Lifeboat Foundation

Training robots to complete tasks in the real-world can be a very time-consuming process, which involves building a fast and efficient simulator, performing numerous trials on it, and then transferring the behaviors learned during these trials to the real world. In many cases, however, the performance achieved in simulations does not match the one attained in the real-world, due to unpredictable changes in the environment or task.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have recently developed DayDreamer, a tool that could be used to train robots to complete real-world tasks more effectively. Their approach, introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv, is based on learning models of the world that allow robots to predict the outcomes of their movements and actions, reducing the need for extensive trial and error training in the real-world.

Continue reading “DayDreamer: An algorithm to quickly teach robots new behaviors in the real world” »

More frequencies of light can pass between two coupled wavy waveguides than between two coupled straight ones, something that could allow for more flexible designs of optics-based circuits on silicon chips.

More frequencies of light can pass between two coupled wavy waveguides than between two coupled straight ones, something that could allow for more flexible designs of optics-based circuits on silicon chips.

A trapped nanoparticle interacting with a laser provides a simple way to generate squeezed light, which has an unusually low level of fluctuations.

Project Mosquito barely got underway before it hit a dead end, with potential overseas designs waiting in the wings.

Project Mosquito barely got underway before it hit a dead end, with potential overseas designs waiting in the wings.

The man is among a handful who have gone into remission after the procedure, but it is not an option for most people.

Scientists have just found that using cubic boron arsenide in semiconductors could prove to be much better than silicon. Is silicon on its way out the door?

But Lindgren received an abrupt request to comment on the day’s big news: the new Russian space chief Yuri Borisov said the nation, which has been a steady NASA partner in space and that has ferried American astronauts up to the ISS as recently as 2020, would end their decades-long space station collaboration.

The news spread on Tuesday after the Kremlin published a transcript meant to represent a dialogue between Borisov and President Vladimir Putin, in which Borisov tells Putin that Russia will end their partnership on the ISS in 2024.

Continue reading “Russia announces an official exit from the ISS — surprising its decades-long partner NASA” »

Harnessing muons allows us to see through and inside objects to uncover their secrets.

A muon beam discovered a previously unknown room deep inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. Now DARPA wants to build muon beam imagers.