Two teams of Princeton graduate students are making strong showings in national robotics competitions this year. The teams are combining advances in computation with those in sensing technology.

One group is joining with teammates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology later this month for the third annual Amazon Robotics Challengein Nagoya, Japan. The challenge asks teams to develop a robot that can recognize various objects that it has never seen before, pick them up and pack them in a box. The team finished third overall in last year's challenge. The second Princeton team is a finalist in Amazon's ongoing Alexa Prize competition, which challenges teams to create software that converses naturally with people.

The Alexa team is plumbing methods to understand and work with language, while the Robotics Challenge team is pushing the boundaries of computer vision and image processing.

"I'm excited to see Princeton teams leading in robotics competitions," said Jennifer Rexford, the Gordon Y. S. Wu Professor in Engineering and chair of the Department of Computer Science. "The transition of robotics from controlled environments, like factories, to the complex human world brings tremendous opportunity to serve society, while also raising difficult technical challenges. Princeton is tackling these challenges by bringing advances in sensing and computation together to allow future robots to understand the world around them and interact safely in human society.

Princeton graduate students are developing a software system that can engagingly converse with humans on a variety of topics. Team members, from left,Niranjani Prasad, Ari Seff, Karan Singh and Daniel Suo work on the project in the computer science building.

Photo by

David Kelly Crow for the Office of Engineering Communications

During a recent demonstration in their lab, Shuran Song and Andy Zeng held up a small black metal-mesh basket to demonstrate the challenge of creating accurate robotic vision. It was an everyday object, the kind of thing used to hold pencils on a desk. But as Zeng slowly spun the small basket in this hand, he said, "It may not seem like it, but this is actually one of the more challenging objects to handle.

"This is because the black reflective surface makes it hard for 3-D sensors to see," Zeng explained. "Such surfaces appear often in our everyday environments, but are less addressed in recent computer vision research. By using various objects with special properties like this one, the competition forces us to tackle challenging vision problems for real-world scenarios."

In a video the team made last year, viewers can see a robot painted Princeton orange look into a red container to identify an object using a sensor on the robotic arm. After determining it is a coffee can, the robot cranes down into the crate, uses high-powered suction cups to pick up the can, then lifts its arm upward and places the coffee can on to a shelf.

Princetons team is led by Zeng and Song, both graduate students in computer science, and their faculty adviser is Thomas Funkhouser, the David M. Siegel Professor of Computer Science. While the Princeton students work on building an algorithm for identifying objects, their teammates from MIT are working on manipulation, or using the robotic arm and hand to grasp and move the objects.

This will be the second year the team has taken part in the challenge, which originally was known as the Amazon Picking Challenge. The students said that although the algorithm they built last year was accurate, the two teams that finished ahead of them built a robot that worked more quickly. Our biggest weakness was speed, Song said.

They are working to solve that problem by installing more cameras to supplement the camera on the robotic arm. With that change, along with an improved algorithm, hopefully we can obtain a speedup similar to the teams that performed well last year, Zeng said.

Last year, the team was given a list of objects in advance that the robot might be asked to identify, grasp and move. But this year, the challenge is harder: Participants will only have that information a half-hour in advance. That has required them to create an algorithm that is more versatile, the students said.

We have to adapt our algorithm to be versatile enough so that it can still recognize these new objects with less time, Zeng said.

Since childhood, Cyril Zhang has dreamed of simulating consciousness in a machine. Although scientists still debate whether creating a truly conscious machine is even possible, for now the doctoral student in computer science is working on something that is "perhaps as close as you can get."

Beginning in early October, Zhang and 12 other graduate students in computer science began working on a software system designed to converse coherently and engagingly with humans on a variety of popular topics. The effort is part of Amazon's Alexa Prize competition, which requires international teams of university students to create software that can carry on such conversation for at least 20 minutes using Alexa, Amazons voice service, as a starting point. The winning team will receive a $500,000 award as well as a $1 million research grant for their department.

In November, Amazon notified the Princeton team that it was one of 12 university groups chosen to be sponsored to participate in the competition, bringing a $100,000 stipend. Since then, team members have been meeting every Thursday with their faculty adviser, Sanjeev Arora, the Charles C. Fitzmorris Professor of Computer Science, to coordinate their respective tasks.

Software that emulates human behavior is known as a socialbot. The Princeton team chose to name its socialbot Pixie, as the most concise combination of Princeton and Alexa that they could devise, according to team member Daniel Suo.

The team grew out of a weekly graduate student reading group on the topic of deep learning. Zhang described the team as outsiders since most of the students do not specialize in natural language processing research, but have experience in other fields such as machine learning theory, deep learning, computer vision, robotics or distributed systems.

Our simultaneous strength and weakness is that we come from a variety of research backgrounds, Zhang said. What that means is that Im optimistic we can come up with something that may never have occurred to someone who has spent a long time in the natural language processing field. But at the same time, we are definitely spending a lot of effort getting oriented to techniques that researchers in the field are already completely comfortable with.

Emulating human conversation has long been a challenge in software design. Humans communicate in ambiguous terms, and correctly interpreting words and sentences depends on context, common sense and some understanding of the world. Because computers lack such prior knowledge and rely on precision, programming computers to make sense of ambiguities is extremely difficult.

For any particular input, the bot has to determine is the user trying to talk about a specific topic? Is it more just general chitchat? Which sources might be needed for generating a suitable response? said team member Ari Seff.

The team also faces the broader challenge of designing a coherent personality that will entertain the user and keep the conversation natural and fluid.

The Amazon competition challenges us to think about conversation from a social perspective, Suo said. It would get boring to talk to a bot that just told endless one-liners or just answered fact-based questions. But what about language cues indicating how interested or bored someone is? Can we guide the conversation to a new area rather than just react to the user?

Members of the team expressed excitement at the collaborative nature of the project and the possibility of new and disruptive ideas growing from it.

It's an opportunity for us to build something together, but to also learn from each other, Suo said.

In April, entrant teams received feedback from real-life Amazon Echo users on the success of their socialbot based on the relevance, coherence, interest and speed of the conversation. The final prize winners will be announced in November.

If we win or if we dont win is not the point, team member Davit Buniatyan said. The fact is that this research is advancing the future of machine learning.

The Pixie team members are: Oluwatosin Adewale, Alex Beatson, Davit Buniatyan, Jason Ge, Misha Khodak, Holden Lee, Niranjani Prasad, Nikunj Saunshi, Ari Seff, Karan Singh, Daniel Suo, Kiran Vodrahalli and Cyril Zhang.

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Princeton graduate student teams advance in robotics, intelligent systems competitions - Princeton University

Artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics are making some real money for stock investors, and beating the market.

The Global X Robotics and Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ) is up 30 percent this year and the ROBO Global Robotics and Automation Index (ROBO) is up 25 percent. That's roughly three times the Dow Jones industrial average's 9 percent rise and twice the S&P 500's 11 percent climb.

"Between the tech exposure and the international exposure, that's helped the group pretty well," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank. "Certainly thematically it's in a sweet spot."

The upward trend in robotics and artificial intelligence stocks is one proponents say, in the long-term, could top the so-called FANG stocks Facebook, Amazon.com, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet. Each FANG stock has rallied 20 to 50 percent this year and the companies are increasingly focused on using technologies such as artificial intelligence, or AI, to develop their businesses.

