Amazon Rain Forest NOT Pristine: Western Amazon has Over 450 Large Earthworks From 2,000 Years Ago

The Amazonian rainforest was transformed over two thousand years ago by ancient people who built hundreds of large, mysterious earthworks.

Findings by Brazilian and UK experts provide new evidence for how indigenous people lived in the Amazon before European people arrived in the region.

The ditched enclosures, in Acre state in the western Brazilian Amazon, were concealed for centuries by trees. Modern deforestation has allowed the discovery of more than 450 of these large geometrical geoglyphs.

The function of these mysterious sites is still little understood - they are unlikely to be villages, since archaeologists recover very few artefacts during excavation. The layout doesn't suggest they were built for defensive reasons. It is thought they were used only sporadically, perhaps as ritual gathering places.

The structures are ditched enclosures that occupy roughly 13,000 km2. Their discovery challenges assumptions that the rainforest ecosystem has been untouched by humans.

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Bezos Wants to Move Industry Into Space

Elon Musk wants us to build human colonies on Mars. Jeff Bezos has a slightly more measured take.

Onstage at the Code Conference on Tuesday, the Amazon founder and CEO said that we have to start bringing parts of the industrial economy to space in order "to save Earth."

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Last 48 Hours: Free Finite Mental Elements

My second short fiction book, Finite Mental Elements, has been released on Amazon.  This one is the same length as my previous, Quantums of the Mind, at 26k words.

For the next five days, Finite Mental Elements will be FREE.

Thereafter, it will, like Quantums of the Mind, be $.99.

I want to give a special thanks to psyxis, who let me use the art for the cover for Finite Mental Elements and special thanks to hameed for the new cover of Quantums of the Mind.

Reminder: Quantums of the Mind is out and FREE for Kindle

My first ebook is out and available for free download for Kindle and the Kindle App on Amazon.  At least until friday its free.

Quantums of the Mind FREE for the Next Five Days

My first attempt at short fiction, Quantums of the Mind, will be free for the next five days (until friday 2/19/16) so folks can decide if they like my writing enough to buy it.  Thereafter it will be $.99. 

Quantums of the Mind

I took the short writings I've been doing, formatted them and uploaded them into an ebook.  

I wanted to make the book cheaper but for some reason, Amazon didn't want me to.  Well, I work with what I'm give.

I'd appreciate if you picked up a copy.

Amazon Negotiating 20 Boeing 767s Lease to Bypass Fedex, etc.

Amazon.com is negotiating to lease 20 Boeing 767 jets for its own air-delivery service, cargo-industry executives have told The Seattle Times.

The online retail giant wants to build out its own cargo operations to avoid delays from carriers such as United Parcel Service, which have struggled to keep up with the rapid growth of e-commerce.

“Amazon is pretty fed up with the third-party carriers being a bottleneck to their growth,” Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian said.

That has led Amazon to consider handling more of its own delivery. A senior aircraft-leasing company executive familiar with Amazon’s plans said the company has approached several cargo-aircraft lessors to line up the planes. The company has had talks with Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), Atlas Air and Kalitta Air, according to sources, though Kalitta Chief Executive Connie Kalitta denied he has talked with Amazon.

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Robopocalypse Report #28: Digital Hormones for Robots...greeeeeeaaaaat...

Drones:

Google's latest delivery drone prototype has been spotted.  Google has also registered its delivery drones for testing in the US.

Amazon appears to have gotten permission for its drone delivery tests in the US, amongst others.

The FAA is going to require everyone who buys a drone will have to register that drone.  There are lots of negative responses to the FAA Plans requiring everyone must register a drone when bought.

Legislation fencing in drones from aircraft is looming.

Researchers are working on drones to automatically repair cities in the future.

A Japanese company has developed an origami-like orinthopter drone, the skeleton of which is 3d printed.

NOAA Fisheries is using a hexacopter to monitor the health of southern resident killer whales.

A new virtual reality app allows for flying your drone.

 

Self Driving Cars:

Why self driving cars must be 'programmed to kill.'

Self driving cars might map our cities in the future.

