Lifeboat Foundation

The Atacama Desert in Chile has been a hotbed of astronomical activity of late. Not only is it the site of Martian environmental simulations to test rover capabilities, it is also home to an project called SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars).

SPECULOOS is part of the ESO, the European Southern Observatory, and involves the use of four robotic telescopes for planet hunting. In particular, the telescopes look near to ultracool stars and brown dwarfs to search for Earth-sized exoplanets which can then be investigated in more detail by another telescope such as ESO’s forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

The four telescopes of SPECULOOS are named after Jupiter’s moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, and each has a one meter primary mirror with cameras that are sensitive to near-infrared wavelengths. This accords with the type of light given off by the ultracool stars and brown dwarfs which are the telescopes’ targets.

Continue reading “Beautiful First Image Captured by a new telescope in the Chilean desert” »

Spider silk, which is tougher than steel, could be used as artificial muscles for robots, research finds.

Spider silk, already known as one of the strongest materials for its weight, can be used to create artificial muscles or robotic actuators, scientists say.

According to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, the resilient fibres respond very strongly to changes in humidity.

Continue reading “Artificial muscles for robots could be made by spider silk, finds study” »

It’s yet another historic moment for the Crew Dragon mission as the docking procedure is quite different this time when compared to previous Dragon missions: “Dragon was basically hovering under the ISS,” said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance at SpaceX during a pre-launch briefing on Thursday. “You can see how it moves back and forth and then the [Canadarm] takes it to a berthing bay.”

In contrast, the Crew Dragon’s docking system is active, he said: “it will plant itself in front of the station and use a docking port on its own, no docking arm required.”

Five days from now, Crew Dragon will undock and makes its long way back to Earth. This time around, it will splash down in the Atlantic Ocean — previous (cargo) Dragon missions have touched down in the Pacific.

» Download all images (ZIP, 59 MB)

What’s New: Intel is hosting its first artificial intelligence (AI) developer conference in Beijing on Nov. 14 and 15. The company kicked off the event with the introduction of the Intel® Neural Compute Stick 2 (Intel NCS 2) designed to build smarter AI algorithms and for prototyping computer vision at the network edge. Based on the Intel® Movidius™ Myriad™ X vision processing unit (VPU) and supported by the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit, the Intel NCS 2 affordably speeds the development of deep neural networks inference applications while delivering a performance boost over the previous generation neural compute stick. The Intel NCS 2 enables deep neural network testing, tuning and prototyping, so developers can go from prototyping into production leveraging a range of Intel vision accelerator form factors in real-world applications.

“The first-generation Intel Neural Compute Stick sparked an entire community of AI developers into action with a form factor and price that didn’t exist before. We’re excited to see what the community creates next with the strong enhancement to compute power enabled with the new Intel Neural Compute Stick 2.” –Naveen Rao, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the AI Products Group

What they do and how machine learning fits in.

Unlike the cargo Dragon, which is grappled by a robotic arm, this uncrewed test flight for our NASA Commercial Crew Program will dock autonomously.

Watch live at 3:30 a.m. EST to see a brand-new spacecraft’s first-ever arrival at the station: https://go.nasa.gov/2IPCG7P

The synthetic brain has similar characteristics to a real one in functional MRI & EEG scans.

Biologically inspired circuitry could help build future low-power AI chips—if some obstacles are overcome.

The news: Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology built a new magnetically controlled electronic synapse, an artificial equivalent of the ones that link neurons. They fire millions of times faster than the ones in your brain, while using 1,000th as much energy (which is also less than any other artificial synapse to date).

Why it matters: Synthetic synapses, which gather multiple signals and fire electronic pulses at a threshold, may be an alternative to transistors in regular processors. They can be assembled to create so-called neuromorphic chips that work more like a brain. Such devices can run artificial neural networks, which underpin modern AI, more efficiently than regular chips. This new synapse could make them even more energy-efficient.

Continue reading “A new artificial synapse is faster and more efficient than ones in your brain” »

Wearing a haptic feedback glove, I pilot a robotic hand from across the world, feeling what it feels. The sensation is almost too weird to be real.