"In our opinion, robotics, automation, AI [RAAI] is really the next FANG trade if you will," William Studebaker, president and CIO at Robo Global, told CNBC.

"All the FANG companies are really redefining their business as AI first and they're investing" in these companies, Studebaker said. "We're selling the tech they're using to enable their business."

Relative performance of ROBO and BOTZ to the S&P 500 (year to date)

Source: FactSet

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite has soared 19 percent in 2017 to hit a record high this week. More than half of the S&P 500's technology sector sales come from overseas, where economic growth has largely picked up more than in the U.S.

Many of the robotics or machine learning-focused companies in the BOTZ and ROBO ETFs are not based in the U.S., helping explain some of the funds' outperformance.

For BOTZ, Japanese companies compose nearly half of the 29-stock fund, followed by the U.S. and Switzerland, according to its fact sheet. More than half of ROBO's stocks are based outside North America.

The top 10 holdings of BOTZ include Intuitive Surgical, which received a $1,000 price target from Goldman Sachs in May, Mitsubishi Electric, Nvidia and Keyence. ROBO's major holdings include Swiss-based industrial company Abb, Chinese industrial name HollySys and U.S. health care company Accuray, according to a fact sheet.

"Many of these companies are not followed by Wall Street or underfollowed by Wall Street," Studebaker said. "This is an industry that's evolving and so it's going to explode."

Investors are starting to get interested as well. Studebaker said ROBO added $1 billion in assets under management over the last 12 months, while Global X said BOTZ's assets under management leaped from $1.5 million at its launch in September 2016 to $236 million Monday.

That jump in assets under management makes BOTZ the youngest fund in Global X's top 10 largest funds, according to Jay Jacobs, director of research and vice president at Global X Funds. "It's really hitting this inflection point," he said.

Increased focus on artificial intelligence is already showing up in the tech giants' earnings calls.

Google parent Alphabet reported better-than-expected second-quarter results after the close Monday. Its shares fell Tuesday on worries that rising traffic acquisition costs will hit future profit growth, but UBS analyst Eric Sheridan wrote in a Monday report that he still holds a long-term constructive view on Alphabet given its focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Alphabet's earnings call was also the third straight quarter in which Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned artificial intelligence, Gene Munster, once a prominent Apple analyst, pointed out Tuesday.

"Google is betting on the right long-term trends (Google, AI, AR, VR)," Munster said in a note from his new firm Loup Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Facebook is scheduled to report quarterly earnings Wednesday, and Amazon.com on Thursday.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on the video streaming company's earnings call last week that the company uses algorithms for personalization.

To be sure, since terms like artificial intelligence and robotics have become buzzwords, investors will need to do their research to determine leaders in the industry,

The number of U.S. corporate earnings call transcripts mentioning the words jumped to 124 last quarter, up from 107 in the first quarter and 50 in the second quarter of 2016, according to a search using AlphaSense. The analysis covered U.S. companies with more than $2 billion in market capitalization.

"In the tech boom," BMO's Ablin said, "random companies would put 'dotcom' at the end of their name just to prove they're different."

Disclaimer

CNBC's Tae Kim contributed to this report.

Original post:

Crushing the old economy: Robotics, artificial intelligence fund has tripled the Dow this year - CNBC

Today, the Girl Scouts of the USA introduced 23 new badges in the areas of science, technology, engineering, math, and the outdoors. This is the largest rollout of new badges for the organization in almost a decade, aiming its focus on encouraging interest in STEM and environmental conservation from an early age.

The new merit badges include Programming Robots, which requires Scouts to create simple programs that could be run by a robot and understand how machines use sensors, and Race Car Design Challenge, where Scouts have to design cars, tracks, and learn how to carry out fair tests. The organization created select badges with contributions from tech-related groups like Code.org, SciStarter, and GoldieBlox, and they join other Girl Scout STEM badges like Website Designer and Cybersecurity (which was announced this year and will be available in 2018).

The new merit badges include Programming Robots and Race Car Design Challenge

According to the organizations announcement, Girl Scouts are almost twice as likely as nonGirl Scouts to participate in STEM (60 percent versus 35 percent) and outdoor activities (76 percent versus 43 percent). They also note that Girl Scouts are more likely to seek careers in STEM, law, and business fields where women are traditionally underrepresented.

While these badge additions are a definite yay! moment, its worth noting theres still severe discrepancies between available badges for Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. For example, the Girl Scouts have two meal-related badges Dinner Party (how to be the hostess with the mostest) and Simple Meals (serve a meal for family and friends), while the Boy Scouts cooking badge has a list of requirements, including trail meals and food-related careers.

The new badges are indicative of where the Girl Scouts are going, though, and its frankly super cool to see them stepping up to give us our next generation of robot-programming, racecar-building women.

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Girl Scouts add new STEM badges in robotics, coding, and racecar design - The Verge

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two members of a teenage robotics team from Burundi who went missing after a competition in Washington last week have been located and are safe, the city's Metropolitan Police Department said on Tuesday.

The teens, Don Ingabire, 16, and Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, were spotted last week crossing the border into Canada. The Metropolitan Police Department would not say on Tuesday where or when they were found, citing department procedures for missing persons.

"The others are still missing, so the case is still under investigation," police spokeswoman Karimah Bilal said.

Four boys and two girls from the African nation were last seen on July 18 after the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge concluded. Organizers have said the disappearance may have been "self-initiated" because the students' hotel keys were left in a chaperone's bag while their clothes were taken.

Police have said they did not suspect foul play.

The Burundian embassies in Ottawa and Washington said they were unaware on Tuesday that two of the students had been found.

The other missing Burundians have been identified as Nice Munezero, 17; Kevin Sabumukiza, 17; Richard Irakoze, 18; and Aristide Irambona, 18.

High school students from more than 150 countries took part in the FIRST Global competition. An all-girl squad from Afghanistan drew worldwide attention when President Donald Trump intervened after they were denied U.S. visas.

Burundi has long been plagued by civil war and other violence. Fighting has killed at least 700 people and forced 400,000 from their homes since April 2015.

Additional reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Leslie Adler

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Two members of missing Burundi robotics team found, US police say - Reuters

Joe Sestak, a former Pennsylvania congressman and retired Navy admiral who is president of First Global, the nonprofit group that organized the competition, made the initial call to the police shortly after midnight, officials said. The authorities began sharing photographs and descriptions of the teenagers on missing persons fliers on Wednesday.

The police searched Constitution Hall, interviewed other competitors in the dorms and unsuccessfully tried to reach one of the missing students uncles, according to police reports.

The teenagers all have one-year visas, officials say.

The Burundi Embassy in Washington said in an email that officials there had not known there was a team from their country in the United States until after the teenagers were reported missing.

In June, the State Department issued a travel warning for Americans going to Burundi, located between Rwanda and Tanzania, citing political tensions, political and criminal violence, and the potential for civil unrest. The warning took note of a tenuous political situation and reported ambushes and kidnappings.

More than 325,000 Burundians have fled the country since 2015, mostly to Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Human Rights Watch.

The First Global competition made international headlines after the all-girl team from Afghanistan struggled to get visas to attend the event, advertised as an international robotics Olympics. Students from more than 150 countries participated in the competition, organizers said. It is scheduled to take place in Mexico City next year.