A road rally enthusiast took the Tesla S largely hands off from coast-to-coast using the new Autopilot software in under 58 hours. On the other hand, many people are using it beyond what its capable of doing and nearly getting themselves killed.

Honda is planning a partially self driving car in 2020.

One opinion on how close are we - really - to self driving cars and how far we have come in the past 11 years.

Google's self driving car may hit production in the next few years.

Japan is putting together the regulations for self driving cars.

Mother Nature Network claims self driving cars won't replace mass transit.

Uber needs self driving cars to prevent becoming just another taxi company.

Will self driving cars kill motor sports?

Rio Tinto's mine trucks are already self driving (and remotely monitored).

German researchers has a self driving car drive from Nogales to Mexico City without human intervention.

Wired calls out a Scientific American article claiming hacking cars is nearly impossible for its inaccuracy.

3d Printing:

A University of Colorado student 3d printed high heels as her "final thesis."

A Torontoan has developed a solar powered 3d printer for medical device production in remote locations.

Caterpillar, the heavy equipment company, is adopting 3d printing for manufacturing.

Medical science is one of the areas 3d printing has a potential to transform the industry.  3d printing life-like prosthetics is now possible and 3d printing cartilage is now possible, too.  Scottish researchers are 3d printing stem cells.  3d printed organs may face issues with patent law.  Researchers in the Netherlands have developed a 3d printed tooth made from resin that can kill 99% of mouth bacteria.

Robotics:

Harvard has improved their robotic bee so it can swim and fly.

Cornell has developed 'soft actuators.'

Bristol Robotics Lab has developed the Row Bot, a swimming bot that uses microbial fuel cells to swim, well, the claim is forever because the microbes produce energy from the water and its organics for the robot to keep going.  In other words, this robot is the equivalent of a jelly fish, folks: it eats for energy.

How do you teach a robot to fall down gracefully?

Can studying the spider cricket help improve robotic hopping design?

DARPA's jazz playing bots are meant to explore ways people and robots can interact.

Dubai based Digi Robotics is branching out into several areas other than just industrial bots.  This includes a self driving car (Carbot), food service and fire fighting bots.

Fetch Robotics' warehouse bot is ready for the early adopters.  I think they are targeting the wrong market: this robot follows people around is really meant to be a shopping cart at the grocery store.  Seriously.  The elderly and parents with kids would LOVE this thing.  However, sell it to the market, not the consumer.

Robots are now making very high end furniture.

UC San Diego has developed a bot that can explore and clean air ducts.

Dyson, the vacuum cleaner company, has their own vacuum bot, but it is pricey and delayed.

Robots may not be the machines of logic alone (sorry, Data).  It seems some are working on giving robots the digital equivalent of hormones.  Greeeaaaaat.  Teenager bots.  Just what we need in the Robopocalypse.

Deepfield Robotics has developed a bot to go out into the field and weed.

Robotics has already had an impact on farming.

Cyborgism:

The Japanese have been working on artificial skin for robotic prosthetics to provide touch sensation.

Software Bots:

A new algorithm can predict human behavior better than people can.

Japanese researchers have developed software for bots to change their tone if people are not paying attention to what they are saying.

Google is apparently rethinking its method for machine learning.

Economics:

Some governments are subsidizing the robopocalypse.

Robopocalypse Report #7

Welcome to the latest Robopocalypse Report.  This is where I highlight some of the changes coming due to the new robotics revolution we are going through.  There is a strong emphasis on the technology of what is happening, but links will be present for the implications when they are present too.

The explosive ordnance disposal community in the US is now really worried about flying IEDs.  Their concern comes from the idea someone could strap a bomb on a quadcopter or other commercial drone and...yikes!  

The US Navy nuclear attack submarine successfully deployed an unmanned underwater vehicle, drone sub, and recovered it while on deployment.

The Russians took their Platform-M (gotta love Russian project names) to Crimea and showed off at one of their 'military festivals.'  It seems the controller is from video game console.  There are other bits to criticize as well.  Their timing was pretty bad.

