Proponents say the AI-powered Judging Support System will promote fairness and transparency in the sport. But can it deliver?
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Why everyone’s excited about household robots again
“The missing piece is AI,” he says.
AI has also shown promise in getting robots to respond to verbal commands, and helping them adapt to the often messy environments in the real world. For example, Google’s RT-2 system combines a vision-language-action model with a robot. This allows the robot to “see” and analyze the world, and respond to verbal instructions to make it move. And a new system called AutoRT from DeepMind uses a similar vision-language model to help robots adapt to unseen environments, and a large language model to come up with instructions for a fleet of robots.
And now for the bad news: even the most cutting-edge robots still cannot do laundry. It’s a chore that is significantly harder for robots than for humans. Crumpled clothes form weird shapes which makes it hard for robots to process and handle.
New fuel cell taps energy from dirt-dwelling microbes to power sensors
A newly invented fuel cell taps into naturally present, and ubiquitous microbes in the soil to generate power.
This soil-powered device, about the size of a regular paperback book, offers a viable alternative to batteries in underground sensors used for precision agriculture.
Northwestern University highlighted the durability of its robust fuel cell, showcasing its ability to withstand various environmental conditions, including both arid soil and flood-prone areas.
Scientists generate ‘first’ stable qubits at room temperature
‘This is the first room-temperature quantum coherence of entangled quintets.’
A team of researchers from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering, led by Associate Professor Nobuhiro Yanai, has shattered barriers by achieving quantum coherence at room temperature.
Researchers show room-temperature quantum coherence by observing the entangled quintet state with four electron spins in molecular systems.
Researchers use light-reactive molecules to capture carbon dioxide
The new method from ETH Zurich departs from traditional carbon capture, relying on temperature or pressure, minimizing energy consumption.
The details of the study, led by Maria Lukatskaya, Professor of Electrochemical Energy Systems at ETH Zurich, were published in the journal ACS.
Acid switch
The team at ETH Zurich utilized the principle that CO2 exists in its gaseous form in acidic aqueous solutions. In contrast, in alkaline aqueous solutions, it undergoes a reaction to produce carbonates, referred to as salts of carbonic acid. This chemical transformation is reversible, and the acidity level of a liquid decides whether it contains CO2 or carbonates.
China’s nuclear battery powers your smartphone for 50 years straight
Betavolt wants to create batteries that will last a lifetime by 2025.
A Chinese startup called Betavolt has cooked up this itty-bitty nuclear battery — about the size of a little coin — which they claim can crank out electricity for 50 years straight, with no charging pit stops needed.
As the company leaps from development to the pilot stage, they’re gearing up for full-scale production and a grand entrance into the market pretty soon.
How did they create it?
The Beijing-based company also claims that its nuclear battery is the world’s first to successfully miniaturize atomic energy, fitting 63 nuclear isotopes into a module smaller than a coin.