Facial recognition
According to an article in the MIT Technology Review, computers are quickly becoming incredibly good at recognizing faces. Indeed, facial recognition has existed for decades, but only now is it accurate enough to be used in secure financial transactions. The technology is expanding quickly in China, where it possibly may transform everything from policing to the way people interact every day with banks, stores and transportation services. For instance, technology from Face++ is already being used in several apps, and it is now possible to transfer money through Alipay, a mobile payment app used by more than 120 million people in China, using only one’s face as credentials. Additionally, Didi, China’s dominant ride-hailing company, uses the Face++ software to let passengers confirm that the person behind the wheel is a legitimate driver.
For more information visit https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603494/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-paying-with-your-face/.
A merge
Cars are getting smarter and smarter, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review. During one computer simulation, for instance, a group of self-driving cars were merging on a four-lane virtual highway, with half trying to move from the right-hand lanes while the other half attempted to merge from the left. Interestingly, the software governing the cars’ behavior wasn’t programmed in the conventional sense; rather, it learned how to efficiently and safely merge by practicing. During training, the control software repeatedly performed the maneuver, altering its instructions with each attempt. For the most part, the cars merged too slowly, interfering with each other. But, whenever the merge went smoothly, the system learned to favor the appropriate behavior. This approach, known as reinforcement learning, is not only used to train self-driving cars. The technology can also teach a robot to grasp objects it has never seen before, and it can figure out the optimal configuration for the equipment in a data center.
Reinforcement learning works because researchers have figured out how to get a computer to calculate the value that should be assigned to, say, each right or wrong turn that a rat might make on its way out of its maze. Each value is stored in a large table, and the computer updates all these values as it learns. For larger, complicated tasks, this traditionally has been computationally impractical. In recent years, however, researchers have discovered an extremely efficient way to recognize patterns in data, whether the data refers to the turns in a maze, the positions on a Go board, or the pixels shown on screen during a computer game.
In fact, it was in games that artificial intelligence research firm DeepMind made its name. In 2013 it published details of a program capable of learning to play various Atari video games at a superhuman level, leading Google to acquire the company for more than $500 million in 2014. These and other accomplishments have inspired various researchers and companies to turn to reinforcement learning. Today, a number of industrial-robot makers are testing the approach as a way to train their machines to perform new tasks, without manual programming. And researchers at Google are working with DeepMind to use deep reinforcement learning to make its data centers more energy efficient. Along the same lines, today’s driverless vehicles often falter in complex situations that involve interacting with human drivers, such as traffic circles or four-way stops. If we don’t want them to take unnecessary risks, or to clog the roads by being overly hesitant, they will need to acquire more nuanced driving skills, like jostling for position in a crowd of cars. Companies such as Mobileye plan to test their software on a fleet of vehicles in collaboration with BMW and Intel later this year. And, both Google and Uber report to be testing reinforcement learning for their self-driving vehicles.
For more information visit https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603501/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-reinforcement-learning/.
The full picture
Harvard ecological researcher Koen Hufkens recently devised a system to continuously broadcast images from a Massachusetts forest to a website called VirtualForest.io, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review.
Because he used a camera that creates 360-degree pictures, visitors can do more than just watch the feed; they can use their mouse cursor (on a computer) or finger (on a smartphone or tablet) to pan around the image in a circle or scroll up to view the forest canopy and back down to see the ground. By viewing the image through a virtual-reality headset, they can rotate the photo by moving their head, intensifying the illusion that they are in the woods. Hufkens says the project will allow him to document how climate change is affecting leaf development in New England. The camera system costs $550, which includes the $350 cost of the Ricoh Theta S camera that takes the photos.
Traditionally, we experience the world in 360 degrees, surrounded by sights and sounds. Until recently, there were two main options for shooting photos and video that captured that context: Using a rig to position multiple cameras at different angles with overlapping fields of view, or pay at least $10,000 for a special camera. The production process was cumbersome and generally took multiple days to complete. Once the photographer shot footage, he or she had to transfer the images to a computer; wrestle with complex, pricey software to fuse them into a seamless picture; and then convert the file into a format that other people could view easily. Today, it’s possible to purchase a decent 360° camera for less than $500, record a video within minutes and upload it to Facebook or YouTube. But, much of this amateur 360-degrees content is blurry; some of it captures 360 degrees horizontally, but not vertically; and most of it is mundane.
Indeed, the best user-generated 360-degree photos and videos are said to deepen the viewer’s appreciation of a place or an event. Journalists from the New York Times and Reuters have been using $350 Samsung Gear 360 cameras to produce spherical photos and videos that document anything from hurricane damage in Haiti to a refugee camp in Gaza. One New York Times video that depicts people in Niger fleeing the militant group Boko Haram puts viewers in the center of a crowd receiving food from aid groups. You start by watching a man heaving sacks off a pickup truck and hearing them thud onto the ground. When you turn your head, you see the throngs that have gathered to claim the food and the makeshift carts they will use to transport it.
The 360-degree format is so compelling that it could become a new standard for raw footage of news events – something Twitter is trying to encourage by enabling live spherical videos in its Periscope app. Spherical videos are also enhancing doctors’ ability to teach medical procedures. For instance, the Los Angeles startup Giblib uses this technology to teach students about surgery. The company films the operations by attaching a $500 360fly 4K camera (about the size of a baseball) to surgical lights above the patient. The 360-degree view enables students to see not only the surgeon and surgical site, but also the way the operating room is organized and how the operating room staff interacts. Additionally, inexpensive 360-degree cameras such as Kodak’s $450 Pixpro SP360 4K are showing up on basketball backboards, football fields and hockey nets during practice for professional and collegiate teams. Coaches say the resulting videos help players visualize the action and prepare for games in ways that conventional sideline and end-zone videos can’t.
These applications are feasible because of the smartphone boom and innovations in several technologies that combine images from multiple lenses and sensors. For instance, 360-degree cameras require more horsepower than regular cameras and generate more heat, but that can be handled by the same energy-efficient chips that power smartphones. Both the 360fly and the $499 ALLie camera the use Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, similar to those that run Samsung’s high-end handsets. Camera companies have also benefited in recent years from smartphone vendors’ continuous quest to integrate higher-quality imaging into their gadgets. The competition has forced component makers like Sony to shrink image sensors and ensure that they offer both high resolution and good performance in low light. As the huge smartphone market has helped bring down component prices, 360-degree camera makers are finding it possible to price their devices accessibly, often at less than $500 multiple points. Spherical cameras represented 1 percent of worldwide consumer camera shipments in 2016 and are expected to reach 4 percent in 2017, according to the research firm Futuresource Consulting.
For more information visit https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603496/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-the-360-degree-selfie/.