The reason being Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and others have called on United Nations to ban autonomous weapons.  So long as one member of the Security Council wants those sort of weapons, the UN is going to do bupkiss. 

Back to more peaceful uses of drones, Amazon proposed the altitude of 200 ft to 400 ft be set aside for drone flights as a way of regulating with a buffer of another 100 feet so manned helicopters and aircraft would be required to fly at 500 feet and higher.

Back down to earth Matt Burgess posits how autonomous commercial vehicles will have a far greater impact on our lives than self driving cars.

General Electric, in an interview by John Lizzi, discusses its vision of 'service robotics' and how bots will act like our apprentices.

MIT - those organic traitors! - have also greatly improved object recognition for machine vision.

Great Flying Robopocalyptic Stalkers! Amazon Drones Could Follow You to Complete Delivery

If Amazon’s drone delivery service ever gets airborne, the company’s drones may follow you to work to deliver your package.

That’s one of the more intriguing details included in Amazon’s patent application, approved April 30, which lays out the company’s plan of operation for its delivery drones. The document indicates that Amazon’s vision for drone deliveries is a lot bigger than just moving a package from point A to point B.

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Amazon Reveals More About Robopocalyptic Drone Delivery Plans

Online retailer Amazon has disclosed full details of a concept for delivering packages with unmanned air vehicles in a US patent application published on 30 April.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first announced plans to deliver packages with small octorotor UAVs in a 2013 interview with 60 Minutes, but the company had kept silent on how the package delivery concept would work.

But newly-published patent application – titled “unmanned air vehicle delivery system" – describes a complete system with a customer interface, route planning, inventory tracking, in-flight navigation and completing delivery.

The concept anticipates that a “remote entity” would control the UAV at the delivery point to select a safe landing site. That information would be stored and used to make future deliveries automatically, the application says.

As the aircraft navigates to the delivery site, Amazon envisions making adjustments to the route in real-time. Some would be driven through communications with other UAVs in the same area, which would provide updates on weather and ground traffic.

The UAV also would monitor the ground to avoid flying over people and animals, according to the Amazon concept. The flying delivery vehicles may have to pass over roads with moving ground vehicles, but Amazon’s plan is to minimise the overflight time by only crossing over roads at a perpendicular angle.

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Amazon Given Permission by FAA to Test new Delivery Drone

Amazon has won approval from U.S. federal regulators to test a delivery drone outdoors, less than a month after the e-commerce powerhouse blasted regulators for being slow to approve commercial drone testing.

The Federal Aviation Administration had earlier given the green light to an Amazon prototype drone in March, but the company told U.S. lawmakers less than a week later that the prototype had already become obsolete while it waited more than six months for the agency's permission.

The FAA granted Amazon's request to test delivery drones in a letter dated Wednesday, posted on the agency's website.

Amazon must keep flights at an altitude of no more than 400 feet (120 meters) and no faster than 100 miles per hour (160 km per hour), according to the letter.

Seattle-based Amazon.com has been pursuing its goal of sending packages to customers by air, using small, self-piloted aircraft, even as it faces public concern about safety and privacy.

The company wants to use drones to deliver packages to its customers over distances of 10 miles (16 km) or more, which would require drones to travel autonomously while equipped with technology to avoid collisions with other aircraft.

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Amazon Moves Robopocalyptic Drone Delivery Testing to Canada due to FAA Obstructionism

Amazon is testing its drone delivery service at a secret site in Canada, following repeated warnings by the e-commerce giant that it would go outside the US to bypass what it sees as the US federal government’s lethargic approach to the new technology.

The largest internet retailer in the world is keeping the location of its new test site closely guarded. What can be revealed is that the company’s formidable team of roboticists, software engineers, aeronautics experts and pioneers in remote sensing – including a former Nasa astronaut and the designer of the wingtip of the Boeing 787 – are now operating in British Columbia.

The end goal is to utilise what Amazon sees as a slice of virgin airspace – above 200ft, where most buildings end, and below 500ft, where general aviation begins. Into that aerial slice the company plans to pour highly autonomous drones of less than 55lbs, flying through corridors 10 miles or longer at 50mph and carrying payloads of up to 5lbs that account for 86% of all the company’s packages.

