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In a new paper, the researchers explain how the robot can impressively locate and retrieve an item, even if it is covered by other objects and completely out of view of the main camera. All the robot’s owner has to do is attach RFID tags — cheap, battery-free tags that send signals to the antenna — to their valuable possessions.

“This idea of being able to find items in a chaotic world is an open problem that we’ve been working on for a few years. Having robots that are able to search for things under a pile is a growing need in industry today. Right now, you can think of this as a Roomba on steroids, but in the near term, this could have a lot of applications in manufacturing and warehouse environments,” senior author Fadel Adib explained in MIT’s statement.

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Get ready for the future of mobility.

The world is moving to electric vehicles (EVs), but we are still rolling on vehicle concepts meant for heavy internal combustion engines. Challenging the very concept of what a mobility solution should look like is the Ryzr, from new players in the EV market, R.

As the pandemic pushed people to opt for more independent mobility solutions, bicycle sales rocketed in many parts of the world, the BBC reported last year. With its open concept, R’s Ryzr is designed to offer the same thrill as cycling does on open streets but with a more relaxed car-like seating comfort.

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Data infrastructure technology solutions from the Santa Clara, California-based company Marvell have already become an industry benchmark. Now the company has expanded its 5nm data infrastructure portfolio with a line of high-performance Prestera carrier switches and its OCTEON 10 data processing units (DPUs).

Marvell’s Prestera switches combine high-bandwidth, high-availability, and resilient switching systems with speed and high-precision synchronization benefits. In particular, the Prestera family’s optimization capability helps network operators scale with their 5G infrastructure needs. The new DX 7,321 Ethernet switch is another significant addition to the Prestera line.

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Blowing older methods away, which can take hours and even days.

Global data production is estimated to reach 463 exabytes per day by 2025 — which is the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day, per the World Economic Forum.

Our existing data-storage systems, which can hold only so many 0s and 1s, and consume huge amounts of energy and space, cannot last us forever, putting us on the cusp of a serious data-storage problem that can only worsen over time. DNA-based data storage may come to the rescue as an alternative to hard drives since our genetic code is millions of times more efficient at storing information than current solutions. Now, in a breakthrough development, researchers at Northwestern University have devised a new method for recording information to DNA that takes minutes rather than hours or days.

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“The twisted coils are the most expensive and complicated part of the stellarator and have to be manufactured to very great precision in a very complicated form,” physicist Per Helander, head of the Stellarator Theory Division at Max Planck and lead author of the new paper, told Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory News.

The new design offers a simpler approach by instead using permanent magnets, whose magnetic field is generated by the internal structure of the material itself. As described in an article published by Nature, Zarnstorff realized that neodymium–boron permanent magnets—which behave like refrigerator magnets, only stronger—had become powerful enough to potentially help control the plasma in stellarators.

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Scientists managed to arrange the electrons into a honeycomb-like lattice by sandwiching them in an electric field between two atom-thin layers of tungsten compounds, according to research published in the journal Nature last week. The ability to tame them — which scientists accomplished by exploiting the tiniest differences in the atomic structures of the two tungsten layers — marks an incredible experimental achievement that has, until now, eluded the most accomplished labs in physics.

Other researchers have claimed that they created Wigner crystals in the past, and Nature News notes that they had some convincing evidence. But no one’s actually presented imaged evidence of their crystal before, study coauthor and University of California, Berkeley physicist Feng Wang told Nature News in the physicist’s version of a microphone drop.

“If you say you have an electron crystal, show me the crystal,” he said.

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Circa 2018

Inspired by the children’s TV show Transformers, engineers have developed a robot that becomes a car.

Japanese firm Brave Robotics and amusement park ride manufacturer Sansei Technologies worked together on the development.

The designers say it’s the first time a machine of this kind has been able to carry people in a functioning vehicle.

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