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One of the interesting consequences of the emergent upshift in visual systems is that all streetlights, car headlights and other external sources of lighting will no longer be needed within around a decade. This will not only make astronomers happy, since they will be able to see the dark skies again but will simplify urban infrastructure. The three convergent elements making this change of affairs come about are the following:

1) Quanta Image Sensors, whether of the SPAD or the CIS-QIS versions are expected to become widely available within 5 to 10 years. Unlike the CMOS image sensors in billions of cell-phone cameras, which only register packets of the incoming light, these sensors can register single photons of light. The most versatile of these are the QIS sensors being developed by Fossum—who also developed the CMOS sensor—wherein a single jot\.

Demonstrating single-photon sensitivity at room temperature without avalanche multiplication, QIS technology offers sub-diffraction-limited pixel sizes and many degrees of freedom in computing the reconstruction of the image to emphasize resolution, sensitivity, and motion-deblur.

Continue reading “Advances in Detectors: The Quanta image sensor (QIS): Making every photon count” | >

Machine learning is capable of doing all sorts of things as long as you have the data to teach it how. That’s not always easy, and researchers are always looking for a way to add a bit of “common sense” to AI so you don’t have to show it 500 pictures of a cat before it gets it. Facebook’s newest research takes a big step toward reducing the data bottleneck.

The company’s formidable AI research division has been working for years now on how to advance and scale things like advanced computer vision algorithms, and has made steady progress, generally shared with the rest of the research community. One interesting development Facebook has pursued in particular is what’s called “semi-supervised learning.”

Generally when you think of training an AI, you think of something like the aforementioned 500 pictures of cats — images that have been selected and labeled (which can mean outlining the cat, putting a box around the cat or just saying there’s a cat in there somewhere) so that the machine learning system can put together an algorithm to automate the process of cat recognition. Naturally if you want to do dogs or horses, you need 500 dog pictures, 500 horse pictures, etc. — it scales linearly, which is a word you never want to see in tech.

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Still calling 2025 for the debut of a robotic set of human level hands.

Although robotic devices are used in everything from assembly lines to medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for the friction that occurs when those robots grip objects – particularly in wet environments. Researchers have now discovered a new law of physics that accounts for this type of friction, which should advance a wide range of robotic technologies.

“Our work here opens the door to creating more reliable and functional haptic and robotic devices in applications such as telesurgery and manufacturing,” says Lilian Hsiao, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the work.

At issue is something called elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) friction, which is the friction that occurs when two solid surfaces come into contact with a thin layer of fluid between them. This would include the friction that occurs when you rub your fingertips together, with the fluid being the thin layer of naturally occurring oil on your skin. But it could also apply to a robotic claw lifting an object that has been coated with oil, or to a surgical device that is being used inside the human body.

Continue reading “New Law of Physics Helps Humans and Robots Grasp the Friction of Touch” | >

Scientists from the University of Bristol’s Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QETLabs) have developed an algorithm that provides valuable insights into the physics underlying quantum systems—paving the way for significant advances in quantum computation and sensing, and potentially turning a new page in scientific investigation.

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A seabed mining robot being tested on the Pacific Ocean floor at a depth of more than 4 km (13000 ft) has become detached, the Belgian company running the experimental trial said on Wednesday.

Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), the deep-sea exploratory division of dredging company DEME Group, has been testing Patania II, a 25-tonne mining robot prototype, in its concession in the Clarion Clipperton Zone since April 20.

The machine is meant to collect the potato-sized nodules rich in cobalt and other battery metals that pepper the seabed in this area, and was connected to GSR’s ship with a 5km cable.

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Great new episode with University of Hawaii cosmologist Brent Tully who’s been mapping the local cosmos for 50 years now. This is a good one! Please have a listen.

World-renowned, University of Hawaii cosmologist Brent Tully on 50 years of mapping the nearby universe which includes our own home supercluster ‘Laniakea.’ Tully candidly assesses the state of cosmography, the science of making 3D maps of the nearby universe and speculates on when astronomers will finally map the cosmos in its entirety.

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The project is a part of a much wider effort to bring artificial intelligence into the operating room. Using many of the same technologies that underpin self-driving cars, autonomous drones and warehouse robots, researchers are working to automate surgical robots too. These methods are still a long way from everyday use, but progress is accelerating.

Real scalpels, artificial intelligence — what could go wrong?

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Leading industrial companies are using artificial intelligence to analyze data from their manufacturing tracking systems to spot the causes of potential defects in real-time.

Robert Bosch GmbH is one of the latest to deploy AI to analyze data from its manufacturing execution systems, as the monitoring and tracking systems are called. General Electric Co. and Siemens AG have already deployed such systems.

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A bold project to read the complete genetic sequences of every known vertebrate species reaches its first milestone by publishing new methods and the first 25 high-quality genomes.

It’s one of the most audacious projects in biology today – reading the entire genome of every bird, mammal, lizard, fish, and all other creatures with backbones.

And now comes the first major payoff from the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP): near complete, high-quality genomes of 25 species, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator Erich Jarvis with scores of coauthors report April 28, 2021, in the journal Nature. These species include the greater horseshoe bat, the Canada lynx, the platypus, and the kākāpō parrot – one of the first high-quality genomes of an endangered vertebrate species.

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