Amazon has acquired a plot of open land lined by oak trees and firs, where it is conducting frequent experimental flights with the full blessing of the Canadian government. As if to underline the significance of the move, the test site is barely 2,000ft from the US border, which was clearly visible from where the Guardian stood on a recent visit.

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Amazon Pushes Robopocalypse Further in the Warehouse With a Challenge in Seattle, WA in May

Packets of Oreos, boxes of crayons, and squeaky dog toys will test the limits of robot vision and manipulation in a competition this May. Amazon is organizing the event to spur the development of more nimble-fingered product-packing machines.

Participating robots will earn points by locating products sitting somewhere on a stack of shelves, retrieving them safely, and then packing them into cardboard shipping boxes. Robots that accidentally crush a cookie or drop a toy will have points deducted. The people whose robots earn the most points will win $25,000.

Amazon has already automated some of the work done in its vast fulfillment centers. Robots in a few locations send shelves laden with products over to human workers who then grab and package them. These mobile robots, made by Kiva Systems, a company that Amazon bought in 2012 for $678 million, reduce the distance human workers have to walk in order to find products. However, no robot can yet pick and pack products with the speed and reliability of a human. Industrial robots that are already widespread in several industries are limited to extremely precise, repetitive work in highly controlled environments.

Pete Wurman, chief technology officer of Kiva Systems, says that about 30 teams from academic departments around the world will take part in the challenge, which will be held at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle (ICRA 2015). In each round, robots will be told to pick and pack one of 25 different items from a stack of shelves resembling those found in Amazon’s warehouses. Some teams are developing their own robots, while others are adapting commercially available systems with their own grippers and software.

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Robopocalypse is Nigh: FAA Grants Amazon Permission to Begin Test Flights of Delivery Drones (With Restrictions)

Amazon.com Inc has won approval from U.S. federal regulators to test a delivery drone outdoors, as the e-commerce company pursues its goal of sending packages to customers by air, even as it faces public concern about safety and privacy.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday it issued an experimental airworthiness certificate to an Amazon business unit and its prototype drone, allowing test flights over private, rural land in Washington state.

The FAA also granted Amazon an exemption from other flight restrictions so the experimental drone can conduct those flights.

The approval is a win for Seattle-based Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the United States, and advances plans by the company and others to deliver packages using small, self-piloted aircraft.

There are limitations, however. The experimental certificate applies to a particular drone and Amazon must obtain a new certification if it modifies the aircraft or flies a different version, making it difficult to adapt the model quickly in the field. Amazon's petition for permission indicated it was testing several iterations of a drone at an indoor facility in Seattle.

Amazon must keep flights below 400 feet (120 meters) and keep the drone in sight, according to the FAA.

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Audi Mocks Robopocalypse While Embracing it

Amazon Receives Patent for Mobile Manufacturing & Delivery

There is little doubt that some of the world’s largest corporations are investigating 3D printing as a means to both make and save money across the board. Amazon, for example, has slowly been inching its way into the space, partnering with several key companies, including Mixee Labs, to offer customizable 3D printed products to their customers.

As the world’s leading ecommerce provider, Amazon seems to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to selling us anything from printer paper to giant $1 million robots. Thus far, it appears as if the company’s decision to enter the 3D printing space has paid off, as they continue to expand the program in both scale and scope.

If you know much about Amazon, then you know that they obsess with getting products to consumers as fast as physically possible. In fact, they have recently launched One-Hour Delivery in Manhattan, and is pushing for delivery via drones. Usually though, the faster a product is shipped, the more money it will cost the company that is shipping it, and ultimately this comes back to the consumer. For example, Amazon needs to stock literally millions of products at warehouse hubs as close to their customers as possible. Warehouse space is not cheap, especially when considering the millions of square feet needed by a company like Amazon.

What if Amazon could avoid same of these storage costs and get items to users even faster with the use of new, rapidly advancing technologies like 3D printing? Well, that’s just what they are looking into.

