robotics

Description:
Smart machines do what we thought only people could do. They include conversational assistants like GoogleNow that know how you work, understand written content and make recommendations based on what you’re doing; advisors like IBM’s Watson that can help clinicians keep up with medical literature and suggest courses of action; software that writes sports stories from box scores; and cars that drive themselves.

Key Issues
1. What are smart machines?
2. How will smart machines impact business, technology, economies and society?
3. What should you do about it?

From DSC:
First, some items:

Thinking for the future — from nytimes.com by David Brooks

Excerpt:

We’re living in an era of mechanized intelligence, an age in which you’re probably going to find yourself in a workplace with diagnostic systems, different algorithms and computer-driven data analysis. If you want to thrive in this era, you probably want to be good at working with intelligent machines. As Tyler Cowen puts it in his relentlessly provocative recent book, “Average Is Over,” “If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch.”

So our challenge for the day is to think of exactly which mental abilities complement mechanized intelligence. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few mental types that will probably thrive in the years ahead.

Excerpt:

Create your own employment avatar robot to replace you at work. Fight fire with fire. Could this be the solution to the coming robotic automation revolution?

…

The question on everyone’s mind is “If all the jobs are automated, who will have money to buy the products from these corporations?” This is not just a blue-collar issue. Predictive analytics in soft A.I. robots could replace creative jobs as well.

Siri says ‘dump him’? How mobile devices could run (or ruin) your life — from CNN.com by futurist Gerd Leonhard

Excerpt:

(CNN) — The Web is set to change our lives dramatically over the next decade. This will also raise questions about the use of personal data and the need to balance new powers with ethics. Here are five ways you can expect the explosion in technology to impact you:

From DSC:
These items caused me to reflect…they made me wonder…

How should we educate our youth in this age of automation?
How should our curricula respond/change/adapt to these trends?
Or should we even be talking about curricula? Perhaps we should rather be curating and providing streams of content — and doing so on a lifelong basis…?
How should we reinvent ourselves and keep ourselves marketable?

Addendum:

Why Cognition-as-a-Service is the next operating system battlefield — from gigaom.com by Nova Spivack

Drive the robot in this classroom! (from anywhere in the world) — per Kevin Honeycutt

On 09/27/2013, in 21st century, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, global / globalization, innovation, interactivity, K-12 related, learning spaces, robotics, smart classrooms, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, by Daniel Christian

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots [Frey & Osborne]

On 09/25/2013, in 21st century, Asia, career development, corporate / business world, future, professional development, robotics, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots — from qz.com by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne

Excerpt:

Commentators today are less optimistic. “How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class,” a recent New York Times Column by David Autor and David Dorn, captures an observation made by several commentators: technology has turned on labor.

…

The threat of computerization has historically been largely confined to routine manufacturing tasks involving explicit rule-based activities such as part construction and assembly. But a look at 700 occupation types (pdf) in the US suggests that 47% are at risk from a threat that once only loomed for a small proportion of workers.

From DSC:
What does — or should — this mean for K-12? For higher education? For the corporate world? For curricula? Skills? Values? How can we pivot NOW to help our students survive/thrive in this quickly-changing world?

Addendum on 9/27/13:

Robots May Revolutionize China’s Electronics Manufacturing — wsj.com by Paul Mozur and Eva Dou
Machines in Pipeline to Supplant Workers as Pay Soars and People Age

The science-fiction world continues to develop — but it’s often for real!

On 07/17/2013, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, Daniel S. Christian, digital video, engineering, global / globalization, Google, interactivity, internet, learning ecosystem, robotics, society, telecommunications, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Some items that made me think of this posting:

DARPA unveils Atlas DRC Robot — from spectrum.ieee.org by Stephen Cass

Specs:

Six feet, two inches tall (1.88m)
330 pounds (150kg)
On-board real-time control computer
On-board hydraulic pump and thermal management
Tethered for networking and 480-V three-phase power at 15 kW
Two arms, two legs, a torso and a head
28 hydraulically actuated joints
Carnegie Robotics sensor head with LIDAR and stereo sensors
Two sets of hands, one provided by iRobot and one by Sandia National Labs

Drone Home — from time.com by Lev Grossman — also see TIME: “Rise of the Robots” Special Issue

Excerpt:

Flying a drone, even just a Parrot, makes you realize what a radically new and deeply strange technology drones are. A drone isn’t just a tool; when you use it you see and act through it — you inhabit it. It expands the reach of your body and senses in much the same way that the Internet expands your mind. The Net extends our virtual presence; drones extend our physical presence. They are, along with smart phones and 3-D printing, one of a handful of genuinely transformative technologies to emerge in the past 10 years.

