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Debut of LLM-enabled humanoid robot at event met with mixed reviews by human attendees

A team of roboticists at the University of Canberra’s Collaborative Robotics Lab, working with a sociologist colleague from The Australian National University, has found humans interacting with an LLM-enabled humanoid robot had mixed reactions. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes what they saw as they watched interactions between an LLM-enabled humanoid robot posted at an innovation festival and reviewed feedback given by people participating in the interactions.

Over the past couple of years, LLMs such as ChatGPT have taken the world by storm, with some going so far as to suggest that the new technology will soon make many human workers obsolete. Despite such fears, scientists continue to improve such technology, sometimes employing it in new places—such as inside an existing . That is what the team in Australia did—they added ChatGPT to the interaction facilities of a robot named Pepper and then posted the robot at an innovation festival in Canberra, where attendees were encouraged to interact with it.

Before it was given an LLM, Pepper was already capable of moving around autonomously and interacting with people on a relatively simple level. One of its hallmarks is its ability to maintain eye contact. Such abilities, the team suggested, made the robot a good target for testing with LLM-enabled humanoid robots “in the wild.”

Scientists Finally Discover a New Way to Travel Ten Times Faster than Light!

Watch THIS Next: https://youtu.be/6kcNzmUaTdA

Faster-than-light travel still seems like pure science fiction—but it could soon become a reality. Scientists have finally discovered a new way to travel at speeds ten times faster than light! Other research teams have made amazing breakthroughs in WARP technology, and in practice this could mean that in just 10 or 20 years we could have the first prototypes of spaceships capable of traveling enormous distances in ever shorter times.

Engineers introduce human-like driving technology for autonomous vehicles

Self-driving cars will soon be able to “think” like human drivers under complex traffic environments, thanks to a cognitive encoding framework built by a multidisciplinary research team from the School of Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

This innovation significantly enhances the safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs), reducing overall traffic risk by 26.3% and cutting potential harm to high-risk such as pedestrians and cyclists by an impressive 51.7%. Even the AVs themselves benefited, with their risk levels lowered by 8.3%, paving the way for a new framework to advance the automation of vehicle safety.

Existing AVs have one common limitation: their decision-making systems can only make pairwise risk assessments, failing to holistically consider interactions among multiple road users. This contrasts with a proficient driver who, for example, can skillfully navigate an intersection by prioritizing pedestrian protection while slightly compromising the safety of nearby vehicles. Once pedestrians are confirmed to be safe, the driver can then shift focus to nearby vehicles. Such risk management ability exhibited by humans is known as “social sensitivity.”

Compact magnetometer innovation enables ultra-sensitive detection in high magnetic fields

A research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a compact dynamic cantilever magnetometer with a diameter of just 22 mm, achieving magnetic moment sensitivity on the order of 10-17 A·m2.

“This breakthrough fills a technological gap in ultra-sensitive magnetic measurements for small, low-dimensional materials under ,” said Prof. Wang Ning, a member of the team.

The study was published in Review of Scientific Instruments.

AI Isn’t A Revolution—It’s A Productivity Engine

At Phobio, well-implemented AI hasn’t just made us faster—it’s made us sharper, more creative and more strategic. When routine tasks are streamlined, people have time to think deeply about customers, competition and innovation.

Closing Thoughts

AI isn’t coming to take your job. But someone who knows how to use it might.

Cambridge Physicists Pioneer Atomically-Thin Quantum Magnetic Sensors

Cambridge researchers created a quantum sensor using hBN, offering improved magnetic field detection over diamond-based sensors with new imaging possibilities. A team of physicists at the University of Cambridge has achieved a major breakthrough in quantum sensing by showing that spin defects in

“40% More Hydrogen From Sunlight”: Scientists Unleash Breakthrough Method That Could Reshape Global Green Energy Forever

IN A NUTSHELL 🌞 Solar hydrogen generation could revolutionize clean energy by converting sunlight into hydrogen fuel. 💡 Researchers discovered that elevating electrolyte temperatures boosts bismuth-vanadate electrode activity by 40%. 🔍 The study provides new insights into how temperature affects solar water splitting and metal-oxide cell performance. 🚀 Advancements in this field may accelerate the

New measurement of the mass of the Z boson from the Large Hadron Collider

The LHCb experiment has taken a leap in precision physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In a new paper submitted to Physical Review Letters and currently available on the arXiv preprint server, the LHCb collaboration reports the first dedicated measurement of the Z boson mass at the LHC, using data from high-energy collisions between protons recorded in 2016 during the collider’s second run.

The Z boson is a massive, electrically neutral particle that mediates the weak nuclear force—one of nature’s fundamental forces. With a mass of about 91 billion electronvolts (GeV), it ranks among the heaviest known elementary particles.

Discovered at CERN more than 40 years ago, alongside the W boson, the Z boson played a central role in confirming the Standard Model of particle physics—a breakthrough that led to the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics. Measuring its mass precisely remains essential for testing the Standard Model and searching for signs of new physics.

“Lasers Just Got Unstoppable”: Quantum Trick Turns Chaotic Light Into Ultra-Stable Beams That Break the Rules of Modern Physics

IN A NUTSHELL 🔬 Researchers have developed a groundbreaking method to convert noisy lasers into stable beams using nonlinear optical fibers and spectral filters. 📉 This innovative technique achieves noise levels 30 times lower than traditional laser beams while maintaining high intensity. 💡 The discovery enables the production of intensity-squeezed light, reducing photon variation beyond