Spain store, or somewhere around $210 to $250 if you use an online retailer in China. That makes it slightly cheaper in Europe than one of our current absolute favorite budget phones, the Honor 7X (the Mi A1 is a tad more expensive in the U.S.). For that you get a sleek, smooth metal body that’s 7.3mm thick, a 5.5-inch LCD screen with a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution, a fingerprint scanner, and a dual-lens 12-megapixel camera on the back. It’s all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, with 4GB of RAM.

Exactly what we want from a mid-range phone.

The Mi A1’s style is reminiscent of the Xiaomi Redmi 4X, and identical to the Mi 5X. It’s simple but attractive, and could be easily mistaken for the OnePlus 5  or an iPhone 7 Plus as well. It’s comfortable to hold, and super light at 165 grams. We carried it around while on vacation in Japan, along with several other phones, and it happily slipped into a pocket or bag without a fuss.

The build quality is good, although the volume rocker audibly rattles when you put it down on a table. There is a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, far from the camera lenses, and it is accurate and quick to respond. On the bottom is a USB Type-C charging port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Simple software, timely updates

Battery life is solid, with the phone easily lasting a day with its 3,080mAh cell. This is undoubtedly aided thanks to the Android One software and its uncluttered, and simple approach. Thanks to the Google software, the phone also delivered on timely security updates. Since using the phone, we’ve received October, November, and December’s Android security patch updates, along with another update fixing bugs and improving the device. It felt almost unnatural, having so many important software updates in such a timely manner on an Android phone. It’s the way things really should be.

There are a few pre-installed Xiaomi apps, including Mi Remote to use with the IR blaster, plus the Xiaomi camera app. The Snapdragon 625 processor isn’t that fast, and although scrolling and moving around Android isn’t slow, wading through some apps can be. We noticed hesitation and less-than-smooth scrolling in the Google Play Store, YouTube, and apps like Twitter. It’s not bad, but it’s noticeable, especially if you’re coming from a higher-performance smartphone.

We ran the Mi A1 through a few benchmark tests:

• AnTuTu 3D Bench: 59883
• Geekbench 4 CPU: 4200 Multi-Core/867 Single-Core
• 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme: 463

The results almost match what we saw from the Honor 7X, a phone which uses a Kirin 659 processor and also has 4GB of RAM. Ultimately for everyday tasks, with a little gaming thrown in, the Mi A1 is a perfectly usable and surprisingly capable companion.

Capable camera

That’s all before you start using the camera, which is excellent for such a low-cost phone and a solid competitor to the Honor 7X, and other similarly-priced dual-lens camera phones. The two lenses have 12 megapixels each, an f/2.2 aperture, and a 2x optical zoom feature. The front camera has 5 megapixels, as well as a portrait mode.

It takes vivid, natural, and interesting pictures in normal light, but the cameras struggle a little with noise when the light is poor. The dual-lens system for adding a blurred background for portraits works surprisingly well — it’s easy to use, fast, and produces some good results. We were very happy with the photos taken by the Mi A1 considering the price, especially for sharing photos on social media. The portrait mode adds plenty of fun, and is a feature many phones don’t share at this price. The video camera even has a slow-motion mode for extra creativity.

Downsides? Apart from the 4G LTE problems in the U.S., the Mi A1 doesn’t have NFC, so it can’t be used for Android Pay. We also found the gold rear panel scuffs easily just from sitting in a bag or pocket, so a case may be in order here. Also, compared to the minimal bezels around the Honor 7X’s screen, the Mi A1 doesn’t look quite so modern. Still, we vastly prefer Android One over Huawei’s EMUI user interface on the Honor phone. It ultimately comes down to what’s more valuable to you — timely software and security updates, or style.

Choose the Mi A1 and you will be very happy. It’s exactly what we want from a mid-range phone — no software clutter, a good camera, a pretty screen, a simple design, and a low price tag.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Snap the best picture you can by mastering the Xiaomi Mi A1’s camera
• Bezel-less Mi Mix 2 and Android One Mi A1 lead Xiaomi’s European charge
• Why 2017 was the best year for smartphones ever
• Honor 7X vs. Moto E4 Plus: Big-screen budget battle
• Honor 7X vs. Nokia 6: Can Honor beat the Finnish veteran?

