2023 – Page 77 – Impact Lab

Quantum machine learning (QML) is poised to make the leap in 2023

January 22, 2023

In classic machine learning (ML) proven algorithms to be powerful tools for many tasks, including image and speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP) and predictive modeling. However, classical algorithms are limited by the constraints of classical computers and may have difficulty handling large files and complex data sets or to achieve a high degree of accuracy and precision.

Enter quantum machine learning (QML).

QML combines the power of Quantum Computation with the predictive power of ML to overcome the limitations of classical algorithms and offer performance improvements. In their article “On the role of entanglement in speeding up quantum computing,” Richard Jozsa and Neil Linden, of the University of Bristol in the UK, write that “QML algorithms promise to provide exponential speedups over their classical algorithms for some of the most tasks such as data classification, feature selection, and cluster analysis. In particular, the use of quantum algorithms for supervised and unsupervised learning has the potential to revolutionize machine learning and artificial intelligence.”

Driverless vehicles

The World’s First Intelligent Unmanned Oceanographic Research Ship Enters Service

January 22, 2023

The World’s First Intelligent Unmanned Oceanographic Research Ship Enters Service

The world’s first intelligent unmanned oceanographic research vessel “Zhuhaiyun” entered service in the city of Zhuhai today.

The ship, which has successfully completed all its maritime test objectives, is the world’s first intelligent oceanographic research vessel with autonomous navigation and remote control functions. The ship’s power system, information system, dynamic positioning system and operation support system are completely independently developed by China.

Electric Vehicles

Auto Expo 2023: Liger Mobility Unveils World’s First Self-Balancing Scooters

January 22, 2023

The company says that the Liger X and Liger X+ are fitted with its patented self-balancing system and will be launched in India by end-2023.

Engineering and Tech start-up Liger Mobility has unveiled the world’s first self-balancing electric scooters – the Liger X and Liger X+. While self-balancing technology isn’t new to the two-wheeler space developments in the technology have been focused on the motorcycle space with brands having previously showcased prototypes of the same.

Liger says that its self-balancing system (AutoBalancing technology) allows riders to ride the scooter and low speeds and even come to a full stop without requiring to place their leg on the ground. Additionally, the system works in conjunction with a reverse gear allowing users to reverse the scooter without needing to use their feet for balance. The scooters will additionally be offered with a learner mode restraining the top speed.

Speaking on the occasion Ashutosh Upadhyay, Co-founder of Liger Mobility said, “Liger Mobility’s team of passionate engineers have worked hard over the last several years to make our AutoBalancing technology for two-wheelers, technically and financially viable. All aspects of Liger X and Liger X+’s AutoBalancing technology, including the hardware and software, have been developed in-house, further underlining India’s ambition, determination and quality of engineering talent.”

SpaceX

SpaceX’s New Project Is A Middle Finger To Putin

January 22, 2023

Rendering of Starship conducting Starlink deployment — SpaceX

Elon’s Starshield programme is a game-changer.

Elon Musk hates Putin with a passion. One of the primary motivators for developing and expanding SpaceX was to topple Putin’s monopoly on crewed space launches. Musk’s Starlink is also a crucial technology in empowering the Ukrainian forces to annihilate Putin’s pathetic ones. But Elon’s latest program, Starshield, promises to impact Russia far more than anything else he has done.

In March 2018, the US Space Development Agency (SDA) was formed. One of its missions was to develop missile defence systems that use low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. In October 2020, the SDA awarded SpaceX $150 million for a dual-use contract to develop a particular military version of the Starlink satellite to become a part of their new system known as the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA). The NDSA will have seven layers: data transport, battle management, missile tracking, weapons targeting, navigation, deterrence, and ground support. SpaceX could, in theory, service all of these layers thanks to this dual-use contract.

