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Category: robotics/AI – Page 11

Laude × CSGE: Bill Joy — 50 Years of Advancements: Computing and Technology 1975–2025 (and beyond)

From the rise of numerical and symbolic computing to the future of AI, this talk traces five decades of breakthroughs and the challenges ahead.

Bill is the author of Berkeley UNIX, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, author of “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (Wired 2000), ex-cleantech VC at Kleiner Perkins, investor in and unpaid advisor to Nodra. AI.

Talk Details.
50 Years of Advancements: Computing and Technology 1975–2025 (and beyond)

I came to UC Berkeley CS in 1975 as a graduate student expecting to do computer theory— Berkeley CS didn’t have a proper departmental computer, and I was tired of coding, having written a lot of numerical code for early supercomputers.

But it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Berkeley soon had a Vax superminicomputer, I installed a port of UNIX and was upgrading the operating system, and the Internet and Microprocessor boom beckoned.

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Robots combine AI learning and control theory to perform advanced movements

When it comes to training robots to perform agile, single-task motor skills, such as handstands or backflips, artificial intelligence methods can be very useful. But if you want to train your robot to perform multiple tasks—say, performing a backward flip into a handstand—things get a little more complicated.

“We often want to train our robots to learn new skills by compounding existing skills with one another,” said Ian Abraham, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “Unfortunately, AI models trained to allow robots to perform complex skills across many tasks tend to have worse performance than training on an individual task.”

To solve for that, Abraham’s lab is using techniques from optimal control—that is, taking a mathematical approach to help robots perform movements in the most efficient and optimal way possible. In particular, they’re employing hybrid control theory, which involves deciding when an autonomous system should switch between control modes to solve a task. The research is published on the arXiv preprint server.

Study finds AI can safely assist with some software annotation tasks

A dystopian future where advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems replace human decision-making has long been a trope of science fiction. The malevolent computer HAL, which takes control of the spaceship in Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a chilling example.

But rather than being fearful of automation, a more useful response is to consider what types of repetitive human tasks could be safely offloaded to AI, particularly with the advances of large language models (LLMs) that can sort through vast amounts of data, see patterns and make predictions.

Such is the area of research co-authored by Christoph Treude, an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Singapore Management University (SMU). The team explores potential roles for LLMs in annotating software engineering artifacts, a process that is expensive and time-consuming when done manually.

Watch: Humanoid robots sort boxes in real-time warehouse demo

Yay 😁 Robotic utopia here we come!

Mentee Robotics, an Israeli company started by Mobileye co-founder Amnon Shashua, has released a new video of its V3 MenteeBot working in a real warehouse.

The company shared an unedited 18-minute test where two humanoid robots work together in space.

Many in the industry now see long, continuous footage like this as a strong sign of real capability. Mentee says the test was fully autonomous and done without any remote control.

An AI-Based System Has Found a Potential Longevity Drug

In a preprint published in bioRxiv, Prof. Vadim Gladyshev and a team of researchers have used an artificial intelligence-based system to discover a wide variety of potential interventions, including a drug that significantly improves biomarkers of frailty in mice.

Repurposing previous data

Previous research efforts have created a massive dataset in the form of the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), which contains the results of a great many experiments related to potentially disease-modifying drugs, many of which are tissue-specific [1]. These researchers refer to this dataset as a “massive missed opportunity” in aging research, because the vast majority of the experiments in the GEO were unrelated to aging and their data was never investigated in that context.

AI can speed antibody design

Extracellular ATP is an environmental cue in bacteria.

Extracellular ATP acts as a signal regulating physiology and immunity in eukaryotes and is elevated during intestinal infection or damage. Tronnet et al. show that extracellular ATP reprograms the transcriptional and metabolic landscapes of gut bacteria, impacting biofilm formation, production of bioactive metabolites, bacterial envelope composition, antimicrobial resistance, and virulence.

Pesticides and other common chemical pollutants are toxic to ‘good’ gut bacteria, lab-based screening indicates

A large-scale laboratory screening of human-made chemicals has identified 168 chemicals that are toxic to bacteria found in the healthy human gut. These chemicals stifle the growth of gut bacteria thought to be vital for health. The research, including the new machine learning model, is published in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Most of these chemicals, likely to enter our bodies through food, water, and environmental exposure, were not previously thought to have any effect on bacteria.

As the bacteria alter their function to try and resist the chemical pollutants, some also become resistant to antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin. If this happens in the human gut, it could make infections harder to treat.

Innovative materials boost stretchable digital displays’ performance

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) power the high-end screens of our digital world, from TVs and phones to laptops and game consoles.

If those displays could stretch to cover any 3D or irregular surfaces, the doors would be open for technologies like wearable electronics, medical implants and humanoid robots that integrate better with or mimic the soft human body.

“Displays are the intuitive application, but a stretchable OLED can also be used as the light source for monitoring, detection and diagnosis devices for diabetes, cancers, heart conditions and other major health problems,” said Wei Liu, a former postdoctoral researcher in the lab of University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) Assoc. Prof. Sihong Wang.

Interlaced origami structure enables compact storage and high-strength robotic deployment

Researchers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, have applied the principle of interlacing to an origami-inspired structure and developed a “Foldable-and-Rollable corruGated Structure (FoRoGated-Structure)” that can be smoothly folded and rolled up for compact storage while maintaining very high strength when deployed. The study was published in the journal Science Robotics on November 26.

The team was led by Professor Kyu-Jin Cho—Director of the Human-Centered Soft Robotics Research Center and a founding member of the SNU Robotics Institute (SNU RI).

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