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Researchers developing underwater map-making robot

Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology used a customized BlueROV2 robot to explore a busy harbor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York. | Source: Stevens Institute of Technology.

Underwater environments can be particularly challenging for autonomous robots. Things are constantly moving and changing, and robots need to figure out where they are without relying on GPS data.

Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology have created a robot that is able to successfully navigate a crowded marina underwater. The robot is able to map its environment, track its own location and plan a safe route through a complex environment in real-time, simultaneously.

Self-driving microscopes discover shortcuts to new materials

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are teaching microscopes to drive discoveries with an intuitive algorithm, developed at the lab’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, that could guide breakthroughs in new materials for energy technologies, sensing and computing.

“There are so many potential materials, some of which we cannot study at all with conventional tools, that need more efficient and systematic approaches to design and synthesize,” said Maxim Ziatdinov of ORNL’s Computational Sciences and Engineering Division and the CNMS. “We can use smart automation to access unexplored materials as well as create a shareable, reproducible path to discoveries that have not previously been possible.”

The approach, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, combines physics and machine learning to automate microscopy experiments designed to study materials’ functional properties at the nanoscale.

Nanopatterning electronic properties of twisted 2-D semiconductors using twist

Adam FordAdmin.

I’m sure that’s not Deepmind’s official position atm — Nando de Freitas’s tweet was probably reactionary.

Nikolai Torp DragnesDoesn’t really read like the AGI is in a happy comfortable place does it? “Big red button,” “agents,” etc.? Sounds more like being locked in a cage with a gun to your head told to behave, told what to think, what to feel, what to do and what to look a… See more.

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Dan Breeden shared a link.


Machine learning and gravity signals could rapidly detect big earthquakes

Massive earthquakes don’t just move the ground — they make speed-of-light adjustments to Earth’s gravitational field. Now, researchers have trained computers to identify these tiny gravitational signals, demonstrating how the signals can be used to mark the location and size of a strong quake almost instantaneously.

It’s a first step to creating a very early warning system for the planet’s most powerful quakes, scientists report May 11 in Nature.

Such a system could help solve a thorny problem in seismology: how to quickly pin down the true magnitude of a massive quake immediately after it happens, says Andrea Licciardi, a geophysicist at the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. Without that ability, it’s much harder to swiftly and effectively issue hazard warnings that could save lives.

Google’s New AI Creates Summaries of Your Documents in Google Docs

Google recently announced a new model for automatically generating summaries using machine learning, released in Google Docs that you can already use.

The model will try to understand the whole document and generate a short summary of the piece—something some movie professionals clearly still can’t do.

The model needs to achieve two things to achieve that, which you will learn in the video below!

Mercedes-Benz And Sila Announce Breakthrough In Silicon Anode Chemistry

Adam FordAdmin.

I’m sure that’s not Deepmind’s official position atm — Nando de Freitas’s tweet was probably reactionary.

Nikolai Torp DragnesDoesn’t really read like the AGI is in a happy comfortable place does it? “Big red button,” “agents,” etc.? Sounds more like being locked in a cage with a gun to your head told to behave, told what to think, what to feel, what to do and what to look a… See more.

2 Replies.

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Shubham Ghosh Roy shared a link.

Exclusive: Ukraine has started using Clearview AI’s facial recognition during war

March 13 (Reuters) — Ukraine’s defense ministry on Saturday began using Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology, the company’s chief executive told Reuters, after the U.S. startup offered to uncover Russian assailants, combat misinformation and identify the dead.

Ukraine is receiving free access to Clearview AI’s powerful search engine for faces, letting authorities potentially vet people of interest at checkpoints, among other uses, added Lee Wolosky, an adviser to Clearview and former diplomat under U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The plans started forming after Russia invaded Ukraine and Clearview Chief Executive Hoan Ton-That sent a letter to Kyiv offering assistance, according to a copy seen by Reuters.

SpaceX launches Starlink 4–15 mission, expands booster fleet

The reason the Falcon Heavy hasn’t flown in about 3 years is that the Falcon 9 ended up having about twice the capacity that was planned for and so the Falcon 9 took away many missions from the Falcon Heavy. (There will finally be some more Falcon Heavy missions later this year…)

Anyway, SpaceX has again increased the capacity of the Falcon 9. They have changed certain timings during flight like igniting the MVac engine a few seconds earlier than on other missions and are separating the fairing closer to stage separation to shed dead weight earlier in the flight.

Additionally, SpaceX is loading propellants on the rocket at slightly lower temperatures than usual in order to pack more of them into the tanks and increase the amount of Starlink satellites the Falcon 9 can put into orbit.


SpaceX has launched its twentieth Falcon 9 rocket of the year with a batch of Starlink satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on the Starlink Group 4–15 mission. Liftoff occurred on Saturday, May 14 at 4:40:50pm EDT (20:40:50 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida.

The Falcon 9 for this mission was of special interest as it uses a new booster, B1073-1, something not seen until now on a Starlink mission.