This militarised version of Starlink, dubbed “Starshield” by Elon Musk, can function as a high-speed space-based communications system as well as carry additional payloads, allowing it to function as a highly flexible, highly detailed, and global earth observatory. Starshield satellites are based on V1.5 and V2.0 Starlink satellites, but they are larger and more powerful (with twice the solar cell area), which enables them to carry and power additional payloads. One such payload will be military imaging technology that will enable Starshield to identify and track objects of interest on the surface of Earth. So far, this is the only confirmed additional payload, though it is likely that the NDSA has other technologies in the works for these incredible missions.

Crazy Stuff

American Dialect Society names “-ussy” its 2022 Word Of The Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it

January 20, 2023

The popular suffix beat out “Dark Brandon” and “quiet quitting” as 2022’s Word Of The Year

By William Hughes

Language is an ever-evolving and living thing; a social construct plucked from the minds of millions, with each hand that touches it shaping it in some small but ineffable way. And like all living things, it must, eventually, give way to the natural order of things, and do as we all are destined to do: Crap its pants, and then die.

As it happens, said ignominious death occurred, for the English language, just a few short hours ago today, when the American Dialect Society—a collection of “linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars”—decided to throw their combined academic acumen behind naming “-ussy” the 2022 Word Of The Year.

In other news, we’re in hell now, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Fashion

Not so faux: How the ‘fake’ fur industry is secretly selling you real fur

January 20, 2023

Faux fur is a staple of the fashion industry. But what’s marketed as fake might actually be all too real.

By Tove Danovich

It started with raccoon dogs. They have the bandit mask of a raccoon but are fluffier, like wild Pomeranians. Most consumers in the United States were unlikely to have heard of the species — before 2005, when a video began circulating on the internet showing a raccoon dog being skinned alive in a fur market in China where millions of them are raised and killed for their pelts every year.

But where were the pelts going? The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) began looking into what raccoon dog fur was being used for because it’s not heavily marketed like fox or mink fur.

“That was when we saw [advertising copy] saying it’s a raccoon, Finnish raccoon, Asiatic raccoon,” said PJ Smith, director of fashion policy for the HSUS. “What was worse, we saw it coming in as ‘faux fur.’”

2023 CES

This New Street-Legal Flying Car Can Take Off Like an eVTOL and Then Cruise the Highway at 70 MPH

January 20, 2023

The Aska AS5’s wheels are a major differentiator over other electric hovercraft that just take off and land.

By MICHAEL VERDON

California-based ASKA showed off its electric “flying car” with a full-scale interior mockup at CES last week. Unlike other flying cars entering the market, the AS5 looks and behaves more like a conventional eVTOL than a converted airplane design.

“People were excited when they got behind the wheel and saw how easy it would be to drive and fly,” said Guy Kaplinsky, ASKA’s co-Founder and CEO.

The company has established a Tesla-style retail store in Los Altos in Silicon Valley, and is taking preorders for the aircraft ($5,000 deposit, $789,000 retail). ASKA has a manufacturing center in Mountain View, Calif., where it says it can produce two eVTOLs per month. Kaplinsky expects the AS5 will be certified and on the market by 2026.

drones

A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH COULD MEAN REALISTIC AUTONOMOUS BIRD-LIKE DRONES ARE ON THE HORIZON

January 20, 2023

By TIM MCMILLAN·

The challenge to imitate nature’s gravity-defying designs has confounded some of the most brilliant engineering minds for at least the last 1,200 years. Specifically, designing a functional ornithopter–the technical term for an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings–has proven to be an exceptionally difficult task.

Now, thanks to a recent breakthrough, the development of the world’s first true ornithopter and dexterous-winged unmanned aircraft, capable of flying and perching just like a bird, appears to be on the horizon.

Researchers working with the European Union-funded GRIFFIN project recently demonstrated the ability of an ornithopter to fly, land, and perch on a tree branch using a talon-like claw system. All autonomously, without any additional in-flight input from a remote user. The achievement marks the first time a large-scale autonomous ornithopter has been able to perform this incredibly complicated maneuver.

