They may be the only cars to go more viral than Cybertruck.
Remember that Hyundai concept 4×4 with robotic legs?
The South Korean automotive giant actually means to make it a reality and it has announced a development and test facility in Montana for that very purpose.
Hyundai has a planned investment goal of $20 million over the next five years for its New Horizons Studio, which will employ 50 people.
In recent years, developers have created a wide range of sophisticated robots that can operate in specific environments in increasingly efficient ways. The body structure of many among these systems is inspired by nature, animals, and humans.
Although many existing robots have bodies that resemble those of humans or other animal species, programming them so that they also move like the animal they are inspired by is not always an easy task. Doing this typically entails the development of advanced locomotion controllers, which can require considerable resources and development efforts.
Researchers at DeepMind have recently created a new technique that can be used to efficiently train robots to replicate the movements of humans or animals. This new tool, introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv, is inspired from previous work that leveraged data representing real-world human and animal movements, collected using motion capture technology.
Meanwhile, the agency’s supersonic X-59 QueSST has completed wind-tunnel and stress tests.
David Mayman, CEO of JetPack Aviation, sells his new flying motorcycle to global militaries and billionaires. He’s also terrified of heights.
Elon Musk cast Twitter’s future into uncertainty when he made a successful $44 billion bid to acquire the company last month. He will take over as temporary CEO once the deal is complete, CNBC reported Thursday morning.
While countless Musk fans, and a slight majority of Americans—59%—approve of the takeover according to recent data from The Harris Poll, some current Twitter staff worry that it will dramatically change the company’s culture, and overall direction.
It’s still unclear how a Musk-run Twitter might impact the company’s ability to retain current staff and recruit new employees. The company presented the takeover as a potential threat to its staffing abilities in an SEC filing Monday.
But at least casual interest in open positions at the company has skyrocketed since the Tesla billionaire showed serious interest in taking over the company.
On Thursday, Daniel Zhao, a senior economist and data scientist at the job insights platform Glassdoor, tweeted that interest in job openings at the social media giant was up 263% between April 24 and April 30.
Though NASA’s aircraft may prove why electric flight isn’t the way to go. NASA is edging nearer to its first flight test for its all-electric experimental “X-plane” X-57 Maxwell after completing ground tests on the aircraft, a blog post from the space agency reveals.
The West Japan Rail Company (or JR West) unveiled its Gundam-style heavy equipment robot for carrying out repairs.
The robot takes on the appearance of a humanoid upper body mounted on the end of a hydraulic crane arm, which rides around on the rail system atop a specially braced rail car. The rail car can deploy stabilizing legs when it arrives at its destination along the line, allowing the robot to manipulate heavy equipment around the rail system instead of workers “to improve productivity and safety.”
The West Japan Rail Company has released video of its new humanoid heavy equipment robot. Mounted on the end of a crane, this gundam-style robot torso mimics the arm and head motions of a human pilot, who sees through the robot’s eyes via VR goggles.
The key objectives here, according to the company, are “to improve productivity and safety,” enabling workers to lift and naturally manipulate heavy equipment around the rail system without exposing them to the risk of electric shocks or falling.
The robot’s large torso is mounted to a hydraulic crane arm, which rides around the rail system on a specially braced rail car, putting down stabilizing legs when it’s time to get to work.
