Tag: transhumanism

Web sites

She, Robot: An interview with Helen Greiner

Post author By ertrac
Post date December 31, 2014

Time lapse photo of the cleaning patter of a Roomba Robot. By Chris Bartle [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Here is a interesting interview with Helen Greiner of iRobot. From the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs.

Tags robotics, robots, transhumanism

Videos

Space Oddity on the ISS

Post author By ertrac
Post date November 5, 2014

This video has received over 30 millions views since the astronaut Chris Hadfield posted it in 2013. David Bowie considers it the ‘most poignant’ cover of his song.

A perfect example the Equivalence Principle in action, and a good intro to our discussion of local frames, the General Theory of Relativity, and so forth…

Tags APOD, Earth, Einstein, equivalence principle, humans in space, music, non-Euclidean geometry, technology, transhumanism, wonder

TED Talks Videos

Quadcopter athleticism

Post author By ertrac
Post date October 19, 2014

This TED talk by Rafaello D’Andrea presents some amazing examples of robotic control for quadcopters. The ‘model-based’ control theory he describes is based upon Newtonian mechanics, and is an example of how even now — a century after Newton’s world view was replaced by Einstein’s — we can still use Newton’s ideas to understand how things move in space and time in our local part of the world.

Here is an artistic performance called “Shadow” by elevenplay, with a human dancing with quadcopters

The following short film, a collaboration between D’Andrea and Cirque du Soleil, shows how precision flying can be done, with real artistry and grace. This is live performance, not CGI:

Here’s the ‘Making of’ video that shows the background work and testing that went into the previous film:

Tags technology, transhumanism, wonder