First Global is always concerned about the safety of our students, said Jose P. Escotto, the organizations communications director. The group said it had advised students not to leave the dorms or Constitution Hall without a mentor.

Students and their mentors stayed in dorms at George Washington University and Trinity Washington University. The Burundi team stayed at Trinity Washington University in Cuvilly Hall, a university spokeswoman, Ann Pauley, confirmed in an email; the hall is locked at all times. First Global provided bus transportation between the dorm and Constitution Hall.

Members of the Norwegian team, waiting to leave for the airport Thursday morning outside Thurston Hall at George Washington University, had heard about the disappearance from another team but thought it was a misunderstanding.

They havent been found? asked Havard Krogstie, 17, from Trondheim. I thought it was just they had gone somewhere without telling anyone. I dont see why they would just run off in a foreign country.

Right now, he added, with a shake of his head, I realize that theyre actually missing.

A version of this article appears in print on July 21, 2017, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: 6 African Teenagers Disappear After Robotics Contest.

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Burundi Robotics Team Vanishes After US Competition - New York Times

Patch.com

2 Missing Teens From African Robotics Team Found Safe: Police Patch.com WASHINGTON, DC Two of the six missing Burundian teens who disappeared from an international robotics competition in DC have been found safe, police said. Don Ingabire, 16, and Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, were located safely, police announced Tuesday ... and more »

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2 Missing Teens From African Robotics Team Found Safe: Police - Patch.com

The Afghan robotics team won a silver medal for 'courageous achievement' at the FIRST Global Challenge in Washington.

The Afghan robotics team won a silver medal in the "courageous achievement" category at the FIRST Global robotics competition in Washington DC.

The competition is considered to be the "Olympic's" of robotics contests and was represented by over 160 countries.

The Associated Press reported theteam that drew the most attention at the FIRST Global Challenge, which ended Tuesday, was a squad of girls from Afghanistan who were twice rejected for U.S visas before President Donald Trump intervened.

The Afghanistan team won a silver medal for "courageous achievement." The award recognized teams that exhibited a "can-do" attitude even under difficult circumstances or when things didn't go as planned. The gold medal in that category went to the South Sudan team and bronze to the Oman team, whose students are deaf, reported AP.

Rodaba Noori, Afghan robotics team member said: We were proud (of) ourselves and we tried a lot to get a position and we tried to win the game."

"I feel so confident about the last round of the competition. I'm very, very excited and also, I'm very hopeful. I believe we did well and I'm just waiting for the result, Kawsar Roshan, Afghan robotics team member said.

Teams left with gold, silver and bronze medals in a variety of categories, AP reported.

The Europe team won a gold award for picking up the highest cumulative points over the course of the competition. Poland got silver and Armenia bronze.

Finland won a gold award for earning the best win-loss record. Silver went to Singapore and bronze to India.

The 2018 competition will be held in Mexico City.

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Afghan Robotics Team Wins Silver Medal For 'Courage' - TOLOnews

Colin Angle is chairman of the board, chief executive officer and co-founder of iRobot (Nasdaq: IRBT). Angles leadership has transformed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off into a global leader of practical robots. One of the worlds leading authorities on mobile robots, Angle is an industry pioneer with more than two decades of experience. Under his guidance, iRobot is at the forefront of the growing robot industry, delivering home and military robots that are making a difference.

A longtime sailor, Angle is known for his ability to bring together and inspire a winning crew. By setting a course of team empowerment, collaboration and innovation, Angle is enabling iRobot to deliver cutting-edge, market-leading robots that save time and lives. Today, more than 14 million home robots have been sold worldwide, revolutionizing the way people clean. More than 5,000 military robots have been delivered to defense forces worldwide, performing thousands of dangerous missions while keeping troopsout of harmsway.

Angles vision for the future of robots and his keen sense of business strategy are driving forces behind iRobots successful identification and execution of expansion opportunities. Under Angles leadership, iRobot has formed strategic p artnerships with Clorox, Boeing and a variety of other companies, building on decades of expertise from each partner to create new and innovative robot solutions.

In iRobots early days, Angle and his team designed the behavior-controlled rovers for NASA that led to the Sojourner exploring Mars in 1997. Angles team won the NASA Group Achievement Award for its accomplishments, and his name is inscribed inside the case of Spirit, the Mars exploration rover on displa y at NASA.

Before co-founding iRobot in 1990, Angle was president of Artificial Creatures Inc. Earlier in his career, Angle worked at MITs Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he first teamed with iRobot co-founders Helen Greiner and Rodney Brooks. Angles master thesis at MIT produced Genghis, a six-legged auto nomous walking robot that is now at the Smithsonian National Air and Science Museum in Washington, D.C.

Angles leadership has been recognized with numerous professional awards. He has been named CEO of the Year by the Mass Technology Leadership Council, a Mass High Tech AllStar, one of Fortune Small Business Magazines Best Bosses and New England Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young . Angle has a ppeared on CNN and CNBC, and has been profiled as an industry expert in media outlets such as Business Week, CNET, the New York Times and Newsweek. Angle is a member of the board of directors at Striiv, Inc.

Angle holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering and a masters degree in computer science, both from MIT.

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Sessions: Robotics | TechCrunch

July 24th, 2017 by Steve Hanley

One of the stated reasons for the US decision to engage the Taliban in Afghanistan 16 years ago was to make it possible for women to participate in Afghan society. First Lady Laura Bush made empowerment of Afghan women one of her highest goals.

This book is featured on the Bush Institute website and features an foreword by Laura Bush.

Today, the George W. Bush Institute carries the following statement on its Afghan Womens Project home page: For Afghanistan to become a fully inclusive society, womens rights must be protected and expanded. A cornerstone of US policy toward Afghanistan is the Promote policy, which states,Everyone who cares about the future of Afghanistan supports womens empowerment as the foundation for economic growth, peace and security.

Despite all that lofty rhetoric, when a team of young Afghan women applied for visas to attend an international robotics competition in Washington, DC, the US State Department, reflecting what it assumed were the wishes of the Muslim-hating president, summarily denied their request.

The young girls were crushed. We thought the U.S. and Afghanistan had friendly relations. We thought the U.S.s fight for womens rights and equality would get us visas, said Rodaba Noori, age 15, according to The Guardian.

They were stunned when they learned that visas had been approved for a team from Iran one of the 6 Muslim countries targeted by Trumps unconscionable travel ban. Why is it only Afghans who cant go? Its discrimination. It really makes me angry, said Lida Azizi, age 16.

Alireza Mehraban, the teams mentor, recounts the special hardships the young women encountered in order to compete at all. Most had to travel through Taliban-controlled sections of the country to complete their visa applications in Kabul. Taliban men are so weak and insecure, they cannot control their sexual urges if they see a womans face, hands, ankles, or other body parts. Therefore, they insist women be fully covered whenever they are outside the home.

Like many Muslim countries, women in parts of Afghanistan are forbidden to appear in public without an escort from a male relative, lest they misbehave and provoke any other male. Religious thought police patrol regularly and delight in administering public whippings to any woman who dares contravene sharia law.

The robotics competition involves designing robots that can separate blue and orange balls. Afghan officials were so befuddled about why the equipment needed to compete in the contest would be sent to females that the kits were detained for 3 months after they arrived in Kabul. As a result, the girls had only 2 weeks to complete their robots other contestants had 4 months.

