DeepMind's AI helps slash cooling costs at Google's data centers

Deep learning AI has been put to work in intelligent drones, sequencing genomes, learning the tactics of the ancient Chinese board game Go, and even keeping cats off the lawn. Now, Google has set its DeepMind system loose on its massive data centers, and drastically cut the cost of cooling these facilities in the process.

Running Gmail, YouTube, and the all-knowing Google Search guzzles a tremendous amount of power, and while Google has invested heavily in making its servers, cooling systems and energy sources as efficient and green as possible, there's always room for improvement. Especially when the industrial-scale cooling systems are difficult to run efficiently, given the complex interactions that occur between equipment, environment and staff in a data center.

To account for all those factors that a human operator or traditional formula-based engineering might miss, the team put DeepMind to work on the problem, and the result was a drastic reduction in power consumption for the center's cooling systems.

The efficiency was measured by the ratio of the IT department's energy usage compared to that of the entire building – a metric known as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). DeepMind networks were fed existing data, including temperature, power and pump speeds, and then trained to focus on the average future PUE, while other systems analyzed data to predict how factors like the temperature and pressure would change over the next hour, and adjust the cooling systems accordingly.

With the PUE plotted out, DeepMind's effectiveness is pretty clear: when the machine learning controls were turned on, the site saw a consistent 40 percent reduction in power used for cooling, a 15 percent reduction in total PUE (after inefficiencies in other departments were accounted for), and a new record for the lowest PUE the center had ever achieved.

Google plans to expand the system more broadly across its own facilities, as well as share the nitty-gritty of how it achieved the energy savings to help other data centers and industrial system operators reduce their energy consumption and environmental footprint.

Source: Gizmag, DeepMind 

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Unboxing the kit: Foundation level

If you have already read through the two of our previous posts where we just piqued your interest and yet did not reveal anything substantial, we are just sorry. We have been only trying to build up the surprise until we reveal the endless possibilities the kit is capable of offering.

“The longer the wait, the tastier is the fruit”. That is why still haven’t enlightened you on what the kit is and what it’s capabilities are. But, we are sorry for the wait and we would like to say this is your lucky day, for here ends your wait. This piece is intended on covering the various contents of the kit and throw some light on what are the various doables with the kit.

Moving on, let’s dwelve right into the Kit. 

This is the Foundation level kit offered by Kidobotikz. It is a well designed and properly planned kit that is aimed at introducing kids to the world of electronics and help them to test waters in various concepts that would enable them to learn with ease the concepts that are useful for their own academics as well as those requisite to build robots of various kinds. The kit consists of various electronic components and modules that will help kids learn and master the foundation concepts in the area of electronics. 

Unboxing the kit reveals its mysterious contents. The Kit consists of components such as a power supply board that powers all the experiments, led board, light sensor board, a bo wheel and motor among others. The number of projects possible with just one of these kits runs in the dozens. The kit also includes a book which is specifically designed for the foundation course. Kids who buy this kit can avail the online course which helps them learn all the basic concepts and tracks their every activity to provide them with an evaluation of their performance in the course and its various examinations. Buying this kit helps parents keep track of their ward through an exclusive online platform and it also brings the kids under the umbrella of Kidobotikz 12 X 365 tech support for the kit. The kids are also monitored and helped throughout the duration of the entire course with the support of dedicated online trainers who clarify doubts via video chat among other options. Now is the right time for parents to invest their kids’ time in such an engaging and educational activity and help their kids reap the benefits of practical-aided education for their entire lifetime.

Happy Roboting ! ! 

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DARPA-developed next-generation bionic arm hits the market

The next generation in prosthetic arms will soon be helping amputees get a grip in the real world. The LUKE arm, which was previously known as the Deka Arm, was developed under DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics program by DEKA Research & Development Corp. It received marketing approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2014 and is now set to hit the market later this year.

As we've reported previously, the DEKA arm is the first prosthetic arm set approved for commercial markets that translates signals from a patient's muscles into complex motions. Rechristened the LUKE (Life Under Kinetic Evolution) arm by medical device maker Mobius Bionics, which will bring it to market with Universal Instruments Corporation as contract manufacturer, the prosthetic will be the first in a new product category for integrated prosthetic arms.

The LUKE arm's central control technology, whereby electromyogram (EMG) electrodes are used to pick up electrical signals from the patient's muscles, has been around for decades. The key innovation is just how much movement, control and strength the new system is able to translate from those signals to the arm which boasts up to 10 powered degrees of freedom.

According to Mobius Bionics, the LUKE arm will deliver a number of new capabilities to amputees, including a powered shoulder joint that can reach overhead or behind the back; an elbow strong enough to lift a bag of groceries from floor to tabletop; a wrist with enough range of motion and fine dexterity to hold a glass of water overhead or at waist level without spilling; and a complex hand with four motors that can hold heavy items and delicate ones like an egg without dropping or breaking either.

The system has a sensor that also returns "grip-force" information back to the patient, giving feedback about how firmly something is being grasped. Another new innovation is the use of foot-mounted inertial measurement sensors connected wirelessly to the arm that offer an alternative means of control.

