The deployment of capable AI agents raises fresh questions about safety, human–machine relationships and social coordination.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 213
New super-thin robot mimics muscle to crawl, twist, and grab objects
A team of researchers from South Korea has developed a thin, robotic actuator based on the movements of real human muscles.
Actuators are, effectively, the ‘muscles’ of robotic machines. They are devices that convert stored energy into physical motion.
The new system was inspired by human muscle proteins, a press statement reveals. It could eventually allow for human-robot interactions, and may even enable robots to perform delicate surgical procedures.
Elon Announces MOST Powerful FSD Update Ever
Questions to inspire discussion.
🛣️ Q: What specific improvements can we expect from the new FSD model? A: The new model will see and avoid potholes, drive better in parking lots, find parking spaces more efficiently, figure out pickup and drop-off zones for robotaxis, and handle high chaos situations like crowded areas more effectively.
Safety and Regulations.
🚦 Q: How does FSD’s safety compare to human drivers? A: Tesla’s FSD technology is already much safer than humans with the current Version 4, which has 8 cameras and 10x better parameters than previous versions, and it’s expected to improve further with future updates.
📊 Q: How significant are the improvements in the new FSD model? A: While the model has 10x better parameters, the features may not be 10x better, but improvements could be greater than 10x due to hard-to-measure benefits like reduced driving stress and increased safety.
🚫 Q: What’s limiting FSD’s full potential? A: Regulations currently hold FSD back from reaching its full potential, despite its ability to drive faster and handle high chaos situations more effectively.
Programmable Soft Materials: A Leap Forward in Energy Absorption and Shape-Shifting Design
Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), in collaboration with Harvard University, Caltech, Sandia National Laboratories, and Oregon State University, have unveiled a groundbreaking innovation in materials science: a programmable soft material capable of bending, bouncing, and absorbing energy on demand. This new material, described in the journal Advanced Materials, could pave the way for next-generation protective gear, aerospace structures, and adaptive robotic systems.
OpenAI releases ChatGPT-5 as AI race accelerates
OpenAI released a keenly awaited new generation of its hallmark ChatGPT on Thursday, touting “significant” advancements in artificial intelligence capabilities as a global race over the technology accelerates.
ChatGPT-5 is rolling out free to all users of the AI tool, which is used by nearly 700 million people weekly, OpenAI said in a briefing with journalists.
Co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman touted this latest iteration as “clearly a model that is generally intelligent.”
AI accelerates development of advanced heat-dissipating polymers
A machine learning method developed by researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, and other institutions accurately predicts liquid crystallinity of polymers with 96% accuracy. They screened over 115,000 polyimides and selected six candidates with a high probability of exhibiting liquid crystallinity. Upon successful synthesis and experimental analyses, these liquid crystalline polyimides demonstrated thermal conductivities up to 1.26 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹, accelerating the discovery of efficient thermal materials for next-generation electronics.
Finding new polymer materials that can efficiently dissipate heat while maintaining high reliability is one of the biggest challenges in modern electronics. One promising solution is liquid crystalline polyimides, a special class of polymers whose molecules naturally align into highly ordered structures.
These ordered chains create pathways for heat flow, making liquid crystalline polyimides highly attractive for thermal management in semiconductors, flexible displays, and next-generation devices. However, designing these polymers has long relied on trial and error because researchers lacked clear design rules to predict whether a polymer would form a liquid crystalline phase.
PCI-SIG Announces PCI-Express Gen 8 Specification: 256 Gbps Per Lane Per Direction, Arrives 2028
PCI-SIG today announced the PCI Express (PCIe) 8.0 specification will double the data of the PCIe 7.0 specification to 256.0 GT/s and is planned for release to members by 2028. “Following this year’s release of the PCIe 7.0 specification, PCI-SIG is excited to announce that the PCIe 8.0 specification will double the data rate to 256 GT/s, maintaining our tradition of doubling bandwidth every three years to support next-generation applications,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG President and Chairperson. “With the increasing data throughput required in AI and other applications, there remains a strong demand for high performance. PCIe technology will continue to deliver a cost-effective, high-bandwidth, and low-latency I/O interconnect to meet industry needs.”
AI-Powered Discovery of High-Performance Polymers for Heat Dissipation
In a groundbreaking step forward for polymer science and electronics cooling technology, researchers from Japan have leveraged artificial intelligence to identify a new class of liquid crystalline polyimides with remarkably high thermal conductivity. Their work, recently published in npj Computational Materials, combines data science, chemistry, and machine learning to accelerate the search for next-generation materials capable of efficiently dissipating heat in compact, high-performance electronics.