When the plight of the girls caught the attention of the news media, the #FakePresident, whose malevolent policies created the mess in the first place, magnanimously stepping in and ordered the State Department to grant visas to the girls after all, cutting the legs out from under his own people who thought they were dutifully carrying out his hateful policies.

They were met at Dulled International Airport byHamdullah Mohib, Afghanistans ambassador to the US, who called it the proudest moment of my career. He described the girls as symbols of a new Afghanistan emerging from the shadow of Americas longest war.

These girls are 16 years old. The youngest is 14. She was born after the US engagement in Afghanistan, and the others around the time when the US started to engage with the country. 16 years ago we didnt have schools for girls. And today there are, Mohib said.

What does it mean? These girls are actually representative of what progress has been made. They have gone through that process every year, through education. They started with their primary school and went up and today are competing in an international competition with the robots that they built.

At 14, Somayah Faruqi, is the youngest member of the Afghan robotics team. She says her favorite memory from the contest was working with teams from other countries and observing the different techniques her competitors used to assemble their robots. I learned a lot from them, she says. It was a very unique experience. Too bad so many Americans are petrified to learn from others.

At the end of the competition against teams from 158 other nations, the Afghan women didnt win, but they were awarded a special silver medal by the organizers to commemorate their courageous achievement and can do attitude. The members of the team say they plan to continue studying science and technology, and hope to return to the competition as mentors for a future team of young Afghans.

Americans were once known for just such a can do attitude, but now they sit at home, quaking in fear with the covers over their heads. The thought of what harm foreigners who are allowed into the country might do terrifies them. A country built by immigrants doesnt want the creative, exploratory blood of modern-day immigrants to change the stew in the pot.

The US is not the only country with smart people. By vilifying those who look different, dress differently, and worship differently, those smart people from other lands will find other nations where their genius is encouraged and allowed to flourish. And the US will be poorer because of its self-inflicted policies that enshrine the ravings of a madman into law.

Watching this inspiring video from the Bush Institute makes it plain just how far America has fallen as it runs away from its traditional role as an international leader. There is much America could learn from these young women, if we would only allow ourselves to listen.

Source: The Guardian

Check out our new 93-page EV report, based on over 2,000 surveys collected from EV drivers in 49 of 50 US states, 26 European countries, and 9 Canadian provinces.

Tags: #FakePresident, afghanistan, Muslim travel ban, Robotics

Steve Hanley writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Rhode Island. You can follow him onGoogle +and onTwitter. "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." Elie Wiesel

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Afghan Girls Overcome Stupid Politicians, Religious Lunatics To Compete In Robotics Competition - CleanTechnica

The Corning Incorporated Foundation has awarded agrant of $15,000 to Otsego Northern Catskills BOCES, according to a media release.

The money is to go toward an expected Fall 2018 launch of a Mechatronics/Robotics program.The program is designed to prepare students for entry-level manufacturing jobs and to go on to college for advanced training.

Robotics deals with the design, construction, operation, and application of robots. Mechatronics is a technology that combines electronics and mechanical engineering. Mechatronics/Robotics at ONC BOCES will be an interdisciplinary program focused on mechanics, electronics, motor control systems, and automation, which drive the design, operation and maintenance of all modern complex machinery, the release said.

Several area manufacturing firms and food-production facilities rely on mechatronics, but sometimes struggle to fill positions, according to the release. The new program is intended to help plug the middle skills gap, the release said.

Mechatronics/Robotics will provide students with the necessary information and skills sets to enter the emerging field of advanced manufacturing, ONC BOCES Superintendent Nicholas Savin said in the release. SUNY Delhi has recognized the employment need for this emerging field and has developed 2- and 4-year programs to prepare students for this work. Problem solving, mechanical and electrical design, automation and computer systems/logic represent areas of study. Broome Community College has also recognized the need in this emerging field and has begun to develop a degree program as well to help meet the skilled employment needs for this industry.

The Mechatronics/Robotics program offered at the high school level at ONC BOCES will allow for students to achieve a level of experience that will enable them to enter the workforce after graduation or position them to excel in a related course of study at a higher educational institution, the release said.

The grant was written by the Capital Region BOCES Grants Service.

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ONC BOCES receives grant for robotics program - Oneonta Daily Star

On Thursday, Washington police have said that six teenagers from a Burundi robotics team have been reported missing after an international competition in Washington. Wochit

In this July 17, 2017, photo, the Afghanistan team, left, walks past two of the team members from Burundi, at right in black shirts, during the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge in Washington.(Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, AP)

Six African high school students who vanished from an international robotics fair in Washington remained missing sort of Sunday as investigators tried to determine where they are and whether their own families conspired in their disappearance.

The Burundi team attended the three-dayFIRST Global Challenge that kicked off July 16. The event was supposed to be acelebration of global community and science, and it brought together competitors from more than 150 nations.

Burundi, an East African nation of 10 million people with a history of political and economic instability, was represented bya team of four boys and two girls, ages 16 to 18.The team's page on the First Global website talks about the teens' slogan, Ugushaka Nugushobora, which in their native Kirundi language loosely means 'Where there's a will, there's a way."

"We get our motivation for winning this competition through this slogan, which inspires Burundian team," according to the website.

Read more:

African robotics team disappears after U.S. competition

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Ivanka Trump was among the celebrities to hang out with the competition's kids. President Trump personally had to intervene to ensure the team from Afghanistan got visas to attend. Everything went smoothly until the festivities wrapped up Tuesday night. That's when the Burundi mentor discover his team had left him their dorm room keys, packed their bags and disappeared into the hot, muggy Washington night.

"There were indications that the student's absence may have been self-initiated," First Global said in a statement. Still, the organization quickly notified local police early Wednesday, and the hunt was on.

By Thursday morning,police said two of the teens Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, and Don Charu Ingabire, 16 had been seen crossing into Canada. Police declined to say exactly where or exactly when, but added that there was no indication of foul play involving any of the disappearances.

No information was released on the fates of Richard Irakoze, 18, Kevin Sabumukiza, 17, Nice Munezero, 17 and Aristide Irambona, 18.On Sunday, police had little to add.

"There has been no further updateat this time," police said in a statement to USA TODAY. "The investigation remains open."

The team's mentor, Canesius Bindaba, told The Washington Post he sent panicked messages to the teens' families back in Burundi after the kids disappeared. He said their replies made him suspicious they suggested he relax, that everything would be OK.

FIRST Global President Joe Sestak said he was disappointed the students "chose not to return home" but added that he understood the challenges there.Bindaba agreedbut said his tiny country suffers from brain drain" as the best and brightest flee for better opportunities.

For me, they were some kind of hope for the future of this project in Burundi, Bindaba said. Its an opportunity for my entire country.

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Mystery deepens after African teens vanish from US robotics fair - USA TODAY

WASHINGTON As six robots battled it out on the floor of the DAR Constitution Halls auditorium during the FIRST Global Challenge competition Tuesday afternoon, a cheer rose above the din of voices echoing across the stands.

Team Hope! Team Hope! Team Hope!

The cheering came from a corner of the stadium where a group of boys from Team Lebanon wearing rainbow clown wigs stood next to Team Palestine. They, and teams from Libya and Jordan, were lending their voices to support a group of Syrian refugees, known as Team Hope. It was one of many times when teens would spontaneously break out into cheers for competitors.

