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Current News
25/02/2020
Impact of Robotics and Autonomous Systems on the Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global agenda of 17 goals and 169 targets published in 2015 by the United Nations to “stimulate action over the next 15 years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet”. The SDGs are being widely used as a basis for social, economic and environmental policy and action across the world. The role RAS may play in achieving these goals is currently unclear.
19/02/2020
Are robots designed to include the LGBTQ+ community?
In a new short paper in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, Roger A. Søraa from Norwegian University of Science and Technology and co-authors Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Adam Poulsen discuss what a queering of robots might entail.
19/02/2020
‘Sensorized’ skin helps soft robots find their bearings
For the first time, MIT researchers have enabled a soft robotic arm to understand its configuration in 3-D space, by leveraging only motion and position data from its own "sensorized" skin. Soft robots constructed from highly compliant materials, similar to those found in living organisms, are being championed as safer, and more adaptable, resilient, and bioinspired alternatives to traditional rigid robots.
19/02/2020
Meet Jaco and Baxter, machine learning robots who cook perfect hot dogs
Craving a bite out of a freshly grilled ballpark frank? Two robots named Jaco and Baxter can serve one up. Boston University engineers have made a jump in using machine learning to teach robots to perform complex tasks, a framework that could be applied to a host of tasks, like identifying cancerous spots on mammograms or better understanding spoken commands to play music. But first, as a proof of concept—they've learned how to prepare the perfect hot dog.
19/02/2020
Artificial intelligence finds disease-related genes
An artificial neural network can reveal patterns in huge amounts of gene expression data, and discover groups of disease-related genes. This has been shown by a new study led by researchers at Linköping University, published in Nature Communications. The scientists hope that the method can eventually be applied within precision medicine and individualised treatment.
13/02/2020
Masters of the Universe: National school competition ignites children’s interest in space and robotics
UK-RAS has joined forces with the online educational publisher Twinkl to launch a national School Robot Competition and celebrated today with an out-of-this-world event.
11/02/2020
New humanities-led network will put social justice at the heart of AI research
UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have launched JUST AI, a network of researchers and practitioners, in partnership with The Ada Lovelace Institute, that will establish a multidisciplinary research base around ‘just AI’ - AI that is ethical, works for the common good and is effectively governed and regulated.