Circuit Launch Racetrack Day Pass - $19/day Want to get a competitive edge for the next DIY RoboCars in September? You can now get access to the track, the electronics lab, some hand tools, common area usage and WIFI for $19/day. To book, email dan@circuitlaunch.com. He will set you up with access and give you a 10 min in-person orientation prior to your first use. The day pass does not include use of the 3D printers, Laser cutter, or power tool use (some hand tools and soldering is included). Monthly membership is required for these services as well as a safety class.
****
Opportunity for SVR Members!
Welcome to the Berkeley Postdoctoral Entrepreneur Program (BPEP) Jobs Portal
The Visiting Scholars and Postdoc Affairs (VSPA) Program hosts some of the world’s most talented scholars and researchers, and one of its core goals is to connect UC Berkeley postdoctoral scholars and other advanced degree holders with exciting career opportunities in the private sector, especially among startups.
Job postings are free for employers and can only be accessed by UC Berkeley postdocs, visiting scholars and PhD students.
We ask that employers:
- Only post jobs specific to candidates with advanced degrees
- Keep their posts current
- Report hires as a result of this job board back to postdocjobportal@berkeley.edu.
****
Car makers, vendors, startups, and academics promote their innovations, projects and co-development products in a show-and-tell format at Autotech Council’s Science Fair on Monday, October 14th at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View.
Show your innovation and collaboration projects to Autotech Council members, the local mobility ecosystem, and local auto journalists. Over 300 people visited the Science Fair last year including 100s of tech scouts and business development executives across automotive, transportation, and mobility. Pre-revenue companies qualify for smaller tables in the startup zone at a subsidized fee thanks to our Science Fair sponsors.
Click here to view last year’s exhibits and projects
Become a Sponsor
We realize that bringing your tech to the table isn’t always a viable option, but that doesn’t mean you’re not committed to innovation! Science Fair sponsors present themselves as leaders in the mobility revolution with their brand and innovation message delivered to every Science Fair participant and 10,000 Autotech Council subscribers. Interested? Reply to this email for more information.
****
Hear these and 40+ more talks by industry leaders at CRAV.ai.
Register before August 15 to save $500! Make sure you get the lowest price for this top event. Register today before savings slip away!
VIEW FULL AGENDA
****
Call for Speakers is Open!
Sensors Expo & Conference brings together over 9,000 engineers and engineering professionals annually to San Jose. As the nation's largest event for sensors, connectivity and IoT, we are currently seeking qualified speakers to deliver presentations at the 2020 Conference Program, taking place June 9-11. Deadline to submit is Friday, October 11th.
Visit our Call for Speakers page to learn more about topic areas, speaker benefits, submission process, and more.
Ready to submit? Please consider speaking if you have original research and/or compelling applications or case study examples. We're taking submissions through October 11th!
****
Interested in joining a manufacturing peer cluster?
Today’s small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) face many challenges—and many opportunities. And while there are a wealth of resources out there, sometimes it can still seem like you’re operating in a vacuum, cut off from the rest of the manufacturing world outside of the occasional networking event. To remedy this situation for California’s SMMs, Peer Council groups were created. More information here.
****
Applications are now open for GROW, Singapore’s first agri-foodtech accelerator program!
We are searching the globe for the brightest minds to join our inaugural cohort for the chance to receive up to US$120,000 in funding and US$80,000 in-kind benefits plus expert mentoring and unparalleled network access.
GROW is a joint venture between AgFunder, the online VC focused on transforming the food industry, and Rocket Seeder, the leading Australian agri-food tech accelerator. Together we bring deep knowledge and understanding of the agri-food industry with particular ties to leading industry players, not to mention AgFunder’s global network of over 65,000 members and subscribers... More information here.
****
The World Robot Summit WRS will be held in 2020 in Aichi/Fukushima of Japan in order to showcase the latest technologies and excellent ideas from around the world. It will feature: World Robot Challenge (WRC) where robots compete in simulated real-life scenarios such as industrial, retail store, home and disaster site settings in addition to a junior category; and World Robot Expo (WRE) where robotics companies, service providers, research institutions, and both national and regional governments from around the world exhibit their R&D efforts and integration of robots in real daily life/society/industry.