When they werent cheering, hundreds of teens from 157 countries mingled, chatted and leaned in for selfies in the sweltering corridors of the concert hall at the first international Global Challenge competition. In between making final adjustments on their robots, a bonding experience that has become central to this competition, they signed each others T-shirts and exchanged pins. If they did not speak the same language, they all understood the thrill, the frustration and the anxiety that comes with competition.

Salwan Georges, The Washington Post

These are precisely the kinds of friendships FIRST Global founder Dean Kamen, an inventor, hoped to build ones that crossed languages, cultures and geopolitical frontiers. His lofty vision is one in which graduates of this program put aside politics to solve the worlds most pressing challenges, like shortages of clean water and the myriad problems wrought by global climate change. In this years competition, teams built robots to sort contaminated water from clean water actually orange and blue plastic balls to get them thinking about the real-life challenge that many face getting enough clean water.

If we can get kids from around the world to deal with the same issues . . . we could compete on the same team, Kamen said on Sunday evening, in remarks at the opening ceremony. You dont have to have self-inflicted wounds created by arbitrary differences and politics.

This cauldron of competition with countries sending some of their brightest and best aspiring engineers forged plenty of unusual friendships. Team Armenia and Team Turkey, who come from countries whose relations are strained were allied in one match. The Armenian team also helped Lesotho make modifications to their robot.

You have to put politics aside, said Lilit Tarumyan, a 16-year-old team member. Her teammate. Maria Ter-Minasyan, chimed in: They were some cool guys!

The contest is called a coopera-tition, with points given to teams for working together to form alliances.

Salwan Georges, The Washington Post

Under their countrys flag, three young Iranian men tinkered with their robot on Tuesday afternoon, in preparation for the final, nerve-racking matches of the FIRST Global Robotics competition. Just feet away, Team Israel was busily making adjustments to theirs. The two countries have hostile relations. But in this corner of the DAR Constitution Hall, separated by no more than 30 feet, the teens from both countries forged an unlikely bond.

They chatted about robots and politics, and then the two teams huddled together for a group photo with founder Kamen. And then the teens wished each other good luck.

Please, see us today, we Israelis and Iranians were together and happy,said Mohammad Reza Karami, the mentor for Team Iran. You also can see, learn and be together.

The competition capped weeks of drama in which two teams one from Gambia and Afghanistans all-girls squad appeared to be in jeopardy of competing in the U.S. when their visas were initially denied. Their plight garnered international attention and sympathy. The Gambian team finally received their visas in early July, according to the Associated Press. But the Afghan girls did not get their visas until President Donald Trump intervened at the last-minute, granting them passage to the U.S.

Alieu Bah, an 18-year-old Gambian team member from Serakunda, said the team was crestfallen when their visa applications were initially denied. But they did not give up and continued to put in hours of work sometimes seven hours at a stretch on their competition robot, with plans to ship it to Gambians living in the U.S., who would compete in their place.

We worked hard. And even when we didnt get it, we worked hard, said Bah, who added that he was just excited to see Gambia represented in the international competition. But he was still thrilled when he heard the State Department had reversed its decisions. Im proud to be here.

Tuesday, First Daughter Ivanka Trump came to the hall and met with five other all-girl squads, including the teams from Jordan, Brunei, Vanuatu and the U.S. She then pulled the lever to start a friendly match between the six teams.

Kawsar Roshan, a 15-year-old member of Team Afghanistan, said Trump was welcoming, telling her through a translator: Youre most welcome. Im happy you made it to the U.S.

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At a global robotics competition, teens put aside grown-up conflicts to form alliances - The Denver Post

Watch the first trailer for Steven Spielbergs adaptation of Ready PlayerOne

A student walked up to me at an event following Mondays TC Sessions: Robotics event in Cambridge. I have a question for you, he said, adding that he was a few months away from becoming a college senior. How do I launch a successful startup?

I explained that I might not be the person at the show best equipped to answer, but I offered some simple advice nonetheless: find a problem that needs solving, address a need that already exists, and dont go offering up solutions in search of problems.

Oh, and get a day job.

Learn the industry and the ins and outs of running a business from someone whos already in it. Work on your passion on the weekends and after work, while youre young and still have the energy to invest. Be bold and be excited, but temper that with pragmatism. Theres a reason that one of the most successful robotics companies at the event is the one that sells robotic vacuums. Its not universal advise, but its a model thats worked for countless startups before.

The student seemed unimpressed.

It wasnt difficult to come up with an answer. It was something Id been thinking about quite a bit in the lead up to the event. Moderating multiple panels gave me the opportunity to put the questions to a number of people far smarter and with far more direct industry experience. It was the one question I had on my index cards for multiple conversations: Are universities doing a good enough job preparing students to make the jump from the research lab to real-world commercial endeavors?

At MIT, were very excited about taking ideas that matter today and making them real, Daniela Rus, the head of MITs massive CSAIL interdisciplinary laboratory told me toward the close of the days first panel. In general, we are focused on long-term research. We want to invest in the future of computing and a future enabled by computing. But we are also very interested in how our ideas can matter today.

Universities and startups are very different beasts, built around very different models. Schools have their own pressures getting grants/sponsorships, publishing papers, applying for awards. But any researcher interviewed about their work by a member of the media will invariably get the same question: what are the commercial applications for this work? That topic isnt always at the top of students and professors minds when theyre doing the sort of long-term research to which Rus refers.

But there does seem to be an increasing interest in helping researchers make the transition to real-world product. Certainly theres a lot to be said for seeing the work on which youve spent months or years laboring have a direct impact on the lives of real people. Earlier this week, I spoke to ReWalk Robotics CEO Larry Jasinski about the companys relationship with Harvards Wyss Institute.

Turning research into product is one of the institutes key components, working to leverage [its] internal business development team, intellectual property experts, and entrepreneurs-in-residence to drive commercialization, throughindustrial partnershipsand the creation ofstartups, according to its mission statement.

In the case of ReWalk, the company gets to commercialize the research of Biodesign Lab head Conor Walsh, in exchange for help with FCC red tape, market considerations and royalties on sales. Theyre trying to develop the institute as something that has more of an application mindset, Jasinski told me. We are a bit of an experiment, as part of their attempted business model.

Its a commendable model, particularly in the case of the Restore soft exosuit the partnership has created to assist stroke patients. But that particular model doesnt address those students looking to transition out of the research lab and into the world of commercial robotics.

In a conversation with our own Ron Miller, Sami Atiya, the president of Robotics and Motion at industrial automation giant ABB, did a good job succinctly contrasting the two worlds. In academia, we focus on proving a hypothesis works, he explained. If you look at the industry, if we did that, we wouldnt be able to survive. We have to feed solutions to our customers that are highly repetitive, precise and accurate. The customer wants to have 99 percent uptime that is repeatable, at a cost that is affordable.

Expectations shift dramatically when research becomes product. No one knows this better than iRobot CEO Colin Angle. The companys first dozen years were a struggle to create a truly profitable robotics company. Its a decade lined with space rovers, baby dolls and movie licensing attempts before finally creating the Roomba in 2002, a product that has disrupted the vacuum industry and become the first and arguably still only mainstream home robot.

Angle laughingly explains that he didnt find success as a roboticist until he became a vacuum salesman. Its a funny statement, but the sentiment is important. The key to launching a successful robotics startup is focusing on the practical ways in which technology can positively augment our lives and, to some degree, getting lucky.

