The ride was inspired by the 1982 movie Tron, It’s the first of its kind in a Disney park and is expected to be Shanghai Disneyland‘s most popular attraction…
On Shanghai Disneyland‘s Tron ride, an exhilarating roller coaster in the park’s Futureland area, riders race headlong into dark tunnels interspersed with shows of red, blue and yellow lights…
Adrenaline-pumping music, lights and 3-D graphics inspire a furious surge toward the winner’s circle. Traverse TRON’s electrifying multi-sensory environment as you speed, dip and dive through digitized darkness on one of the fastest indoor roller coasters in Disney theme park history…
Sync Chamber
Step inside the techno-style zone featuring glowing glass rails, a real-time Raceview and blue laser lights that etch patterns through space—this is where Users synchronize with their Lightcycles. Feel the power activating as you jump on, grab the handles and brace to face an unknown digital frontier…
Launcher-Upload Conduit
Anticipation heightens as the Lightcycles lunge forward with sound effects building to a feverish pitch. Suddenly, you’re throttling through a tunnel of flashing markers and, just as quickly, plummeting onto a turbo-charged track known as the Grid!!!
The Grid
Filled with brilliantly illuminated shapes and sleek, color-changing TRON iconography, this game-world “gravity box” seems to rev harder with enhanced energy as Lightcycles catapult past each Gate. Will Team Blue capture them all and take the championship? See if you can defeat the Programs, survive the Power Run and make your way back to the real world!!!
The reviews so far have been glowing and many Disney fans have been clamoring on online chat sites for Disney to recreate the attraction in other parks. No word yet if Disney plans to follow through on that idea…
Gravity is a British human propulsion technology start-up. Their mission is to re-imagine the future of manned flight. Gravity has invented, built and filed patents for a human propulsion technology that re-imagines manned flight…
The technology combines body mounted miniaturised jet-engines with a specially designed exo-skeleton allowing vertical take off and flight. The ‘Daedalus’ our mark 1 jet-engine suit is pioneering an entirely new category in aviation history…
Each motor produces about 22kg (46 pounds) of force, so six are more than enough to heft Browning aloft. The device cost him £40,000 ($50,000) to build, but some of that cost was offset thanks to investors and partners like Red Bull.
UK inventor Richard Browning told Techcrunch“I can just strap this on and go flying at a moment’s notice,” adding that a mountain bike was more dangerous. Judging by the footage of his early trials, however, his rig “Daedelus” looks insane on multiple levels. Powered by kerosene jet fuel, it looks like the fiery explosion would kill you if the crash or fall…
After trying the suit with the rockets on both his legs and arms, he switched to an arms-only approach. That works well for him as an ex-Royal Marine and fitness enthusiast, but it would probably tire the average person’s arms rather quickly…
Recently Browning added a Sony-built heads-up display, that can show fuel levels. Prior to that, he had to ask family members to feel the back-mounted tank “and judge by their facial expression” how much was left, he told Wired. The aim is to eventually build a device that could be used by rescue or military personnel, but for now Browning is just doing exhibitions, perfecting the device and hopefully staying in one piece…
Unlike most robotics creations, Cassie’s agile legs and light weight keep it stable while walking across various terrains and even in bad weather conditions…
Behold The Future…Agility Robotics evolves from OSU research, aims to revolutionize robot mobility CORVALLIS, Ore. – The rapidly expanding robotics program in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University has spun off one of its first businesses, a company focused on legged locomotion that may revolutionize robot mobility and enable robots to go anywhere people can go…
Cassie the walking robot? This model was originally created to explain animal running and walking gaits by Agility Robotics, based in the city of Albany, Oregon, US. Soon, such robots could be applied in various industries and perform different jobs, such as military service, delivery, telepresence and search and rescue operations.
Cassie has a natural gait, similar to our own. Just like ostriches and humans, this bipedal bot has three degrees of freedom in its hips and flexible, powered ankles, but its knees flex one way only. Quick and careful placement of the feet makes Cassie resistant to slips and stumbles…
The Lilium Jet successfully completed its maiden test flight series in the skies above Bavaria. The 2-seater Eagle prototype executed a range of complex maneuvers, including its signature mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight…
German startup Lilium Aviation has completed test flights on the world’s first electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) jet at a private airfield in Bavaria. Controlled remotely by a pilot on the ground, the two-seater prototype performed a successful vertical takeoff and transition between its hover mode and forward flight mode…
“There is a growing need for transport solutions that are emission free due to worsening urban pollution and global climate change,” Wiegand said. “Congestion and noise pollution are also making our cities harder to live in. The Lilium jet is less harmful on the environment than other existing modes of transport. The jet is a zero-emissions aircraft and requires minimal ground infrastructure.”