Bioengineers 3D print tiny functioning human liver — from wired.co.uk

Peek inside Tesla’s robotic factory — from wired.com

Image from
http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/alternative/1206_2012_tesla_model_s_first_drive/photo_11.html

From DSC:
And, if you are up to filtering through a great deal of content, create some Google Alerts on the following things to see what’s happening with them:
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Internet of Things
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Augmented reality
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WebRTC
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Artificial intelligence
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Self-driving cars
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Wearable technologies

Employment & Sustainability: Report of the Cornell ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment & Technology

On 07/08/2013, in 21st century, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, economics, higher education, robotics, society, surviving, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Employment & Sustainability: Report of the Cornell ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment and Technology — from ilr.cornell.edu

Excerpt:

The Great Recession has compounded the ongoing forces of technological change and globalization to drive an even more profound transformation in the relationships between Americans and work. Jobs are disappearing, skill sets are a moving target and the evolving concept of earning a sustainable living is becoming increasingly complex and, for many, increasingly remote.

The Cornell ILR School, a renowned leader in advancing the world of work, recognizes that today’s and tomorrow’s challenges demand a new paradigm, one that joins together the many highly educated – but also siloed – discussions about employers’ use of new technologies and the impact on quality job creation.

On April 12, 2013, the ILR School convened 40 economists and engineers, academics and corporate executives, social scientists and philanthropists, policy makers and journalists and statisticians in a ground-breaking, cross-sector, invitation-only dialogue. It was a day full of agreement, fervently diverse opinions and insights – notably that most participants had never before discussed these issues with such a varied group of stakeholders, and that the country’s best hope for reaping widespread gains from technological progress rests on continuing and expanding such discourse.

Also see:

Should we fear “the end of work”? — from pbs.org by Frank Koller

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Key points raised and addressed:

Technological advancement and globalization are significantly impacting U.S. jobs and raising the risk that more and more U.S. workers will be caught “in the middle” as jobs migrate to higher-skill and lower-skill work.
Collection of U.S. economic data for measuring work and the labor market is not keeping pace with the rapidly changing world of work.
As globalization and technology make it more efficient for companies to engage fewer U.S. workers, and more of them in countries such as India and China, these forces are also changing the U.S. innovation advantage.
Current conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility isn’t enough.

Overall, there was widespread agreement that a much broader and more vigorous national discussion is needed regarding the short- and longer-term impacts of technological advances on the nature of work, the creation and elimination of jobs, and the ability of U.S. workers to earn a sustainable living.

…

“There is a real need for corporate leadership, and there is a need for accountability. When companies engage in productivity layoffs with record profitability, unprecedented levels of cash and all-time-high stock prices, no one in the media says, ‘Isn’t this terrible?’ No political leader speaks up to protest. We don’t hear anything from the labor unions. The companies are applauded for it because they’re cutting costs and improving profitability, and that’s supposedly what a company exists for. But it’s not that simple. They do have other responsibilities.”

…

“In terms of a market failure, it’s the reality that it’s not in the interests of any individual firm in the United States to try to solve the jobs problem. So, we’ve got to figure out a way to deal with that…and the only way that you solve this is by getting people and institutions and organizations to work together, to engage these issues collectively.

“It’s about an institutional failure over the last 30 years. With the decline of the labor movement, you’ve seen a lot of institutions go downhill equivalently. We don’t see the kind of dialogue, we don’t see the enforcement of our social norms and social policies that discipline corporations, and that really provided the kind of collective spreading of wage patterns and wage norms across the society.

“We’ve got to rebuild those, but we can’t try to rebuild them in an old-fashioned way. Now we’re in a more digital economy, a more knowledge-based economy, and we need to invent the new institutions that will cut across and aggregate these interests to address these challenges. We’ve got to get the education community working with business and employers, working with labor and civil society.