The idea that you launch with, youll either be very, very lucky or wrong, Angle told me during our interview. Youll need to stay open to learning how the rest of the world reacts to your idea and be flexible. Patience is also critically important, and its best not to do it alone. At iRobot, if we had been alone, instead of the three of us, it would have been a very different experience. We arranged that no one would be allowed to have crushing despair while another was having crushing despair.

Its true that the robots that are having the most immediate impact on our lives lack the sort of bleeding-edge excitement outsiders are hoping for from the field. Theyre the industrial pick-and-place arms from companies like ABB and the wheeled robots being used in Amazon warehouses. And the realities of running a business can be equally mundane, from the government regulation to payroll.

But universities do seem to be taking a more aggressive approach toward helping students make the transition. Carnegie Mellon has Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, which serves as a sort of on-campus incubator, helping to launch companies and, hopefully, fostering the startup community in and around Pittsburgh.

MIT, for its part, is being more progressive on that front, as well. During our interview, Rus described the schools technical entrepreneurship course, along with a new initiative. MIT has also started a big incubator called The Engine, which is extraordinarily exciting, she explained. It was just kicked off a few months ago, and there is already so much energy and buzz and so many companies that are taking advantage of it. We have a lot of opportunities for students. We want to train them to become entrepreneurs, just like we trained to become academic or industry researchers.

Theres no simple answer to the question, how do I launch a successful startup? Its long and frustrating and almost invariably paved with failures. But with a good idea, the right guidance and knowledge of the market, a student can turn a great bit of research into a successful product and if theyre lucky, it wont take 12 years to get there.

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For a few days, DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., was transformed into a competitive robotics arena, where teenagers from 157 countries gathered for the First Global Challenge. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

For a few days, DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., was transformed into a competitive robotics arena, where teenagers from 157 countries gathered for the First Global Challenge.

This week, the First Global Challenge, a highly anticipated robotics competition for 15- to 18-year-olds from 157 countries, ended the way it began with controversy.

On Wednesday, members of the team from the violence-torn east African country of Burundi went missing. And well before the competition even began, the teams from Gambia and Afghanistan made headlines after the U.S. State Department denied the members visas. Eventually, they were allowed to compete.

Team Honduras preps for the competition. The members, who come from a remote village, may have lacked resources, but they know that the "world today demands that we understand technology," said one participant. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

Team Honduras preps for the competition. The members, who come from a remote village, may have lacked resources, but they know that the "world today demands that we understand technology," said one participant.

The drama marred an otherwise upbeat event focused on kids and robots.

Every team arrived with a robot in tow, each built with the exact same components, but designed, engineered and programmed differently. The goal: to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls representing clean water and contaminated water.

For three days, teenagers rich and poor, male and female competed on a level playing field.

In addition to robotic innovation, the competition brought out national pride. This included Brendan Alinquant of Ireland (clockwise from top left), Andrea Tern of Mexico, Helder Mendonca of Mozambique, Anis Eljorni of Libya, Sarah Lockyer of Australia and twins Rinat and Shir Hadad of Israel. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

In addition to robotic innovation, the competition brought out national pride. This included Brendan Alinquant of Ireland (clockwise from top left), Andrea Tern of Mexico, Helder Mendonca of Mozambique, Anis Eljorni of Libya, Sarah Lockyer of Australia and twins Rinat and Shir Hadad of Israel.

But there were reminders that in some parts of the world, there is no such thing as a level playing field. And no team understood that better than Team Hope, made up of Syrian refugees who had fled to Lebanon.

As Fadil Harabi, the team's mentor, pointed out, "more than 90 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon don't have legal status. They don't have passports."

Getting passports for the team, Harabi said, turned out to be a lot more complicated than building a robot.

The competition theme was providing access to clean water. The robots had to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls, representing clean water and contaminated water, respectively. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

The competition theme was providing access to clean water. The robots had to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls, representing clean water and contaminated water, respectively.

Team Hope's robot didn't do very well, but every time the Syrian teens competed, they attracted a crowd that would clap and chant, "Team Hope, Team Hope!"

For Colleen Johnson, 18, a member of the all-girl U.S. team, that was what this event was all about.

"Everybody here is working together, loaning each other batteries, tools, helping each other fix programming issues to lift each other up," she said.

Still, the technology gap between poor and rich nations was evident. For team Honduras though, that gap is due to the lack of opportunity, not just the lack of resources.

Competitors from Team Hope (center in black) test their robot in a designated practice area. The team of Syrian refugees who had fled to Lebanon drew cheers from the crowd. Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

Competitors from Team Hope (center in black) test their robot in a designated practice area. The team of Syrian refugees who had fled to Lebanon drew cheers from the crowd.

"Honduras is a country where there aren't many opportunities," explained the team's leader, 17-year-old Daniel Marquez.

Marquez and his teammates all come from a tiny village that is a seven-hour drive and a world away from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Not a single member of the team had ever handled a remote control, let alone built a robot.

"But the world today demands that we understand technology," said Melissa Lemus, one of two girls on the Honduran team.

As the competition entered its third and final day, I checked in on Afghanistan's all-girl team. It seemed the competitors had grown weary of the media frenzy around them.

Speaking through an interpreter, 15-year-old Lida Azizi said she was disappointed that her teammates' skills, and the robot they built, had gotten a lot less attention than the team's visa problems, which nearly kept them out of the competition.

The Afghan team's consolation prize: a medal for "courageous achievement" and knowing that they placed much higher than countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

Top honors went to Teams Europe, Poland and Armenia.

The all-girls team from Afghanistan had garnered attention even before the competition began, when the U.S. State Department initially denied the members visas. They were awarded a medal for "courageous achievement." Liam James Doyle/NPR hide caption

The all-girls team from Afghanistan had garnered attention even before the competition began, when the U.S. State Department initially denied the members visas. They were awarded a medal for "courageous achievement."

The awards ceremony and closing ceremony felt like one big party, not so much a goodbye. It was a celebration with a hopeful message delivered by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

"You are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty in the world," Kim said. "And from what I saw of these robots, I know you can do it."

His message was not lost: Intelligence and talent with a moral vision have no race, nationality, religion or gender.

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What Really Happened At That Robotics Competition You've Heard ... - NPR

Outside Bujumbura International Airport in the capital city of Burundi, six teenagers bound for Washington D.C. to compete in an international robotics competitions locked hands with parents and relatives to pray one last time before boarding their flight. In Kirundi, their native language, Coach Canesius Bindaba asked God to bless their journey to the United States.

I prayed that God may keep us safe on this trip, Bindaba said.

When Bindaba uttered those words, he said he had no idea that the teens likely with the help of their families had orchestrated a secret bid to stay behind and possibly seek asylum in the U.S. and Canada.The squad two girls and four boys who range in ages from 16 to 18 went missingon Tuesday from theFIRST Global Challenge robotics after it ended at DAR Constitution Hall, and their disappearance set off a panicked search for them at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., where they were staying in dorms.

By Thursday morning, D.C. police said two of the teens Don Charu Ingabire, 16, and Audrey Mwamikazi, 17 crossed in to Canada and were with friends or relatives. Police on Thursday said the other four Richard Irakoze, 18, Kevin Sabumukiza, 17, Nice Munezero, 17 and Aristide Irambona, 18 were not yet with relatives but were still safe.

