Lifeboat Foundation

NASA is going to be testing a new precision landing system designed for use on the tough terrain of the moon and Mars for the first time during an upcoming mission of Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket. The “Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution” (SPLICE) system is made up of a number of lasers, an optical camera and a computer to take all the data collected by the sensors and process it using advanced algorithms, and it works by spotting potential hazards, and adjusting landing parameters on the fly to ensure a safe touchdown.

SPLICE will get a real-world test of three of its four primary subsystems during a New Shepard mission to be flown relatively soon. The Jeff Bezos –founded company typically returns its first-stage booster to Earth after making its trip to the very edge of space, but on this test of SPLICE, NASA’s automated landing technology will be operating on board the vehicle the same way they would when approaching the surface of the moon or Mars. The elements tested will include “terrain relative navigation,” Doppler radar and SPLICE’s descent and landing computer, while a fourth major system — lidar-based hazard detection — will be tested on future planned flights.

Currently, NASA already uses automated landing for its robotic exploration craft on the surface of other planets, including the Perseverance rover headed to Mars. But a lot of work goes into selecting a landing zone with a large area of unobstructed ground that’s free of any potential hazards in order to ensure a safe touchdown. Existing systems can make some adjustments, but they’re relatively limited in that regard.

The Army is formally moving ahead with the development and fielding of a powered exoskeleton to help soldiers move faster and carry more while reducing overall fatigue after years of experimentation and testing.

Officials with Army Futures Command are currently in the process of drafting formal requirements for an infantry exoskeleton ahead of a defense industry day sometime in November, said Ted Maciuba, deputy director of the robotic requirements division for Army Futures Command.

Breaking Defense first reported news of the fresh exoskeleton effort.

This artificial spiderweb mimics the elasticity, adhesion, and tensile strength of spiderweb silk and, with the capacity to self-clean and sense objects, can even replicate some spiderweb features that rely on the behavior of spiders themselves.

Read more about the research Science Robotics:
🕸https://fcld.ly/wsnulle
🕸https://fcld.ly/rvgs2ub

Sept. 9, 2020 By Tom Ward, Senior Vice President, Customer Product, Walmart.

Years ago, our founder Sam Walton famously said, “I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been.” It remains a guiding principle at Walmart to this day. From being an early pioneer of universal bar codes and electronic scanning cash registers to our work on autonomous vehicle delivery, we’re working to understand how these technologies can impact the future of our business and help us better serve our customers.

Our latest initiative has us exploring how drones can deliver items in a way that’s convenient, safe, and – you guessed it – fast. Today, we’re taking the next step in our exploration of on-demand delivery by announcing a new pilot with Flytrex, an end-to-end drone delivery company.

Visit http://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.

Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.

Continue reading “New bionics let us run, climb and dance | Hugh Herr” »

Engineers from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab built a three-inch drone that could be launched from a barrel. It’s called SQUID, or the Streamlined Quick Unfolding Investigation Drone. And this year, the team has debuted a larger six-inch version of the drone.

Food contains many bioactive molecules similar to anti-cancer drugs. ML can discover such components and design cancer-beating hyperfoods.

The food we eat contains thousands of bioactive molecules, some of which are similar to anti-cancer drugs. Modern machine learning techniques can help discover such components and help design “hyperfoods” that will let us live longer and healthier.

Imagine a country where AI takes all the jobs so that no human being is working. How will it be like? To many people, that means hell – human civilization may soon end since we no longer control our own survival. But to others, that signifies the advent of new life, where mankind can finally get rid of labor and focus on something more valuable.

Musk reckons his brain-computer interface could one day help humans merge with AI, record their memories, or download their consciousness. Could he be right?