The most intriguing aspect of Lilium’s electric VTOL is its potential to transform transportation, like Tesla has transformed the automotive industry, by providing a clean and energy-efficient alternative…
Russian military research videos usually deliver something to behold, whether it’s tanks on parade or just Vladimir Putin totally not worried that this sub is going to sink. Take a moment to watch this clip, which features a humanoid robot mowing down targets with a pistol in each hand like some movie bad-ass…
Russia’s space-bound humanoid robot FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) is being trained to shoot guns from both of its hands. The activity will help improve the android’s motor skills and decision-making, according to its creators, who have also tried to address concerns that they’re developing a real-life Terminator…
While the video clip does make one feel like the Terminator apocalypse is nigh, the purposes of FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) are more benign, for now. Once its non-militant motor skills are refined, it will embark on a mission to space in 2021, possibly alone. Stay clear of this cosmonaut, E.T…
Long gone are the days when sexual intercourse took place between two human beings. Now, if you have hidden desires – just tap in your details online and have sex delivered direct to your door step. Recently there have been untold advances in virtual reality technology and a wave of new liberation is sweeping the world, to the point where the thought of intimacy with a loved one appears practically medieval to many…
Virtual affairs could also present a problem in the future, with some partners seeing sex with a machine as similar to sex with another person. When the anatomically correct, customizable, touch-responsive, personality-changing sexbot named Roxxxy was unveiled at the Adult Entertainment Expo it was a sensation despite the assumption that only losers and perverts would be interested in shelling out $7,000 for a glorified sex toy.
David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots believes that the “availability of regular sex with a robot will dramatically reduce the incidence of infidelity as we know it today,” he also acknowledges there may be some potential sticky points. “some human spouses and lovers might consider robot sex to be just as unfaithful as sex with another person.”
People who have lost their partner or who live alone are the people who might benefit the most, psychologically, from a virtual sexual relationship. ‘After all, a virtual partner is surely better than no partner at all…
The simulation hypothesis is the idea that reality is a digital simulation. Technological advances will inevitably produce automated artificial superintelligence that will, in turn, create simulations to better understand the universe. This opens the door for the idea that superintelligence already exists and created simulations now occupied by humans. At first blush the notion that reality is pure simulacra seems preposterous, but the hypothesis springs from decades of scientific research and is taken seriously by academics, scientists, and entrepreneurs like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk…
For Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson, there’s a good chance that our entire existence is a program on someone else’s hard drive, that we’re the playthings of our technologically advanced future descendants. “I think the likelihood may be very high,” Tyson said. “We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence.” As Musk put it, “There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality.”
In 2003 Bostrom presented a paper that proposed a trilemma, a decision between three challenging options, related to the potential of future superintelligence to develop simulations. Bostrom argues this likelihood is nonzero, meaning the odds of a simulated reality are astronomically small, but because percentage likelihood is not zero we must consider rational possibilities that include a simulated reality. Bostrom does not propose that humans occupy a simulation. Rather, he argues that massive computational ability developed by posthuman superintelligence will likely develop simulations to better understand that nature of reality…
Simulation hypothesis has many critics, namely those in academic communities who question an overreliance on anthropic reasoning and scientific detractors who point out simulations need not be conscious to be studied by future superintelligence. But as artificial intelligence and machine learning emerge as powerful business and cultural trends, many of Bostrom’s ideas are going mainstream…
The Batmobile was Batman‘s primary mode of transportation. At first, Batman often simply referred to that Batmobile as “the car”, and he later called it the Batmobile. The Batmobile was one of the most daunting components in Batman’s vast arsenal, and he kept it stored in the Batcave when it was not in use…
A REAL-LIFE superhero has turned down six-figure offers for his home-made Batmobile – so he can continue helping sick children. Batman fanatic Zac Mihajlovic, from Camden, Australia, hand-built his very own street legal version of the car from the 1989 film starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. The 29-year-old turned his comic book fantasies into a high-octane reality by constructing a replica of the iconic vehicle. And the car has whipped up a reaction wherever it has been seen. Businessmen from across the world, including a Sheik in Dubai, have offered Zac big bucks for the Batmobile – and he has also seen his share of bizarre requests. And rather than cash-in on his dream machine, Zac decided to use his powers for good by teaming up with the Make-A-Wish foundation, who make dream’s come true for terminally-ill children…