According to the GRIFFIN project, this recent breakthrough will pave the way for flapping-wing robots to perform a number of real-world applications, including long-range observation and logistics missions.

AI

How Artificial Intelligence Could Transform the U.S. Power Grid

January 20, 2023

By Laura Ross

In February 2021, parts of the U.S. were engulfed by a series of severe winter storms. This resulted in a major electricity generation failure in Texas, where around 4.5 million homes lost power, 57 people died, and the cost of property damage surpassed $195 billion.

The electricity failures, largely attributed to the freezing of the state’s natural gas pipelines, highlighted the problems with the U.S. power grid. During the winter of 2021, production at Texas’ coal and nuclear plants also dropped, and similar events occurred in other states, including Kansas.

In the years since, various energy experts, politicians, and pundits have highlighted the need for major spending on grid-related infrastructure upgrades. What role could artificial intelligence (AI) play in supporting this transformation?

AI

Microsoft’s New AI Can Simulate Anyone’s Voice From a 3-Second Sample

January 20, 2023

Microsoft researchers have announced a new application that uses artificial intelligence to ape a person’s voice with just seconds of training. The model of the voice can then be used for text-to-speech applications.

The application called VALL-E can be used to synthesize high-quality personalized speech with only a three-second enrollment recording of a speaker as an acoustic prompt, the researchers wrote in a paper published online on arXiv, a free distribution service and an open-access archive for scholarly articles.

There are programs now that can cut and paste speech into an audio stream, and that speech is converted into a speaker’s voice from typed text. However, the program must be trained to emulate a person’s voice, which can take an hour or more.

“One of the standout things about this model is it does that in a matter of seconds. That’s very impressive,” Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm in New York City, told TechNewsWorld.

According to the researchers, VALL-E significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art text-to-speech (TTS) systems in both speech naturalness and speaker similarity.

Moreover, VALL-E can preserve a speaker’s emotions and acoustic environment. So if a speech sample were recorded over a phone, for example, the text using that voice would sound like it was being read through a phone.

Space

Lynk launches world’s 2nd and 3rd commercial Cell-Towers-in-Space

January 19, 2023

Lynk Global, Inc. (Lynk), the world’s leading satellite-direct-to-standard-phone telecoms company, has reported the successful launch and deployment of two more satellites in the company’s commercial cell-towers-in-space constellation. These satellites are covered by the world’s first and only commercial satellite-direct-to-standard-phone license that Lynk received from the FCC in September 2022.

A unique capability that Lynk demonstrated during this launch is a new deployer system that supports the launch of multiple satellites at one time on the same ESPA-ring port, which enables the affordable launch of many more satellites.

Charles Miller, CEO of Lynk, said, “This launch extends Lynk’s leadership in the satellite-direct-to-standard-phone category. While others have just figured out that satellite-direct-to-phone is a big deal, we invented and patented the technology in 2017, started testing the technology in space in 2019, and now have three commercial satellite-cell-towers-in-space. We are years ahead of everybody else.”

AI

Artificial intelligence to map all planets and could change our plans for Moon and Mars

January 19, 2023

A team of scientists has developed a new tool to map out the planets

By Cheyenne R. Ubiera

A TEAM of scientists has developed a new open-source tool, powered by artificial intelligence, to map out the planets.

Researchers from Constructor University in Bremen, Germany, the University of Padua, and the University of Bologna from Italy came together for the project.

The goal was to change the way planetary landforms are mapped out as the current system is a multi-step process that is extremely time-consuming, such as the case of mapping surfaces on Mars.

The team found that using deep-learning techniques using artificial neural networks to analyze data sets could improve the production process.

It also allowed for the creation of an open-source, ready-to-use, and highly customizable tool for planetary mapping.

“We were interested in designing a simple, out-of-the-box tool that can be customized and used by many,” said Giacomo Nodjoumi, who was involved in the project.