Lifeboat Foundation

BYD’s announcement of a substantial upgrade to its intelligent driving system signals a notable advancement in its efforts to improve this technology. Scheduled for March 30th, this update signifies a significant step forward for BYD in the realm of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The upgrade will further enhance its Navigation On Autopilot (NOA) or its internally known Urban Navigation Assistance (UNA) system in cities across China.

The upgrade was alluded to in 2023 with the BYD Denza N7 with its advanced lidar system and came on the heels of recent improvements to Xpeng’s XNGP intelligent driving system. Telsa has also been a strong competitor in the intelligent driving race, with announcements last year aiming to improve its FSD system. According to sources, the initial rollout of BYD’s Urban Navigation Assistance (UNA) system is slated for March 30th, starting with the N7 model among its existing lineup of over 20 vehicles.

A Chinese team of life scientists, microbiologists, plant researchers and seed designers has developed a way to grow engineered moss with partially synthetic genes. In their project, reported in the journal Nature Plants, the group engineered a moss that is one of the first living things to have multiple cells carrying a partially artificial chromosome.

Several research projects have been working toward the goal of creating plants with synthetic genes —such plants could be programmed to produce more food, for example, or more oxygen, or to pull more carbon dioxide from the air. Last year, one team of researchers developed a way to program up to half of the genome of yeast cells using synthetic genes.

In this new effort, the team in China upped the ante by replacing natural moss genes with genes created in a lab—moss is far more genetically complex than yeast. They call their project SynMoss.

A coating that can hide objects in plain sight, or an implant that behaves exactly like bone tissue—these extraordinary objects are already made from “metamaterials.” Researchers from TU Delft have now developed an AI tool that not only can discover such extraordinary materials but also makes them fabrication-ready and durable. This makes it possible to create devices with unprecedented functionalities. They have published their findings in Advanced Materials.

The properties of normal materials, such as stiffness and flexibility, are determined by the molecular composition of the material, but the properties of metamaterials are determined by the geometry of the structure from which they are built. Researchers design these structures digitally and then have it 3D-printed. The resulting metamaterials can exhibit unnatural and extreme properties. Researchers have, for instance, designed metamaterials that, despite being solid, behave like a fluid.

Continue reading “New AI tool discovers realistic ‘metamaterials’ with unusual properties” »

The first Hyundai plant dedicated to building EVs and batteries in the US will be open as soon as this October. According to Hyundai Motor America CEO Jose Munoz, the brand is “pulling ahead” to gain eligibility for the $7,500 EV tax credit.

Hyundai began construction on its massive $7.6 billion EV megaplant in Georgia in October 2022. A year later, the company announced that 99.9% of the foundation work was complete as it fast-tracked construction.

The site “is advancing ever day,’” according to Oscar Kwon CEO of the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA).

IFixit went inside the Vision Pro to count every pixel.

Chinese EV maker Geely is launching a 4WD version of its Radar RD6 electric truck that will rival the Cybertruck. According to the brand’s CEO, it will have similar acceleration to Tesla’s Cybertruck while carrying heavy loads.

Geely, the parent company behind Volvo, Polestar, ZEEKR, and others, launched its Radar brand in 2022.

The brand is touted as “China’s first pure electric outdoors lifestyle vehicle brand.” Its first electric adventure vehicle, the RD6, began rolling out in China in September, starting at RMB 178,800 ($25,000).

ScrubMarine, a pioneering marine sector startup, is diving headfirst into the inaugural cohort of Heriot-Watt University’s DeepTech LaunchPad. The company, led by engineer Clyne Albertelli, is making waves with its underwater robot designed to combat biofouling—a persistent challenge for the shipping industry.

Biofouling is the accumulation of microorganisms, plants, and algae on marine vessels. It poses significant threats to hull structures and propulsion systems.

ScrubMarine’s autonomous underwater robot is on a mission to scrub away these challenges, promising to cut fuel costs, reduce maintenance needs, and minimize environmental impact for ships, boats, and submarines.

A coating that can hide objects in plain sight, or an implant that behaves exactly like bone tissue. These extraordinary objects are already made from metamaterials. Researchers from TU Delft have now developed an AI tool that not only can discover such extraordinary materials but also makes them fabrication-ready and durable. This makes it possible to create devices with unprecedented functionalities.

They published their findings in Advanced Materials (“Deep Learning for Size-Agnostic Inverse Design of Random-Network 3D Printed Mechanical Metamaterials”).

Continue reading “New AI tool discovers realistic metamaterials with unusual properties (w/video)” »

Quantum computing has been hailed as a technology that can outperform classical computing in both speed and memory usage, potentially opening the way to making predictions of physical phenomena not previously possible.

Many see quantum computing’s advent as marking a paradigm shift from classical, or conventional, computing. Conventional computers process information in the form of digital bits (0s and 1s), while quantum computers deploy quantum bits (qubits) to store quantum information in values between 0 and 1.

Under certain conditions, this ability to process and store information in qubits can be used to design quantum algorithms that drastically outperform their classical counterparts. Notably, quantum’s ability to store information in values between 0 and 1 makes it difficult for classical computers to perfectly emulate quantum ones.