The goal of an advanced upper limb prosthetic with near natural control is something DARPA began working on a decade ago. The LUKE arm is the result of years of research and development by DARPA, the U.S. Veterans Administration and private companies, including over 10,000 hours of testing involving nearly 100 amputees.

Mobius Bionics is now accepting names of people interested in owning one of the first LUKE arms.

The original DEKA arm is demonstrated in the video below.

Source: Mobius Bionics, Gizmag

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Delivering the future: Autonomous courier bots take to the streets

From this month, pedestrians in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland will begin sharing their sidewalks with robot couriers. The self-driving delivery droids are being rolled out as part of a pilot by Starship Technologies, working with a number of major industry partners.

Starship Technologies was set up in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, with the aim of revolutionizing local deliveries. The robots are designed for delivering packages, groceries and food to consumers in a 2-3-mi (3-5-km) radius and travel at a "brisk walking speed" of 4 mph (6 km/h) on average, but can travel at up to 10 mph (16 km/h).

They are built with off-the-shelf components, such as an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, to keep the costs down. They also make use of a number of conventional cameras, a 360-degree camera, infrared and ultrasonic sensors to navigate autonomously, but are monitored by human operators in control centers who can take control at any time if required.

Starship has been testing the robots in 12 countries for nine months. Around 5,000 mi (8,000 km) are said to have been covered and over 400,000 people encountered without any accidents.

The pilot, however, will provide the first opportunity to test the robots for real deliveries and to introduce them to the general public. It will also allow Starship to better understand and design a robotic delivery service.

The partners for the pilot are food delivery companies Just Eat and Pronto.co.uk, German courier Hermes and German retailer Metro Group. Starship tells Gizmag that each partnership will work slightly differently, but that robot operation, maintenance and the provision of any human operation that is required will be handled in-house. It expects to hand over more responsibility to the partners as they learn more about the technology.

When a customer in one of the served pilot areas orders something from one of the partners online or via an app, they will be offered Starship delivery as an option. They will then be alerted via their mobile phone when their package is ready for delivery and they will be able to choose a time for the robot to make the delivery.

The robot will take between 15-30 minutes to arrive and, once it has arrived, the customer will be sent a unique PIN code with which to access the lid of the robot and take their goods. The robot will then return to its base.

Starship says the combination of PIN-only access and remote tracking makes the robot delivery system both safe and secure. There are also nine cameras in total that can capture the actions of any potential aggressors. In addition, they feature two-way audio so that operators in the control room can speak with people who might approach the robots. Location tracking is said to be to the nearest inch, so they could be easily found if stolen.

The robots are electric and have four motors that drive six wheels, with power coming from lithium batteries that last for about three hours. Starship Technologies says it could easily increase the battery capacity by a factor of 10, but that the robots are currently being transported a lot by plane and they can't fly on a plane with a battery any larger.

The program will see "dozens" of the robots deployed in London, Düsseldorf, Bern and one other German city to begin with. Several other European cities will then be added, as well as the first American cities. Starship says it will also continue testing its technology at its R&D facilities in Tallinn, Estonia.

Source: Starship Technologies

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Get a Kit, nerd up a bit ! !

If you had read our previous post, you would’ve realized by now that the Kidobotikz kit is indeed a big deal. We at Kidobotikz cannot stop looking at it and wonder at the immense possibilities it offers to the world of education and the way kids learn their concepts. As we had covered in the previous posts, we had spent 3 months soft launching the product to the kids on our online platform and with the immense success received from the improvements received from the gamification of the entire classroom environment here at Kidobotikz on to an online platform, we have now decided to roll out the product to make it to hands of every student across the planet. This we believe is the next big thing in education.

So, what are we aiming for with this kit? After a long 3 months with the online tutored robotics training, our team decided to conduct a survey with the users of Kidobotikz kit and online platform- the students and their parents. The responses we received were so rich and full of praises. Parents here at Kidobotikz are a motivational factor for every change we imbibe into the way training is imparted.

The happiest of parents are our assets because the satisfaction received from making a parent realize that their ward is on the right path is something we cherish. So, when we wanted to conduct a survey, we were preparing for an outcome where parents were satisfied but yet would give us complaints. We were expecting a few complaints where parents felt their children were having a hard time understanding the concepts or where the parents felt the portions were not in accordance with their immediate scholastic needs.

But to the wildest of our surprises, all parents were unanimously positive in their feedback for the kits. While we at Kidobotikz were looking at the kits as empowering the students with technologies which could be useful for their future career as engineers, we had rather overlooked a major positive outcome of undergoing training with the kits. One that was more grassroots and had a much more immediate impact on their academics- their school education. Hundreds of parents have come back to us with the feedback that after undergoing training on the Kidobotikz kits, especially the Foundation level kits, the behaviour of their kids has now seen a marked shift. The perspective through which their kids now view the world has completely changed.

