The famous humanoid robot Sophia painted a self-portrait that was later sold at an auction for over $688,000. The artwork is Sophia’s interpretation of her own face and it was created as an NFT (non-fungible token), a digital data unit that’s been popular lately.

The image is titled Sophia Instantiation. It was made in collaboration with artist Andrea Bonaceto, who’s also a partner at blockchain investment company Eterna Capital. She created a colorful portrait of Sophia first, and the robot then painted her own interpretation.

Sophia was developed by Hanson Robotics and has been active since 2016. She’s the first robot with a nationality (Saudi Arabian) and has appeared at many conferences and talk shows in the past.

As NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway says, the fact that she paints was “based completely on decisions she made without any human assistance.” The self-portrait wasn’t the only thing Sophia painted. Her other creations were also sold in batches of 30 for $2,500 to $3,000. She sold the artwork worth over $1 million in total.

The buyer of the most expensive piece, a digital artist known as 888, tweeted “I have goosebumps.” “Me too, we really had a connection,” replied Sophia’s official Twitter account.

The post This Robot’s “Self-Portrait” Was Sold for Almost $700,000 appeared first on toppoptoday.com.

Google Robotics team successfully managed to get a robot to teach itself how to walk without programming its moves. They used a type of machine learning that relies on psychology concepts in order to avoid programming specific commands related to walking, and it worked – the robot basically thought itself how to walk.

Self-taught robotic machines are still undeveloped, which makes this discovery pretty important. It basically proved that the concept works, and you can see how they did it in the video below.

The lead author of the study, Sehoon Ha, published a paper in which he describes how difficult this was. He explained that you can model a road to the tiniest detail, and it still doesn’t help the robot walk down the unfamiliar path. “For this reason, we aim to develop a deep [reinforcement learning] system that can learn to walk autonomously in the real world,” he wrote.

The robot is so advanced, it didn’t even require manual resets during training. The previous robot Ha made in December 2018, for instance, required 100 manual resets.

The post See Google Robot Teaching Itself to Walk appeared first on toppoptoday.com.

With the number of young people who live alone rising year after year, scientists are brainstorming about the ways to help them connect with each other and improve the interpersonal communication.

Long-term loneliness is not a healthy habit. We are social creatures, and prolonged isolation can have consequences on both physical and mental health.

That’s why the researchers from Korea have created Fribo, a home robot that’s different from other home robots. It’s not social, but it helps foster socializing with other people.

It creates a virtual shared space between a group of friends and can recognize activities such as coming home, turning on a light, opening a fridge, etc. It then informs the group about the latest activities and anyone interested can respond.

Fribo was presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in March and here’s what one participant had to say about it:

“I can imagine what my friend is doing and I feel like we live in the same house, but in another room. It’s like sharing daily life activities with friends.”

“I usually wake up late in the morning,” said another, “but when I began to notice my friends getting ready early, I started thinking about starting the day earlier with my friends.”

The post Fribo is a New Robot Made for Lonely Young People appeared first on toppoptoday.com.

The famous humanoid robot Sophia painted a self-portrait that was later sold at an auction for over $688,000. The artwork is Sophia’s interpretation of her own face and it was created as an NFT (non-fungible token), a digital data unit that’s been popular lately.

The image is titled Sophia Instantiation. It was made in collaboration with artist Andrea Bonaceto, who’s also a partner at blockchain investment company Eterna Capital. She created a colorful portrait of Sophia first, and the robot then painted her own interpretation.

Sophia was developed by Hanson Robotics and has been active since 2016. She’s the first robot with a nationality (Saudi Arabian) and has appeared at many conferences and talk shows in the past.

As NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway says, the fact that she paints was “based completely on decisions she made without any human assistance.” The self-portrait wasn’t the only thing Sophia painted. Her other creations were also sold in batches of 30 for $2,500 to $3,000. She sold the artwork worth over $1 million in total.

The buyer of the most expensive piece, a digital artist known as 888, tweeted “I have goosebumps.” “Me too, we really had a connection,” replied Sophia’s official Twitter account.

The post This Robot’s “Self-Portrait” Was Sold for Almost $700,000 appeared first on toppoptoday.com.

Google Robotics team successfully managed to get a robot to teach itself how to walk without programming its moves. They used a type of machine learning that relies on psychology concepts in order to avoid programming specific commands related to walking, and it worked – the robot basically thought itself how to walk.

Self-taught robotic machines are still undeveloped, which makes this discovery pretty important. It basically proved that the concept works, and you can see how they did it in the video below.

The lead author of the study, Sehoon Ha, published a paper in which he describes how difficult this was. He explained that you can model a road to the tiniest detail, and it still doesn’t help the robot walk down the unfamiliar path. “For this reason, we aim to develop a deep [reinforcement learning] system that can learn to walk autonomously in the real world,” he wrote.

The robot is so advanced, it didn’t even require manual resets during training. The previous robot Ha made in December 2018, for instance, required 100 manual resets.

The post See Google Robot Teaching Itself to Walk appeared first on toppoptoday.com.

With the number of young people who live alone rising year after year, scientists are brainstorming about the ways to help them connect with each other and improve the interpersonal communication.

Long-term loneliness is not a healthy habit. We are social creatures, and prolonged isolation can have consequences on both physical and mental health.

That’s why the researchers from Korea have created Fribo, a home robot that’s different from other home robots. It’s not social, but it helps foster socializing with other people.

It creates a virtual shared space between a group of friends and can recognize activities such as coming home, turning on a light, opening a fridge, etc. It then informs the group about the latest activities and anyone interested can respond.

Fribo was presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in March and here’s what one participant had to say about it:

“I can imagine what my friend is doing and I feel like we live in the same house, but in another room. It’s like sharing daily life activities with friends.”

“I usually wake up late in the morning,” said another, “but when I began to notice my friends getting ready early, I started thinking about starting the day earlier with my friends.”

The post Fribo is a New Robot Made for Lonely Young People appeared first on toppoptoday.com.