Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 1721
May 8, 2020
Watch Upload Season 1
Posted by Brent Ellman in categories: robotics/AI, transportation, virtual reality
In 2033, people can be “uploaded” into virtual reality hotels run by 6 tech firms. Cash-strapped Nora lives in Brooklyn and works customer service for the luxurious “Lakeview” digital afterlife. When L.A. party-boy/coder Nathan’s self-driving car crashes, his high-maintenance girlfriend uploads him permanently into Nora’s VR world. Upload is created by Greg Daniels (The Office).
May 8, 2020
Engineers Unveil a System That Delivers Electricity Wirelessly
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: mobile phones, robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation
Wireless charging is already a thing (in smartphones, for example), but scientists are working on the next level of this technology that could deliver power over greater distances and to moving objects, such as cars.
Imagine cruising down the road while your electric vehicle gets charged, or having a robot that doesn’t lose battery life while it moves around a factory floor. That’s the sort of potential behind the newly developed technology from a team at Stanford University.
If you’re a long-time ScienceAlert reader, you may remember the same researchers first debuted the technology back in 2017. Now it’s been made more efficient, more powerful, and more practical – so it can hopefully soon be moved out of the lab.
May 8, 2020
This robot army can run, jump, duck and even backflip
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: robotics/AI
Circa 2019
MIT’s Mini Cheetah robots are small quadrupedal robots capable of running, jumping, walking, and flipping.
Continue reading “This robot army can run, jump, duck and even backflip” »
May 8, 2020
Inspired by cheetahs, researchers build fastest soft robots yet
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: engineering, robotics/AI
Inspired by the biomechanics of cheetahs, researchers have developed a new type of soft robot that is capable of moving more quickly on solid surfaces or in the water than previous generations of soft robots. The new soft robotics are also capable of grabbing objects delicately—or with sufficient strength to lift heavy objects.
“Cheetahs are the fastest creatures on land, and they derive their speed and power from the flexing of their spines,” says Jie Yin, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the new soft robots.
“We were inspired by the cheetah to create a type of soft robot that has a spring-powered, ‘bistable’ spine, meaning that the robot has two stable states,” Yin says. “We can switch between these stable states rapidly by pumping air into channels that line the soft, silicone robot. Switching between the two states releases a significant amount of energy, allowing the robot to quickly exert force against the ground. This enables the robot to gallop across the surface, meaning that its feet leave the ground.
May 8, 2020
Pulse-driven robot: Motion via solitary waves
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: bioengineering, biological, physics, robotics/AI
Scientists have recently explored the unique properties of nonlinear waves to facilitate a wide range of applications including impact mitigation, asymmetric transmission, switching and focusing. In a new study now published on Science Advances, Bolei Deng and a team of research scientists at Harvard, CNRS and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in the U.S. and France harnessed the propagation of nonlinear waves to make flexible structures crawl. They combined bioinspired experimental and theoretical methods to show how such pulse-driven locomotion could reach a maximum efficiency when the initiated pulses were solitons (solitary wave). The simple machine developed in the work could move across a wide range of surfaces and steer onward. The study expanded the variety of possible applications with nonlinear waves to offer a new platform for flexible machines.
Flexible structures that are capable of large deformation are attracting interest in bioengineering due to their intriguing static response and their ability to support elastic waves of large amplitude. By carefully controlling their geometry, the elastic energy landscape of highly deformable systems can be engineered to propagate a variety of nonlinear waves including vector solitons, transition waves and rarefaction pulses. The dynamic behavior of such structures demonstrate a very rich physics, while offering new opportunities to manipulate the propagation of mechanical signals. Such mechanisms can allow unidirectional propagation, wave guiding, mechanical logic and mitigation, among other applications.
In this work, Deng et al. were inspired by the biological retrograde peristaltic wave motion in earthworms and the ability of linear elastic waves to generate motion in ultrasonic motors. The team showed the propagation of nonlinear elastic waves in flexible structures to provide opportunities for locomotion. As proof of concept, they focused on a Slinky – and used it to create a pulse-driven robot capable of propelling itself. They built the simple machine by connecting the Slinky to a pneumatic actuator. The team used an electromagnet and a plate embedded between the loops to initiate nonlinear pulses to propagate along the device from the front to the back, allowing the pulse directionality to dictate the simple robot to move forward. The results indicated the efficiency of such pulse-driven locomotion to be optimal with solitons – large amplitude nonlinear pulses with a constant velocity and stable shape along propagation.
May 8, 2020
Researchers explore quantum computing to discover possible COVID-19 treatments
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: quantum physics, robotics/AI
Quantum machine learning, an emerging field that combines machine learning and quantum physics, is the focus of research to discover possible treatments for COVID-19, according to Penn State researchers led by Swaroop Ghosh, the Joseph R. and Janice M. Monkowski Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering. The researchers believe that this method could be faster and more economical than the current methods used for drug discovery.
Seed funding from the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, as part of their rapid-response seed funding for research across the University to address COVID-19, is supporting this work.
“Discovering any new drug that can cure a disease is like finding a needle in a haystack,” Ghosh said.
May 8, 2020
DeepMind compares the way children and AI explore
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: robotics/AI
In a preprint paper, DeepMind researchers propose a paradigm for comparing the exploration behaviors of children and AI models.
May 8, 2020
What Is Supervised Learning (+ Regression, Classification, …)
Posted by Ankur Bargotra in category: robotics/AI
What is supervised learning (+ regression, classification,…) :
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Continue reading “What Is Supervised Learning (+ Regression, Classification, …)” »
May 8, 2020
A praying mantis wearing tiny glasses holds the key to robot vision
Posted by Quinn Sena in category: robotics/AI
Circa 2019
The insect reveals a vision strategy that takes the computing challenges out of stereo vision.
Continue reading “A praying mantis wearing tiny glasses holds the key to robot vision” »