[Two of six African teens who went missing from robotics competition are in Canada, D.C. police say]

The teens, who did not respond to Facebook messages, have left anger, disappointment and questions about their intentions for staying in the United States and Canada. Burundi has been seized by intermittent political violence for years that has driven hundreds of thousands of people out of the country.

I am disappointed that the students chose not to return home, even though I have a very clear understanding of the challenging circumstances they face in their nation, said FIRST Global President Joe Sestak, a former Congressman and Navy Admiral, in a statement. He said that the State Department and his organization, which brought in young people from 157 nations, had stringent review protocols for the visa process.

This year was the first for FIRST Global to host an international competition, and it featured an impressive array of competitors. But there were complications: Gambias team faced hurdles getting visas to come to the U.S., but eventually obtained them. An all-girls squad from Afghanistan was also initially denied visas, but after an international outcry, President Trump intervened so they could come to the U.S.

[For Afghan girls team, a trip to Washington was about more than the robotics]

If the teens plan to stay behind, it would be antithetical to the purpose of FIRST Global, which aims to help countries like Burundi build the ranks of skilled engineers by getting young people interested in engineering through its robotics competitions. Its founder, inventor Dean Kamen, hopes these robotics competitions can build the kind of networks and friendships that will help countries tackle global problems like water shortages and climate change together.

If we can get kids from around the world to deal with the same issues we could compete on the same team, Kamen said lastSunday, in remarks at the opening ceremony. You dont have to have self-inflicted wounds created by arbitrary differences and politics.

[At a global robotics competition, teens put aside grown-up conflicts to form unlikely alliances]

Bindaba had never coached a robotics team before and the students, who hailed from public and private schools around Bujumbura, had never built a robot. They adopted the motto Ugushaka Nugushobura a Kirundi proverb that means Where theres a will, theres a way.

They began in early April, putting in 3-4 hours after their high school classes, working out of a classroom at a technical institute owned by Audreys mother. FIRST Global connected the novices withRichard and Isabelle Marchand, a couple who have led robotics squads in Christiansburg, Va. The pair became virtual mentors, coaching them via Skype amid regular power outages.

Once the students landed in the United States, the Marchands would become their caretakers, ensuring that the teens, who were unfamiliar with American cuisine, were fed, Bindaba said. Reached at their home, Isabelle Marchand declined to comment, referring questions to Sestak.

From Friday to Tuesday, the teens spent hours at DAR Constitution Hall, arriving shortly after 7 a.m. to work on and practice with their robot. On Sunday evening, the teens strode onto the floor of DAR Constitution Hall for opening ceremonies, proudly waving the red, white and green Burundian flag, beaming and waving to the crowd. After, Bindaba said, Dons uncle took the team out to eat. Bindaba stayed behind.

Bindaba said he saw few signs that the teens had hatched a secret bid for possible asylum in the U.S. or Canada. They appeared nervous, Bindaba said, but he chalked that up to the competition and their new surroundings.

Before, I thought they were acting a bit strangely, Bindaba said, speaking from Bujumbura. I thought maybe it was their first time to be there, to see the big buildings that we dont have here.

Before closing ceremonies, Bindaba saw the teens onto the floor of the auditorium once more. They carried tiny flags and joined the throng of other competitors whistling and whooping, the ecstatic close to an exhilarating three-day competition. From the highest seats, Bindaba said, it was impossible to see the teens. He said he planned to decompress with the team over pizza and coke after the competition, a reward for the hard work that earned them a 73rd place finish out of about 160 teams. The following morning, the Marchands planned to give them a tour of the monuments. They had an interview scheduled with Voice of America.

Police said this is when at least some of the team members slipped away, taking advantage of the noise and the chaos surrounding the competitions end to disappear. At least one team member, Aristide, stayed behind. He helped Bindaba load the teams robot onto a school bus that would take them back to their dorms at Trinity University. Then, Aristide carried the robot to Bindabas room and told the coach that he was going to take a shower.

As Bindaba unloaded his bag, he noticed something peculiar: the other five team members had apparently secreted their name tags and room keys in to Bindabas bag. For the coach, it was a deeply unsettling discovery.

I knew something nasty was happening, Bindaba said. I felt it from within.

He then rushed to Aristides room: he was not there, and he had left behind a mess of pizza boxes and snacks. He checked the other rooms, too: the teens had still not returned.

I cannot really describe what I felt over there, but it was really scary for me, Bindaba said.

Bindaba also began sending panicked messages to the teens parents back in Burundi. But their replies made Bindaba suspicious: one childs uncle told the coachthat perhaps the children were nearby; anothers mother told him to cool down, that perhaps the team was out having fun.

I am not seeing the kids, Bindaba said. How can I cool down?

Around 5 a.m. Wednesday, about 12 hours before the teens were set to depart from Dulles Airport, Sestak called police to file a missing persons report. Their sober passport portraits went up on the D.C. police Twitter account, under the banner MISSING PERSONS.

Bindaba, who was unable to afford another plane ticket and had been assured the students were safe, headed home. The following morning, when Bindaba was still en route, police would announce two of the teens had made it to Canada.

The coach said he sympathizes with their desire to stay in the United States and Canada. But he said he wishes they understood what their skills and their potential could mean to the future of their own country. Burundi suffers from brain drain, with many of its brightest young people leaving to get education abroad and never returning. For me, they were some kind of hope for the future of this project in Burundi, Bindaba said. Its an opportunity for my entire country.

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He brought Burundi's first robotics team to the US to inspire his country. Then, the teens disappeared. - Washington Post

The missing teens are Aristide Irambona, 18 (clockwise from top left), Nice Munezero, 17, Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, Don Ingabire, 16, Richard Irakoze, 18, and Kevin Sabumukiza, 17. DC Metropolitan Police Department hide caption

The missing teens are Aristide Irambona, 18 (clockwise from top left), Nice Munezero, 17, Audrey Mwamikazi, 17, Don Ingabire, 16, Richard Irakoze, 18, and Kevin Sabumukiza, 17.

Washington, D.C., police say six teenagers from Burundi who competed in an international robotics competition were reported missing on Wednesday.

Two of the teens 16-year-old Don Ingabire and 17-year-old Audrey Mwamikazi were last seen leaving the U.S. and heading into Canada, the Metropolitan Police Department tells The Two-Way blog, adding that there is "no indication of foul play."

The six-person team participated in the first international high school robotics competition, called the First Global Challenge, earlier this week.

They were reportedly last seen on Tuesday, the final day of the competition.

The Metropolitan Police Department says it has no further information as of early Thursday afternoon about the whereabouts of Richard Irakoze, 18, Kevin Sabumukiza, 17, Nice Munezero, 17, and Aristide Irambona, 18, and adds that the case is under investigation.

The six teens four males and two females are shown smiling and posing with Burundi's flag on their team page on the competition's website. It says the teens were chosen from schools around the capital, Bujumbura, and are accompanied by a mentor.

According to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for the competition said "FIRST Global president Joe Sestak, a former Navy admiral and congressman, called police after receiving word from the team's mentor, Canesius Bindaba, that the teens had gone missing."