Late last week United States Patent and Trademark Office published a patent filing by Amazon Technologies, Inc. which outlines a method of 3D printing on-demand within mobile manufacturing hubs. According to Amazon, such a setup could save the company time and money on several fronts.

The multiplicity of items offered may require the electronic marketplace owner/operator to maintain a large inventory requiring sufficient space to store the inventory,” states the filing. “An electronic marketplace may also face the challenge of time delays related to the process of finding the selected item among a large inventory. Increased space to store additional inventory may raise costs for the electronic marketplace. Additionally, time delays between receiving an order and shipping the item to the customer may reduce customer satisfaction and affect revenues generated. Accordingly, an electronic marketplace may find it desirable to decrease the amount of warehouse or inventory storage space needed, to reduce the amount of time consumed between receiving an order and delivering the item to the customer, or both.”

By utilizing ‘mobile manufacturing apparatuses Amazon would be able to send an STL file to a mobile unit that’s closest to a customer, providing it with instructions to print out an item which was ordered. When the item has been completed, it could then be within miles of the customer who ordered it and quickly delivered or picked up.

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Amazon Hiring Engineers for Amazon Prime Air (their robopocalyptic drone devliery system) in the UK

Amazon is looking to recruit British employees to join its Prime Air unmanned air vehicle delivery service project, which until now was largely centred out of its Seattle headquarters.

The company’s job site lists vacancies for a flight operations engineer, project manager, software development engineer and senior research scientist, all to work for the Prime Air initiative and to be based at Amazon’s Cambridge, UK facility.

“We’re working on the future,” the job vacancies state. “If you are seeking an environment where you can drive innovation, if you want to apply state-of-the-art technologies to solve extreme-scale real world problems, if you want the satisfaction of providing visible benefit to end-users in an iterative fast-paced environment, this is your opportunity.”

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Amazon Creates Robotics Challenge to Bring Robopocalypse to Warehouses

Amazon has lots and lots of warehouses, sorry fulfilment centers, all over the world and they employ lots of humans to find the stuff you buy. The Amazon Picking Challenge is about getting robots to do the same job.

Amazon's fulfilment centers are already interesting from the point of view of computer science. For example, they use a hashing system to place things on shelves. You don't have to search for something alphabetically, you simply compute its hash function and this is the address of the shelf it is sitting on.

In March 2012 Amazon also bought a company that makes warehouse robots, Kiva Systems. These make small trucks which turn shelving into something more mobile. In this case the trucks move any shelf with everything it is storing to a location that needs it - either to load it with new items or to obtain items that have been ordered.

However, for all this automation Amazon still uses human's, pickers, to actually go to the location on a shelf and take one, or however many, of whatever it is you ordered and put the items in a tray on another automatic shelf.

Why?

Because despite it being a seemingly menial job it actually needs all those human senses and effectors that we take for granted.

A machine just isn't up to it - or is it?

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Amazon Applies for FAA Drone Exemption to Start Testing Amazon Prime Air

Amazon.com has asked the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration permission to test drones outdoors for use in its Prime Air package delivery service.

In the run up to launching the service, which aims to deliver packages in 30 minutes or less, the online retailer is developing aerial vehicles that travel over 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour, and will carry 5pound (2.3 kilogram) payloads, which account for 86 percent of the products sold on Amazon.

U.S. regulations currently allow non-commercial, hobbyist uses of model aircraft under certain conditions, but the FAA has been exploring giving exemptions to seven aerial photo and video production companies for filming movies, ahead of finalizing rules for the integration of commercial unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the national airspace.

Amazon has been currently experimenting with Prime Air inside its research and development lab in Seattle, the company said in its exemption application to the FAA. As it is a commercial enterprise, it has been limited to conducting test flights indoors or in other countries, it said. The company said it would prefer to keep the focus, jobs and investment for the program in the U.S.

The retailer said that granting its request for exemption would do no more than allow Amazon to do what thousands of hobbyists and manufacturers of model aircraft already do every day. It said it will abide by much stronger safety measures than currently required for these groups by FAA policies and regulations.

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