If consciousness is ours to give, should we give it to AI? This is the question on the mind of the very sentient Daniel Dennett. The emerging trend in AI and AGI is to humanize our robot creations: they look ever more like us, emote as we do, and even imitate our flaws through machine learning. None of this makes the AI smarter, only more marketable. Dennett suggests remembering what AIs are: tools and systems built to organize our information and streamline our societies. He has no hesitation in saying that they are slaves built for us, and we can treat them as such because they have no feelings. If we eventually understand consciousness enough to install it into a robot, it would be unwise. It won’t make them more intelligent, he says, only more anxious. Daniel Dennett’s most recent book is From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds…
Dennett thinks a lot of people just assume that the way to make AIs more intelligent is to make them more human. But I think that’s a very dubious assumption…
Dennett thinks we’re much better off with tools than with colleagues. We can make tools that are smart as the dickens, and use them and understand what their limitations are without giving them ulterior motives, purposes, a drive to exist and to compete and to beat the others. those are features that don’t play any crucial role in the competences of artificial intelligence. So for heaven sakes don’t bother putting them in…
Leave all that out, and what we have is very smart “thingies” that we can treat like slaves, and it’s quite all right to treat them as slaves because they don’t have feelings, they’re not conscious. You can turn them off; you can tear them apart the same way you can with an automobile and that’s the way we should keep it…
Now that we’re in the age of intelligent design—lots of intelligent designers around—a lot of them are intelligent enough to realize that Orgel’s Second Rule is true: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.” That’s Francis Crick’s famous quip. And so what they’re doing is harnessing evolutionary processes to do the heavy lifting without human help. So we have all these deep learning systems and they come in varieties. There’s Bayesian networks and reinforcement learning of various sorts, deep learning neural networks… And what these computer systems have in common is that they are competent without comprehension. Google translate doesn’t know what it’s talking about when it translates a bit of Turkish into a bit of English. It doesn’t have to. It’s not as good as the translation that a bilingual can do, but it’s good enough for most purposes…
And what’s happening in many fields in this new wave of AI is the creation of systems, black boxes, where you know that the probability of getting the right answer is very high; they are extremely good, they’re better than human beings at churning through the data and coming up with the right answer. But they don’t understand how they do it. Nobody understands in detail how they do it and nobody has to…
So we’ve created entities, which are as inscrutable to us as a bird or a mammal considered as a collection of cells is includable; there’s still a lot we don’t understand about what makes them tick…
But these entities instead of being excellent flyers or fish catchers or whatever they’re excellent pattern detectors, excellent statistical analysts, and we can use these products, these intellectual products without knowing quite how they’re generated but knowing having good responsible reasons for believing that they will generate the truth most of the time…
No existing computer system no matter how good it is at answering questions like Watson on Jeopardy or categorizing pictures, for instance, no such system is conscious today, not close. And although I think it’s possible in principle to make a conscious android, a conscious robot, I don’t think it’s desirable; I don’t think there would be great benefits to doing this; and there would be some significant harms and dangers too…
You could at tremendous expense, but you’d have to have in fact quite a revolution in computer design, which would take you right down to the very base of the hardware…
Oscar Wilde once said that life imitates art, and science and engineering is often no exception to this. Science fiction certainly provides science types with plenty of inspiration for inventions, including holograms, teleportation, and even sonic screwdrivers.
Star Trek’s all-purpose medical device, the Tricorder, has also inspired a fair few people to recreate its near-magical ability to instantly diagnose a patient. As it happens, the non-profit X-Prize Foundation were so keen to get one invented that they started a global competition to see if any mavericks would succeed.
Rather remarkably, one team has emerged victorious in their endeavor. A family-led team from Pennsylvania, appropriately named Final Frontier Medical Devices, have bagged themselves a sum of $2.5 million, with a second-place prize of $1 million going to the Taiwan-based Dynamical Biomarkers Group.
The objective of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition was to create a lightweight, non-invasive, handheld device that can identify 13 health conditions (12 diseases, and the very absence of disease) in 90 minutes to 24 hours with no additional help or counsel from medical professionals. Five vital health metrics, like heartbeat and respiratory function, were also required to be constantly monitored.
The team behind the winning design was headed by brothers Dr Basil Harris, an emergency physician, and George Harris, a network engineer. They came up with “DxtER,” a device infused with artificial intelligence, entire funded by themselves and two other siblings of theirs.
Concluding that one device alone was not sufficient to accurately and quickly diagnose various medical conditions in a patient, the team realized that they needed to link it up to a wealth of medical data.
Science Bitch 