The Metropolitan Police provided NPR with six nearly identical police reports, which all state that Bindaba accompanied the teen to the robotics competition at Washington's DAR Constitution Hall. They each had one-year visas to the U.S. The mentor stated that each teen "went missing and he does not know where [they] could have went."

Authorities also says they canvassed the location where the event was held.

Burundi, which is in central Africa, has faced intense political unrest since 2015. "Hundreds of people have been killed, and many others tortured or forcibly disappeared," according to Human Rights Watch. "The country's once vibrant independent media and nongovernmental organizations have been decimated, and more than 400,000 people have fled the country."

The robotics competition previously attracted international headlines when Afghanistan's team of six teen girls were denied visas twice. As NPR's Laurel Wamsley reported, President Trump "intervened to find a way to permit the girls entry."

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Burundi High School Robotics Team Reported Missing In DC - NPR

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Lida Azizi, right, and other members of the Afghanistan team repair their robot during the competition. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hide caption

Lida Azizi, right, and other members of the Afghanistan team repair their robot during the competition.

The first international robotics competition for high schoolers made headlines before it even started and after the event was over as well.

First there was the story of the all-girl Afghanistan team, which was denied visas to attend for unknown reasons.

Then there was the post-competition story: All six teens on the Burundi team were reported missing on Wednesday, the day after the competition ended, with reports that two of them were headed to Canada.

At the last minute, the Afghan team did get visas. They waved their country's flag during the parade of nations at the event's opening ceremonies. And they showed off their robot. Like all the entries, it was designed to separate balls representing water particles and water contaminants, among other tasks.

So how did the Afghan team do?

"The girls did a good job in the competition," says Roya Mahboob. She's a tech entrepreneur from Afghanistan and the CEO of the Digital Citizen Fund, the nonprofit which sponsored the team.

"They did much better than many of the other countries, but of course we could still do better. We had less experience and practice," Mahboob says.

They ranked 114th out of 163 teams ahead of the U.S. and the United Kingdom teams.

And they didn't go home empty-handed. They did win an award for "courageous achievement" for showing a "can-do attitude' throughout the Challenge, even under difficult circumstances, or when things do not go as planned," according to First Global, the nonprofit that organized the event.

The other two "courageous achievement" winners were the teams from South Sudan and Oman.

The Afghan team was thrilled by the award: "They got so excited, they were very happy," Mahboob says.

Mexican billionaire and First Global founding member Ricardo Salinas announced during the competition that next year's international robotics competition will be held in Mexico City.

The Afghanistan team hopes to be back.

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How Did The Afghan All-Girl Team Do At The Robotics Competition? - NPR

Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) is hamstrung on a "psychological barrier" at 1,000 a share, an analyst arguedFriday as the stock toppled despite the robot surgeon-maker's sales and earnings beat late Thursday.

XAutoplay: On | OffThe numbers simply weren't good enough to pull the stock above 1,000, Evercore analyst Vijay Kumar said. On the stock market today, Intuitive Surgical stock tumbled 4.6% to close at 927.47.

Shares have climbed by half this year, and closed in on the 1,000 mark Thursday, hitting a high at 974.66. Intuitive Surgical inched up after hours following its second-quarter earnings report.

"While a headline revenue, procedure and overall systems beat all pointed to 'life is good' for Intuitive Surgical, they key question for investors is whether these numbers were enough to drive the stock higher and potentially break through the 1,000 psychological barrier," Kumar said.

IBD'S TAKE:Intuitive Surgical is fending off robotics advances from Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google and Medtronic (MDT). How will it fare as offerings from those rivals come to fruition? Visit IBD Data Stories.

U.S. procedures a proxy for overall health of the company continued to be healthy, he wrote in a note to clients. That said, procedure guidance implies a slowdown in the second half of the year from the first half.

"Guidance of about 15% (growth) at the high end implies about 13% (growth) in the second half of the year vs. 17% seen in the first year," he wrote.

RBC analyst Brandon Henry doesn't see the same psychological barrier at 1,000.He upped his price target on Intuitive Surgical stock to 1,000 from 950. But her kept his sector perform rating on the stock.

Henry also increased his sales views for 2017 and 2018 to $3.03 billion and $3.38 billion, respectively, and calls for adjusted profits to come in at a respective $23.65 and $26.65 a share.

Meanwhile, Intuitive Surgical is working to maintain its lead in robotics and is aiming to have a lung biopsy system launched in 2019. It's facing robotics competition from the likes of Google parent Alphabet and Medtronic.

"While robotics competition is coming, Intuitive Surgical is making the necessary investments to expand its total addressable market and remain a premium player in the surgical robotics market," he wrote in a note to clients.

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7/21/2017 Despite a disappointing outlook, eBay management reiterated 2017 guidance, which implies accelerating growth in the second half.

7/21/2017 Despite a disappointing outlook, eBay management reiterated 2017 guidance, which...

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This Robotics Player Neared 1000, Then Toppled Here's Why - Investor's Business Daily

In and interview earlier this week at theTechCrunch Robotics Sessionheld on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA, Sami Atiya, president of ABBs Robotics and Motion division, said he believes bringing robots into the manufacturing process actually adds jobs instead of killing them.

ABB certainly has some data points with more than 300,000 industrial robots installed worldwide, and Atiya claims that conventional wisdom is wrong when it comes to robots and jobs. Automation is going to drive more productivity and also jobs, he said. He went on to say that countries with the highest ratios of humans to industrial robots in production environments also have the lowest rates of manufacturing unemployment.

If you look at pure data and statistics, he said, in the countries that have the highest rates of robots per employees, which is Japan and Germany, they have about 300 robots per 10,000 employees, and they have the least unemploymentin the manufacturing sector.

He also claimed that there have been 100,000 industrial robots installed in the U.S. in the last five years, which has resulted in 270,000 additional jobs, more than two jobs for every robot. (ABB cites the International Federation of Robotics, World Bank, OECD and BLS as sources for these numbers.)

There has been, of course, a lot of speculation that as companies increase the use of robots to automate jobs, there will be corresponding job loss. In May, an article in the LA Times appeared to back up this assertion, citing a study by PwC, whichclaimed that 38 percent of all U.S. jobs could be lost to automation by the early 2030s. Thats a frightening prospect to many people and to policy makers who would have to deal with the fallout if that were to happen.

An article on CNN Money from last March, smack dab in the middle of the contentious presidential campaign, cited numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000. While there has been much debate for the reason, the article claims robots and machines have been a big contributing factor in replacing workers. Its worth noting that there are still more than 12 million jobs in the sector in spite of decades of steady decline.

ABB Robot arm. Photo: Veanne Cao, TechCrunch

Atiya said one of the reasons companies are moving to robots is they simply cant compete without them. If you look at this from a macro-[economic] perspective, skilled labor is becoming [more scarce], and its not a question [whether] you want to do it or not. You have to do it to stay competitive as a nation, and also as a company, he said.

Atiya used the standard argument for these types of historical economic transitions, comparing the increasing use of robotics with the rise of the steam engine, electricity and industrialization. The common belief during all of these key changes was that they would kill jobs, but in the end they created more jobs because of productivity increases, he said (and history backs him up).

Obviously we have concerns and fears about new technologies, but ultimately we humans, Im very convinced, will find ways to cope with them, and use them as tools as opposed to substituting our own work, he said.

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Sami Atiya from ABB says industrial robots will add jobs, not take ... - TechCrunch