Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers from the University of Warsaw have employed liquid crystalline elastomers and soft robotics techniques to make a small robot caterpillar that moves according to light conditions.

Soft robotics is a field that not too many are familiar with, but it has led to the creation of some stunning robots. Far from the large and rigid clunkers that are the public face of robots (think: Atlas), soft robotics focuses on bots with a lighter touch, mimicking the graceful movements of natural organisms.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Made A Tiny Robotic Caterpillar That’s Powered By Light” »

Harvard researchers were able to create the world’s first fully autonomous soft robot. Ultimately, it is controlled by a pneumatic system.

A group of Harvard engineers were able to create a completely autonomous robot using soft robotics. Notably, this is the first robot created that does not use any hard components. And if that’s not enough, it’s also the world’s first completely autonomous soft robot.

The team’s work was published in Nature, and you can see the robot in action in the video below.

Continue reading “Harvard Made the World’s First All-Soft Robot. It’s Autonomous and It’s Adorable” »

Water storage, GPS and air supply tanks come standard.

O Google planeja supremacia quantum.

Google está construindo computador qu ntico de 50 qubits.

Something big happened this week at Singularity University.

79 participants from 49 different countries graduated from Singularity University’s 10-week flagship Global Solutions Program (GSP).

Over 30 team projects were launched during GSP, each focused on using exponential technology to address a massive global problem, such as water scarcity, malnutrition, and climate change.

Continue reading “5 Big Ideas From Singularity University’s 2016 Global Solutions Program” »

I HIGHLY recommend reading this novel, as well as it sequels! It’s a beautiful, smart, and occasionally frightening exploration of what our civilization will look like post singularity, what WE will look like as posthumans, and where we might go from there.

The Golden Age is Grand Space Opera, a large-scale SF adventure novel in the tradition of A. E. Van vogt and Roger Zelazny, with perhaps a bit of Cordwainer Smith enriching the style. It is an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF’s golden age writers.

The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale-the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia-Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion.

Continue reading “The Golden Age” »

Experts may reassure us that artificial intelligence won’t take over the world anytime soon – but they just might invade the multiplex.

At least that’s the plot developing at IBM, where the Watson artificial-intelligence team programmed a computer to come up with a scary trailer for “Morgan,” a thriller about a genetically modified, AI-enhanced super-human.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are building a “star in a jar” — a miniature version of the how our Sun creates energy through fusion. It could provide humankind with near limitless energy, ending dependence on fossil fuels for generating electricity — without contributing greenhouse gases that warm the Earth, and with no long-term radioactive waste.

But that requires a “jar” that can contain superhot plasma — and is low-cost enough to be built around the world. A model for such a “jar,” or fusion device, already exists in experimental form: the tokamak, or fusion reactor. Invented in the 1950s by Soviet physicists, it’s a device that uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma (superhot charged gas) in the shape of a torus.

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Elon Musk’s neural lace concept and the future scenarios and god-like abilities for humans merged at a neural level with the machine.