An emotion-sensing robot arrives on the International Space Station; A researcher expects AI to trigger major job losses in the financial sector; An exosuit that makes it easy to lift heavy weights; An explanation for off-shore holes in the Pacific Ocean floor; and a Steem essay describing how to calculate the moment of a force couple system
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- Emotion-sensing robot launches to assist space station astronauts - Partly inspired by a 1940s era sci-fi comic strip, the Crew Interactive Mobile Companion 2 (CIMON 2) robot headed for the International Space Station (ISS) on board SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket last week. The spherical, English-speaking robot is loaded with algorithms from IBM that help it to detect emotions in human speech. The robot is also trained to act as an objective listener and thereby help humans avoid group-think, and the irrational choices that sometimes accompany it during times of stress. A previous version, CIMON 1, was on the ISS since 2018. h/t Communications of the ACM
- The 2020s could be an apocalyptic decade for Wall Street as artificial intelligence takes over the most popular jobs in finance - According to Cornell's Marcos Lopez de Prado, algorithms that build portfolios and model prices could eliminate as many as 6 million high paying jobs in the finance industry. This aligns with recent studies by IHS Markit and the Brookings Institute. IHS Markit, for example, predicted the loss of 1.3 million finance jobs by 2030, and the Brookings Institution study expects white collar workers to be impacted by AI more than blue collar. (The Brookings study was previously covered in Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for November 25, 2019.) As-of now, jobs in the finance sector are among the most sought by job-seekers, but banks have already begun the process of rolling out automation and artificial intelligence (AI), and the article notes that workers are not being trained to work alongside of these AI platforms.
- Sarcos Demonstrates Powered Exosuit That Gives Workers Super Strength - This article describes an exosuit by Sarcos Robotics that offers an effortless way for humans to lift weights up to 200 pounds. The IEEE Spectrum auhtor was able to make use of a robotic arm, and to observe a Sarcos operator making use of a prototype suit. The device has sensors that track the human movements, and cause the exosuit to make the exact same movements, with no discernible lag. While it could make any objects feel like zero pounds, it generally lets the wearer feel some resistance for a more natural-seeming experience, and to properly deal with inertia. The amount of resistance that the operator feels is adjustable, through a control on the arm. In order to protect safety, motion is speed-limited, and the exoskeleton will only move if the operator is squeezing triggers in the arm. If the operator releases the triggers, the device locks frozen in place. Creating the device was a 30-year, 30 million dollar project, and commercial versions are expected to ship during late 2020.
Here is a video from the article
- What’s creating thousands of craters off the California coast? - In the 1990s, researchers with SONAR discovered a large depression on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. In the course of investigating that crater, they recently discovered about 15,000 smaller, "microdepressions". The large crater was created by bubbles of gas escaping the ground. Many of smaller ones, however, appear to be created by rocks, animal bones, and human debris on the ocean floor. It seems that the debris attracts sea animals, creating a habitat for them, and the animals create the depressions by digging and burrowing around the trash. The team is still puzzled by the existence of other microdepressions, however, because many of them are empty of foreign objects. h/t RealClear Science
- STEEM Physics - Classical Mechanics - Force Couple System - After being away from the Steem blockchain and finishing a computer science degree, @drifter1 is back with a post describing the physics of a force couple system - a system in which two forces act in parallel directions of equal magnitude with opposite signs. The combined forces results in an equilibrium where the net force is zero for the entire system. The concept is demonstrated by calculating the moment of the couple (M = F x d) in the example of a valve stem with two hand wheels. Click through to congratulate @drifter1 for completing the degree in computer science. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @drifter1.)
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