But what if it’s telling them a false story?
Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,697
Using machine learning to understand how brain cells work
For something so small, neurons can be quite complex—not only because there are billions of them in a brain, but because their function can be influenced by many factors, like their shape and genetic makeup.
A research team led by Daifeng Wang, a Waisman Center professor of biostatistics and medical informatics and computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is adapting machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to better understand how a variety of traits together affect the way neurons work and behave.
Called manifold learning, the approach may help researchers better understand and even predict brain disorders by looking at specific neuronal properties. The Wang lab recently published its findings in two studies.
Low-cost self-healing material for robotic hands and arms
Soft sensing technologies have the potential to revolutionize wearable devices, haptic interfaces, and robotic systems. However, most soft sensing technologies aren’t durable and consume high amounts of energy.
Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications. The low-cost jelly-like materials can sense strain, temperature, and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.
“Incorporating soft sensors into robotics allows us to get a lot more information from them, like how strain on our muscles allows our brains to get information about the state of our bodies,” said David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering the paper’s first author.
Robot dogs could patrol the US-Mexico border
The photos look like a scene out of science fiction: Robot dogs patrolling the US-Mexico border, climbing over harsh terrain to search for threats and contraband.
But these images are real.
The Department of Homeland Security recently released them as it revealed details about how it’s testing the technology.
DeepMind Has Trained an AI to Control Nuclear Fusion
The Google-backed AI firm taught a reinforcement learning algorithm to control the fiery plasma inside a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor.
Self-healing materials for robotics made from ‘jelly’ and salt
Researchers have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications.
The low-cost jelly-like materials, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, can sense strain, temperature and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.
The results are reported in the journal NPG Asia Materials.
6 major breakthroughs Perseverance made during its first year on Mars
The Martian rover has done the most!
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been on Mars for a full Earth year. During that time, the little robot has gotten pretty familiar with Mars’ terrain and set off a historic mission to find out if life ever existed on the Red Planet.
Perseverance landed on Mars on February 18 with an unprecedented task of collecting samples from the Martian landscape, storing them in tiny tubes, and leaving them on Mars for a future pickup mission.
Here are some of the highlights of that mission so far, and what to look forward to from the Perseverance rover in the future.
Light-driven micro-swimmers for responsive drug delivery
In recent years, scientists have introduced a wide variety of robots of all shapes and sizes. Among these are microswimmers, carefully engineered microstructures that can move in water and other liquids.
Microswimmers could have numerous interesting applications, for instance allowing doctors to deliver drugs to targeted regions inside the human body, or scientists to introduce specific substances in water-based environments. While some of these robotic systems achieved remarkable results, most of them were found to be unable to efficiently move inside the human body.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have recently developed new light-driven microswimmers that could be more suited for navigating within biological systems, including body fluids. These microswimmers, introduced in a paper published in Science Robotics, are simple microparticles based on the two-dimensional (2D) carbon nitride poly(heptazine imide) or PHI.