In the foundation course, kids engage themselves in learning the various concepts of basic science such as basic electrical concepts, engineering drawing concepts. All of this makes kids well verse in the subjects that they would otherwise learn in subjects in the classroom. The kids learn these concepts as a part of the courseware that enables them to build a robot. This means that the practical understanding of some of the boring subjects of high school are now learnt in a fun way which facilitates in their retention and leaves room for more concepts to understand and experiment. This is the sweetest benefit from learning through the robotic kits- improvement in academic performance. If you’ve already been with us up until this point on the blog, I’d suggest you to try one for yourself and see the wonders that your kid will be able to perform after learning his subjects the right way.

Happy Roboting ! !

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Introducing : The Kit of possibilities

This week marks the beginning of an exciting era at Kidobotikz. After the soft launch of our product, we had awaited feedbacks from the initial community of students who bought the Kidobotikz Kit. Now with the feedbacks pouring in, we have come to a sweet conclusion- The Kidobotikz kit is a marvellous piece of wonder. Countless man-hours and thought processes put into the design of the Kit had finally paid off. Our early users have come back to us with anastounding inference- The Kidobotikz Kits in themselves are highly engaging and intuitive. Parents who've observed their ward's learning cycle have given us overwhelmingly positive comments. 

The students who had enrolled with us received the Kit and an online learning platform designed specifically for the kids. This platform which includes the entire gamut of tutorials, videos and mock tests has been designed with the intention of emulating an offline classroom environment in the virtual world. It keeps track of every activity a student does while he is logged onto the platform and uses dedicated algorithms to evaluate the calibre and capabilities of the student in his learning process. It even segregates the activities into areas where a student displays more interest and is more well versed compared to other subjects.

Parents and teachers who have have been constantly awatch about the performance of students have come back to us with rich feedbacks which suggest that Kids are quite adept and at ease while using the Foundation Kit of Kidobotikz. It was also observed that away from the watchful eyes of an instructor and with no pressure on them to learn, Kids actually learn faster on the online platform. The entirety of the foundation course which usually takes close to 2 months (or 16 teaching hours spread across one weekly class for 3 hours ) was completed online within a day or two by the kids. This kind of a performance was unheard of. And this was not a unique occurrence. Almost all the kids who underwent the training in the course took an average of just 2 or 3 days from receiving the kit to completing the courseware. Upon inquiry parents revealed that the kits were so engrossing that kids usually end up binge watching all the training videos and learn the entire all the required concepts in a very short time span.

With the confidence given to us by the effectiveness of  the kit and with the support offered by the community of parents and students, we are now moving forward towards the more grandiose goal of disrupting education in the country. We are now introducing the Kidobotikz kits in the retail market where any parent gets to purchase one for their kids and introduce them to something that will impact their lives forever.

To talk more about the kit, it is a well designed kit which is a treasure trove filled with possibilities. It is furnished in such a way that when any kid opens it, it kicks off that primal instinct in him- the desire to innovate. The same desire that moved us as a species from the invention of fire, to the invention of wheel to the modern age of computing and robotics. So, waste no further time and check out the kits here.

Happy Roboting ! !

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Electronic "tattoo" muscles in on emotion mapping

Electromyography procedures, which record the electrical signals of muscles to diagnose neuromuscular disorders, usually require the insertion of a needle electrode into the muscle itself. Obviously, that isn't exactly a pleasant experience, so a team at Tel Aviv University's (TAU's) Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology have developed a more comfortable and accessible alternative in the form of an electronic "tattoo" that unobtrusively monitors muscle activity, for a range of medical and commercial purposes.

Anyone who ever put on and forgot about a temporary tattoo as a kid will understand how unobtrusive the device is to wear, but this is a little more involved than the Road Runner rub-on that came with your cereal.

"Our 'electric tattoo' consists of three parts," explains Yael Hanein, the TAU professor who led the study. "A carbon electrode, an adhesive surface that sticks temporary tattoos to the skin and a nanotechnology-based conductive polymer coating, with special nano-topography, that enhances the electrode's performance."

That allows the user to attach the device onto the skin over the muscle that needs to be tracked, and forget about it. While they go about their day as usual, the electrode measures and records muscle activity, and is apparently able to pick up strong and steady signals from for several hours without irritating the skin.

Researchers at TAU have used the skin electrode to monitor the muscles of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, and in future, the device could be used in rehabilitation for victims of stroke or brain injury to help regain muscle control, enabling amputees to control artificial limbs using remaining muscles, monitoring driver drowsiness and possibly even to map emotions.

"Advertisers, pollsters, media professionals and others – all want to test people's reactions to various products and situations," says Hanein. "Today, with no accurate scientific tools available, they rely mostly on inevitably subjective questionnaires. To address this need, researchers worldwide are trying to develop methods for mapping emotions by analyzing facial expressions, mostly via facial photos and smart software."

The electrodes could provide an alternative solution, by being placed on the face to monitor the electrical signals of the wearer's facial muscles to provide data about a subject's subconscious reactions that they may not otherwise share or be aware of.

The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: Gizmag

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