****
####################################################
Your machine sounds funny - I predict it's going to explode:
...ToyADMOS dataset helps people teach machines to spot the audio hallmarks of mechanical faults…
Did you know that it's possible to listen for failure, as well as visually analyze for it? Now, researchers with NTT Media Intelligence Laboratories and Ritsumeikan University want to make it easier to teach machines to listen for faults via a new dataset called ToyADMOS.
ToyADMOS: ToyADMOS is designed around three tasks: production inspection of a toy car, fault diagnosis of a fixed machine (toy conveyor), and fault diagnosis for a machine machine (a toy train). Each scenario is recorded with multiple microphones, capturing both machine and environmental sounds. ToyADMOS contains "over 180 hours of normal machine-operating sounds and over 4,000 samples of anomalous sounds collected with four microphones at a 48-kHz sampling rate," they write.
Faults, faults everywhere: For each of the tasks, the researchers simulated a variety of failures. These included things like running the toy car with a bent shaft, or with different sorts of tyres; altering the tensions in the pulleys of the toy conveyor, and breaking the axles and tracks of the toy train.
Why ToyADMOS: Researchers should use the dataset because it was built under controlled conditions, letting the researchers easily separate and label anomalous and non-anomalous sounds. "The limitation of the ToyADMOS dataset is that toy sounds and real machine sounds do not necessarily match exactly," they write. "One of the determining factors of machine sounds is the size of the machine. Therefore, the details of the spectral shape of a toy and a real machine sound often differ, even though the time-frequency structure is similar. Thus, we need to reconsider the pre-processing parameters evaluated with the ToyADMOS dataset, such as filterbank parameters, before using it with a real-world ADMOS system.
Why this matters: In a few years, many parts of the world will be watched over by machines - machines that will 'see' and 'hear' the world around them, learning what things are usual and what things are unusual. Eventually, we can imagine warehouses where small machines are removed weeks before they break, after a machine with a distinguished ear spots the idiosyncratic sounds of a future-break.
Read more: ToyADMOS: A Dataset of Miniature-Machine Operating Sounds For Anomalous Sound Detection (Arxiv).
Get the ToyADMOS data from here (Arxiv).
****
AI Policy with Matthew van der Merwe:
…Matthew van der Merwe has kindly offered to write some sections about AI & Policy for Import AI. I’m (lightly) editing them. All credit to Matthew, all blame to me, etc. Feedback: jack@jack-clark.net…
Why Peter Thiel's views on AI miss the forest for the trees:
Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and PayPal, wrote an opinion piece earlier this month on military applications of AI and US-China competition. Thiel argued that AI should be treated primarily as a military technology, and attacked Google and others for opening AI labs in China.
AI is not a military technology: While it will have military applications, advanced AI is better compared with electricity, rather than nuclear weapons. AI is an all-purpose tool that will have wide-ranging applications, including military uses, but also countless others. While it is important to understand the military implications of AI, it is in everyone’s interest to ensure the technology is developed primarily for the benefit of humanity, rather than waging war. Thiel’s company, Palantir, has major defense contracts with the US government, leading critics to point out his commercial interest in propagating the narrative of AI being primarily a military technology.
Cooperation is good: Thiel’s criticism of firms for opening labs in China, and hiring Chinese nationals is also misguided. The US and China are the leading players in AI, and forging trust and communication between the two communities is a clear positive for the world. Ensuring that the development of advanced AI goes well will require significant coordination between powers — for example, developing shared standards on withholding dangerous research, or on technical safety.
Why it matters: There is a real risk that an arms race dynamic between the US and China could lead to increased militarization of AI technologies, and to both sides underinvesting in ensuring AI systems are robust and beneficial. This could have catastrophic consequences, and would reduce the likelihood of advanced AI resulting in broadly distributed benefits for humanity. The AI community should resist attempts to propagate hawkish narratives about US-China competition.
Read more: Why an AI arms race with China would be bad for humanity (Vox).
|