Lifeboat Foundation

Invented by researchers at UC Riverdale and U of Notre Dame, this soft robot built using multi-layered film can clean up oil spills.

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🎥 Ecorobotix SA

In the not-too-distant future, many of us may routinely use 3D headsets to interact in the metaverse with virtual iterations of companies, friends, and life-like company assistants. These may include Lily from AT&T, Flo from Progressive, Jake from State Farm, and the Swami from CarShield. We’ll also be interacting with new friends like Nestlé‘s Cookie Coach, Ruth, the World Health Organization’s Digital Health worker Florence, and many others.

Creating digital characters for virtual reality apps and in ecommerce is a fast-rising new segment of IT. San Francisco-based Soul Machines, a company that is rooted in both the animation and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors, is jumping at the opportunity to create animated digital avatars to bolster interactions in the metaverse. Customers are much more likely to buy something when a familiar face — digital or human — is involved.

Investors, understandably, are hot on the idea. This week, the 6-year-old company revealed an infusion of series B financing ($70 million) led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, bringing the company’s total funding to $135 million to date.

But it comes with an extra-long keel. Sailing through the seas is full of adventures, but you miss 29 percent of the world when you’re on a yacht.

The Air Yacht uses solar energy as an extra power source thanks to two solar-powered blimps instead of traditional parallel hulls.

Continue reading “The Stunning New ‘Air Yacht’ Is a Catamaran That Floats to the Skies” »

Tesla is again rumored to be near a deal for a major new battery venture in Indonesia after a new round of talks with officials and even CEO Elon Musk meeting with the Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

It’s not the first time that talks of Tesla making a major investment in Indonesia have emerged.

In 2020, we reported on Tesla allegedly being in talks with the Indonesian government to build a new nickel venture in the country, which has a strong nickel reserve.

Can we deploy a constellation of solar power generating satellites to energize the entire planet? It is feasible.

In this second part of a two-part series, we look at a constellation of solar satellites as an alternative to geosynchronous power arrays.

A research group from Politecnico di Milano has developed a new computing circuit that can execute advanced operations, typical of neural networks for artificial intelligence, in one single operation.

The circuit performance in terms of speed and energy consumption paves the way for a new generation of artificial intelligence computing accelerators that are more energy efficient and more sustainable on a global scale. The study has been recently published in the prestigious Science Advances.

Recognizing a face or an object, or correctly interpreting a word or a musical tune are operations that are today possible on the most common electronic gadgets, such as smartphones and tablets, thanks to artificial intelligence. For this to happen, complicated neural networks needs to be appropriately trained, which is so energetically demanding that, according to some studies, the carbon footprint that derives from the training of a complex neural network can equal the emission of 5 cars throughout their whole life cycle.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is considering a visit to Indonesia to explore investment opportunities in the resource-rich Southeast Asia country.

The chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the rocket manufacturer’s site in Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday, during which Widodo extended an invite. “Hopefully in November, thank you for the invitation,” Musk said, according to a statement released by Widodo’s office.