Robot Arm is a Fast Learner

Not long ago, machines grew their skills when programmers put their noses to the grindstone and mercilessly attacked those 104 keys. Machine learning is turning some of that around by replacing the typing with humans demonstrating the actions they want the robot to perform. Suddenly, a factory line-worker can be a robot trainer. This is not new, but a robot needs thousands of examples before it is ready to make an attempt. A new paper from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are adding the ability to infer so robots can perform after witnessing a task just one time. …read more

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Modified Baby Monitor Interrupts Your Groove in Case of Emergency

You try to be good, but the temptation to drown out the noise of parenthood with some great tunes is just too much to resist. The music washes over you, bringing you back to simpler times. But alas, once you plug in the kids started running amok, and now the house is on fire and there’s the cleaning up to do and all that paperwork. Maybe you should have tried modifying a baby monitor to interrupt your music in case of emergency?

Starting with an off-the-shelf baby monitor, [Ben Heck] takes us through the design goals and does a quick …read more

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