“I’m not a believer that technology is going to naturally eliminate jobs and cut income, but if we don’t do anything about it, if we just leave it, as we have, to individual market forces and to individual corporate actions and to individual technology innovations, then that’s probably where we are headed.

Reflections on “A swiveling proxy that will even wear a tutu” by Bobbie Brown [NYT]

On 06/28/2013, in 21st century, Daniel S. Christian, K-12 related, robotics, student-related, technologies for your home, telecommunications, telepresence, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

A swiveling proxy that will even wear a tutu — from nytimes.com by Bobbie Brown

John W. Adkisson for The New York Times

Excerpt:

SUMTER, S.C. — Lexie Kinder solves problems during math class, earns gold stars from her teacher and jokes with classmates at her elementary school.

All without leaving her living room.

Born with a chronic heart disorder that weakened her immune system and made attending school risky, Lexie, 9, was tutored at her home in Sumter for years. But this spring, her family began experimenting with an alternative — a camera-and-Internet-enabled robot that swivels around the classroom and streams two-way video between her school and house.

From DSC:
I sometimes get the feeling that I’m coming across as though I want everyone to learn from their living room and that’s it; end of story. But that’s not the case. I just get encouraged/excited about the opportunities that various technologies can provide for us, if we leverage them properly. Ultimately, I see blended solutions being the most effective solutions in the future. But this article is a great example of when technology can benefit someone.

The digital revolution is destroying jobs faster than it is creating them — and other items as curated by Steve Knode

On 06/20/2013, in 21st century, career development, creativity, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, robotics, by Daniel Christian

Below are some items from Steve Knode’s May 2013 newsletter — with some of my reflections/comments
http://www.steveknode.com/newsletters | http://www.steveknode.com/news-items | https://twitter.com/sknode

Outlook 2031 — from wealthmanagement.ml.com by Scott Eden
Five trends are primed to shape the world economy profoundly in the decades to come

An older world | Income inequality | A greater demand for energy | A rising global middle class | Food and water security

Man vs. Machine: Are any jobs safe from innovation? — from Spiegel Online International by Thomas Schulz
.

Photo Gallery: Automating Our Way Out of Jobs

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Past warnings about how technological innovation threatens jobs have proved exaggerated.
Yet the digital revolution now has many scholars warning that this time things are different,
and that the breakneck speed of automation could wreak havoc on the global labor market.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The digital revolution is destroying jobs faster than it is creating them.

…

The worldwide application of computer technology has become so much more cost-effective and efficient that people are no longer only replaceable in certain sectors — autoworkers on assembly lines, for instance — but in entire occupational areas. Cashiers are being replaced by self-service check-out lines, airline employees by self check-in kiosks, financial traders by algorithms and travel agencies by online travel sites.

This development has been apparent for roughly a decade. But, says McAfee: “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Looking ahead to what technology is going to do over the next five to 10 years, I’m really concerned.”

From DSC:
It is critical that we not only watch this trend extremely closely but that we begin making adjustments NOW to our educational systems/curricula based on the likely scenario that this trend will continue!!!

If not…consider our youth’s near-term situations:

They listen to many of the adults in their lives – parents, coaches, teachers, guidance counselors, professors, etc…
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They work their tails off following all of the standards, curriculum, current ways of getting educated and “ahead”…
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…and they jump through all of these hoops only to find out that they can’t gets jobs in several of those areas that they’ve been studying and working towards!
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How might that impact their motivation? Careers? Their views of adults and establishments/institutions such as governments, schools, colleges/universities, etc.?

Will the pathways of standardized tests and being told “do this,” “don’t do that,” “do this,” prepare them to pivot in their careers? To reinvent themselves? To think creatively? (I doubt it.)

Then consider those displaced/replaced cashiers, financial traders, travel agents, autoworkers, etc. — it’s time to reinvent themselves. What’s the best way to do that — and fast!?!

Next-generation search: Software bots will anticipate your needs — from by Brian Proffitt
The rise of intelligent software agents that will not only anticipate the information you need, but also act on that information to help manage your life.

Miscellaneous thoughts from DSC:

Are we seeing the beginnings of a nation as designed/created by STEM graduates? What if you aren’t interested in STEM-related fields — what then?
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Creativity is key — Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” and the work of Sir Ken Robinson come to mind
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We don’t want to be doing rote things — even white-collar work is being turned over to algorithms
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We need to know how to learn and where to go to dip into streams of content that are continually flowing by us
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It’s enormously helpful if we enjoy learning
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It’s critical that we are lifelong learners
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The % of our workforce that is freelancing is already at 30% + — and going to 40% by 2020 –> Are our students good at running their own businesses?

