Stunning payload separation footage of the UP Aerospace SL-10 rocket. One of the four payloads deployed was a test version of the Maraia Capsule, a concept that was to be used to provide the inexpensive and autonomous on-demand return of small science samples from the International Space Station. Credit: UP Aerospace.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,103
NASA’s Voyager twins refuse to die
It’s been almost 42 years since NASA sent its two Voyager spacecraft on record-breaking missions, and both of the decades-old robots are still alive. Voyager 1 and 2 are 13.5 billion and 11.1 billion miles from Earth, respectively, and it’s up to NASA engineers to ensure they remain up and running for as long as possible.
As the agency reveals in a new update, mission managers recently decided to shut down one of the heaters on Voyager 2 which is designed to keep its cosmic ray subsystem (CRS) instrument at a comfortable temperature. This was done to conserve energy, but the CRS itself miraculously still works, despite dipping well below the temperatures it was tested at over four decades ago.
Tiny vibration-powered robots the size of the world’s smallest ant
Researchers have created a new type of tiny 3D-printed robot that moves by harnessing vibration from piezoelectric actuators, ultrasound sources or even tiny speakers. Swarms of these “micro-bristle-bots” might work together to sense environmental changes, move materials—or perhaps one day repair injuries inside the human body.
The prototype robots respond to different vibration frequencies depending on their configurations, allowing researchers to control individual bots by adjusting the vibration. Approximately two millimeters long—about the size of the world’s smallest ant—the bots can cover four times their own length in a second despite the physical limitations of their small size.
“We are working to make the technology robust, and we have a lot of potential applications in mind,” said Azadeh Ansari, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We are working at the intersection of mechanics, electronics, biology and physics. It’s a very rich area and there’s a lot of room for multidisciplinary concepts.”
First programmable memristor computer aims to bring AI processing down from the cloud
The first programmable memristor computer—not just a memristor array operated through an external computer—has been developed at the University of Michigan.
It could lead to the processing of artificial intelligence directly on small, energy-constrained devices such as smartphones and sensors. A smartphone AI processor would mean that voice commands would no longer have to be sent to the cloud for interpretation, speeding up response time.
“Everyone wants to put an AI processor on smartphones, but you don’t want your cell phone battery to drain very quickly,” said Wei Lu, U-M professor of electrical and computer engineering and senior author of the study in Nature Electronics.
Electronic chip mimics the brain to make memories in a flash
Researchers from RMIT University have drawn inspiration from optogenetics, an emerging tool in biotechnology, to develop a device that replicates the way the brain stores and loses information. Optogenetics allows scientists to delve into the body’s electrical system with incredible precision, using light to manipulate neurons so that they can be turned on or off.
The new chip is based on an ultra-thin material that changes electrical resistance in response to different wavelengths of light, enabling it to mimic the way neurons work to store and delete information in the brain. Research team leader Dr. Sumeet Walia said the technology has applications in artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can harness the brain’s full sophisticated functionality.
“Our optogenetically-inspired chip imitates the fundamental biology of nature’s best computer—the human brain,” Walia said. “Being able to store, delete and process information is critical for computing, and the brain does this extremely efficiently. We’re able to simulate the brain’s neural approach simply by shining different colors onto our chip. This technology takes us further on the path towards fast, efficient and secure light-based computing. It also brings us an important step closer to the realization of a bionic brain—a brain-on-a-chip that can learn from its environment just like humans do.”
Hajime Robot Restaurant
This restaurant hired robot waiters to serve you your food.