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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,513

Blainjett’s hemi-rotor concept promises faster, more efficient VTOL performance

Blainjett Aviation announced that initial testing of its hemi-rotor aerodynamic concept has confirmed its potential to deliver faster, more efficient performance in VTOL aircraft. Subscale tests demonstrated the novel configuration’s net positive lift and low drag through the ascent/hover, cruise, and descent/hover phases of flight.

The startup is applying the hemi-rotor concept to a subscale drone as part of a path to demonstrating that the configuration can scale to larger unmanned or manned aircraft in eVTOL applications from package delivery and cargo to transport and tactical military roles. Blainjett’s hemi-rotor design situates familiar vertical lift rotors partially inside opposite sides of an enclosed fuselage. The airfoil-shaped fuselage also houses a pair of electric motors to drive the lift-rotors. Situated in the empennage above an inverted V-tail, the third motor powers a pusher prop.

In a hover, conventional open-rotors generate an even amount of lift all the way around. But when a traditional rotorcraft flies forward, its rotor blades both advances forward into the relative wind and retreat from it during rotation. This yields a dissymmetry of lift on opposing sides of the rotor arc, eventually creating a hard speed limit.

Scientists Have Built Artificial Neurons That Fully Mimic Human Brain Cells

Circa 2015 face_with_colon_three

Researchers have built the world’s first artificial neuron that’s capable of mimicking the function of an organic brain cell — including the ability to translate chemical signals into electrical impulses, and communicate with other human cells.

These artificial neurons are the size of a fingertip and contain no ‘living’ parts, but the team is working on shrinking them down so they can be implanted into humans. This could allow us to effectively replace damaged nerve cells and develop new treatments for neurological disorders, such as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson’s disease.

“Our artificial neuron is made of conductive polymers and it functions like a human neuron,” lead researcher Agneta Richter-Dahlfors from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said in a press release.

This Cyber Security Service Utilizes Artificial Intelligence

This post is also available in: he עברית (Hebrew)

As everyday technologies get more and more advanced, cyber security must be at the forefront of every customer. Cyber security services have become common and are often used by private companies and the public sector in order to protect themselves from potential cyber attacks.

One of these services goes under the name Darktrace and has recently been acquired by Cybersprint, a Dutch provider of advanced cyber security services and a manufacturer of special tools that use machine learning algorithms to detect cyber vulnerabilities. Based on attack path modeling and graph theory, Darktrace’s platform represents organizational networks as directional, weighted graphs with nodes where multi-line segments meet and edges where they join. In order to estimate the probability that an attacker will be able to successfully move from node A to node B, a weighted graph can be used. Understanding the insights gained will make it easier for Darktrace to simulate future attacks.

Towards the interpretability of deep learning models for multi-modal neuroimaging: Finding structural changes of the ageing brain

Brain-age (BA) estimates based on deep learning are increasingly used as neuroimaging biomarker for brain health; however, the underlying neural features have remained unclear. We combined ensembles of convolutional neural networks with Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP) to detect which brain features contribute to BA. Trained on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of a population-based study (n = 2,637, 18–82 years), our models estimated age accurately based on single and multiple modalities, regionally restricted and whole-brain images (mean absolute errors 3.37–3.86 years). We find that BA estimates capture ageing at both small and large-scale changes, revealing gross enlargements of ventricles and subarachnoid spaces, as well as white matter lesions, and atrophies that appear throughout the brain. Divergence from expected ageing reflected cardiovascular risk factors and accelerated ageing was more pronounced in the frontal lobe. Applying LRP, our study demonstrates how superior deep learning models detect brain-ageing in healthy and at-risk individuals throughout adulthood.

Detecting Proof Of Life In Mars Samples May Be Well-Nigh Impossible

Finding definitive evidence for past primitive life in ancient Mars rock and soil samples may be well-nigh impossible, renowned geologist and astrobiologist Frances Westall told me at the recent Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) in Granada, Spain. And she should know. Westall is someone who still claims the discovery of Earth’s oldest-known microfossils, dating back some 3.45-billion-years ago.

But it’s hard enough to identify primitive microfossils in Earth’s oldest rocks, much less from robotic samples taken on Mars. Thus, if we have a hard time identifying past life on Earth, what hope do we have of doing it with Mars samples?

“I think it’s going to be really difficult,” said Westall, a researcher at France’s Center for Molecular Biophysics in Orleans. “I can tell you, there’s going to be a lot of arguments about it.”

Bioinspired robots walk, swim, slither and fly

Such robotic schools could be tasked with locating and recording data on coral reefs to help researchers to study the reefs’ health over time. Just as living fish in a school might engage in different behaviours simultaneously — some mating, some caring for young, others finding food — but suddenly move as one when a predator approaches, robotic fish would have to perform individual tasks while communicating to each other when it’s time to do something different.

“The majority of what my lab really looks at is the coordination techniques — what kinds of algorithms have evolved in nature to make systems work well together?” she says.

Many roboticists are looking to biology for inspiration in robot design, particularly in the area of locomotion. Although big industrial robots in vehicle factories, for instance, remain anchored in place, other robots will be more useful if they can move through the world, performing different tasks and coordinating their behaviour.

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