Gerd Leonhard’s slides from LSG13 in London: Working, learning and living in the future

Excerpted slides:

Can I borrow that robot for a minute? Using remotely-controlled devices to bring distance learners into face-to-face classrooms! [Daniel Christian]

On 06/11/2013, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, accessibility / UDL, active learning, assistive technologies, Bring your own device (BYOD), communications, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, internet, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, lifelong learning, mirroring and/or multiple devices, multimedia, new business models, online learning, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, professional development, reinvent, robotics, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, staying relevant, student-related, tablets, technology (general), telepresence, television, training / L&D, ubiquitous learning, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, webinars, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:

What if you want to allow some remote students to come on into your face-to-face classroom?
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What if you want to allow those remote students to be seen and communicated with at eye level?
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What if you want Remote Student A to join Group 1, and Remote Student B to join Group 2?
.

Well…how about using one of these devices in order to do so!

New video collaboration robot: TelePresence gets moving — from cisco.com by Dave Evans

Excerpt:

That is why Cisco’s new joint effort with iRobot—demonstrated publicly this week for the first time—is so exciting: We’ve created a mobile Cisco TelePresence unit that brings collaboration to you—or, conversely, brings you to wherever you need to collaborate. Called iRobot Ava 500, this high-definition video collaboration robot combines Cisco TelePresence with iRobot’s mobility and self-navigation capabilities, enabling freedom of movement and spontaneous interactions with people thousands of miles away.

iRobot Ava™ 500 Video Collaboration Robot — published on Jun 10, 2013
iRobot and Cisco have teamed to bring the Ava 500 video collaboration robot to market. The robot blends iRobot’s autonomous navigation with Cisco’s TelePresence to enable people working off-site to participate in meetings and presentations where movement and location spontaneity are important. The new robot is also designed to enable mobile visual access to manufacturing facilities, laboratories, customer experience centers and other remote facilities.

Double Robotics Double

MantaroBot™ TeleMe

From Attack of the Telepresence Robots! — from BYTE by Rick Lehrbaum

Kubi


MantaroBot “TeleMe”	VGo Communications “VGo”	Anybots “QB”	Suitable Technologies “Beam”

RP-7i ROBOT

Also see:

Cisco, iRobot’s new bot lets workers roam the office from afar. — from smartplanet.com by Kirsten Korosec
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Meet the next generation of smartphone-based robot companions — from popsci.com by Miriam Kramer

Tagged with: 21st century • 24x7x365 • A/V • accessibility • active learning • assistive technologies • Bring your own device (BYOD) • communications • corporate / business world • corporate training / universities • Daniel S. Christian • digital audio • digital learning • digital video • educational technology • emerging technologies • engagement • experimentation • face-to-face • future of higher education • game-changing environment • higher education • homeschooling/homeschoolers • human-computer interaction (HCI) • ideas • IT • K-12 • learning ecosystem • learning from the living [class] room • learning preferences • learning spaces • Lifelong learning • love of learning • mirroring / multiple devices • multimedia • new business models in he • online learning • online tutoring • personalized learning • professional development • reinvent • Skype • smart classrooms • social learning • staying relevant • student-related • technologies for the home • technology (general) • telecommunications • telepresence • training • TV • ubiquitous learning • user experience • videoconferencing • virtual field trips • vision • web-b • webinars • workplace

Tagged with: computer science • K-12 • programming • robotics

Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy [McKinsey & Co]

On 05/24/2013, in 3D, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, disruption, emerging technologies, innovation, internet, mobile technologies, robotics, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy — from mckinsey.com by James Manyika, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Peter Bisson, and Alex Marrs

Previous Entries Next Entries

Learning Ecosystems

The Emerging Era of Smart Machines Changes Everything [Austin]

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots [Frey & Osborne]

The science-fiction world continues to develop — but it’s often for real!

Employment & Sustainability: Report of the Cornell ILR School 2013 Roundtable on Employment & Technology

The digital revolution is destroying jobs faster than it is creating them — and other items as curated by Steve Knode

Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy [McKinsey & Co]

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