Twitter is notifying anyone who followed a Russian spam account

Last week, Twitter missed the deadline Congress set to turn over information on Russia-backed meddling in the 2016 election. Today, the social media company posted a public update on their internal investigation. First, they found thousands of additional accounts associated with the Russian government-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA). But most importantly, Twitter is emailing notifications to everyone in the US who inadvertently followed one or retweeted or liked one of their messages — which is some 677,775 people.

In effect, that’s a simple measure of the impact that the IRA’s accounts had. Twitter identified 1,062 additional accounts, bringing the total to 3,814; In the ten-week period before the 2016 election that the company studied, those IRA accounts posted 175,993 tweets. Only 8.4% were related to the upcoming elections, but that’s still a wide impact that the Twitter platform unwittingly amplified.

Twitter also identified 13,512 more automated Russian-linked accounts that tweeted election-related material during the period, bringing that total to 50,258. In the company’s blog post, it also reported better security techniques detected 60 percent more suspicious accounts last month than it did in October 2017. They’re getting better at noticing automated activity, Twitter claims: Near-instant replies to tweets, too-regular Tweet timing and coordinated engagement are all red flags.

Twitter will invest more in machine-learning to spot and impede fake and automated accounts, the blog post stated. But popular multitasking overlay programs like Tweetdeck might suffer as the social media company may limit coordinated actions across multiple accounts ‘in Tweetdeck and via the Twitter API.’ To counter that, they promise to expand the developer onboarding process for those building atop the platform’s API. (Twitter acquired Tweetdeck in 2011 and still runs it.)

Source: Twitter blog

‘Skullgirls’ relaunches on mobile as developer ditches publisher

Stylized fighting game Skullgirls came out for mobile in May of last year. It was developed by Autumn Games and initially published by Line. Now, the developer has decided to part ways with the publisher and go back to being independent. As a result of this transition, the developer launched a new version (basically Skullgirls 2.0) and shut down the old one (now called LINE Skullgirls) on the App Store and Google Play.

The title’s relaunch brings a bunch of new updates, including extra Daily Log In loot, double fighters and moves for single gacha-style hero acquisitions, official ultra widescreen support for iPhone X and select Android phones like the Samsung S8, improved Relic coloring (so you know how rare a fighter is) and several bug fixes. In addition, the developer has promised a greater transparency around loot drop rates, along with a guaranteed random generation of loot itself. “While other games may ‘cook the books’ to create the illusion that loot rates are better than that actually are (to encourage spending),” the developer wrote in a forum post, “ours are 100% RNG (random number generator), with plenty of in-game methods to earn them directly without having to spend a dime. We plan to add more layers of granularity and visibility to these loot tables in future updates.”

As a result of its newfound independence from Line, Autumn Games also promises a ton of new characters, modes, social features and content over the next year. If you’re already a Skullgirls player, the developer says that all your data will move to the new app, as well, so you won’t lose any progress from the previous version.

Source: Autumn Games

Apple CEO Tim Cook: I Don’t Believe in Overuse of Technology

Apple this morning announced the expansion of its “Everyone Can Code” initiative to 70 educational institutions across Europe, and following the announcement, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at Harlow College in Essex, one of the schools that will adopt the new curriculum.

The Guardian shared several of Cook’s comments, which covered overuse of technology and boundaries for children.

Cook said he believes there are concepts that can’t be taught using technology, and in many courses, technology shouldn’t dominate.

“I don’t believe in overuse [of technology]. I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using it all the time,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”

“There are still concepts that you want to talk about and understand. In a course on literature, do I think you should use technology a lot? Probably not.”

According to Cook, Apple cares about children out of the classroom, a topic that’s notable as Apple investors recently urged Apple to do more to protect children from smartphone addiction.

Apple in early January said in a statement that it thinks deeply about how its products are used and the impact they have on people, including children. Apple takes its responsibility to protect children “very seriously,” and has promised more robust parental controls for iOS devices in the future.

Though he does not have children of his own, Cook says in his own personal life, he “put some boundaries” on his nephew. “There here are some things that I won’t allow; I don’t want them on a social network,” he said.

On the topic of learning to code, Cook spoke passionately, as he has done several times in the past. Learning to code, he says, is more important than learning a foreign language.

Cook said: “I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.”

Cook’s full commentary, which covers diversity, coding at an early age, and the importance of the press, can be read over at The Guardian.

Tag: Tim Cook
Discuss this article in our forums