Impact Lab – Page 301 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Robots

How Amazon trained its robot Robin to sort packages

April 29, 2022

Robin uses its suction gripper to pick packages from a conveyor belt.

Thousands of packages pass through Amazon’s fulfillment centers every day. More and more of those packages are picked up, scanned, and organized by Amazon’s Robin robotic arm.

Robin picks packages from a conveyor belt with its suction gripper, scans them and then places them on a drive robot that routes it to the correct loading dock. Robin’s job is particularly difficult because of its rapidly changing environment. Unlike other robotic arms, Robin doesn’t just perform a series of pre-set motions, it responds to its environment in real-time.

“Robin deals with a world where things are changing all around it. It understands what objects are there — different sized boxes, soft packages, envelopes on top of other envelopes — and decides which one it wants and grabs it,” Charles Swan, a senior manager of software development at Amazon Robotics and AI, said. “It does all these things without a human scripting each move that it makes. What Robin does is not unusual in research. But it is unusual in production.”

Amazon’s team decided to take a unique approach when teaching Robin how to recognize packages coming down a conveyor belt. Instead of teaching computer vision algorithms to segment scenes into individual elements, the team allowed the model to try to find objects in an image on its own. After the model finds an object, the team provides feedback on how accurate it is.

Driverless cars

Hyundai To Use Quantum Computing For Object Detection For Self Driving

April 29, 2022

The Hyundai partnership with IonQ for the use of quantum computing is all about the acceleration of self driving technology

By Sahil Gupta

Highlights

Object detection is central to autonomous cars
Hyundai will be training on IonQs Aria quantum computer
IonQ has already resolved images in the quantum state

Hyundai has expanded its partnership with IonQ to use Quantum computers for object detection for self-driving purposes. This will be a new project which harnesses the power of Quantum computers to run machine learning algorithms for learning image classification and 3d objects to develop technologies for its future vehicles.

Object detection and image classification are the basis of computer vision techniques which is a field of artificial intelligence that is critical for the development of self-driving cars and ADAS technologies. IonQ and Hyundai are looking to enhance the computational functionality and be more efficient with the training process of their machine learning algorithms with the use of Quantum computers as they can process faster and more accurately than traditional techniques.

IonQ and Hyundai will leverage a breakthrough in encoding images into a quantum state. IonQ is already classifying 43 types of road signs using its Quantum computers. Its machine learning data will be applied to Hyundai’s test environment and will simulate many real-world scenarios.

Engineering

Zoomlion Releases World’s First Hybrid All-terrain Crane, Driving Industry’s New Energy Revolution

April 29, 2022

CHANGSHA, China, April 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co., Ltd. (“Zoomlion”; 1157.HK) has released the world’s first hybrid all-terrain crane ZAT2200VE863 on April 11, marking another innovative milestone following the previous release of the world’s first pure electric crane.

With superior hybrid output performance, the ZAT2200VE863 has achieved the advantage of a dual electric and fuel power system and driven by a gasoline-electric dual-engine, the model is even more powerful with a maximum output of 360kW.

“Driven by policy incentives and market demand, the construction machinery industry is accelerating into the era of new energy, the ZAT2200VE863 is the latest achievement of Zoomlion’s innovative product R&D. The hybrid machinery products are low in fuel consumption, pollution and noise with high energy efficiency, and it’s conducive to promoting energy transformation and the technological upgrading of the industry,” said Luo Kai, vice president of Zoomlion and general manager of Zoomlion engineering crane branch.

Driverless cars

Self-driving startup Argo AI hits $7.5 billion valuation – TechCrunch

April 27, 2022

By Sierra Mitchell

Autonomous vehicle technology startup Argo AI is valued at $7.5 billion, just a little more than three years after the company burst on the scene with a $1 billion investment from Ford.

The official valuation was confirmed Thursday nearly two months after VW Group finalized its $2.6 billion investment in Argo AI. Under that deal, Ford and VW have equal ownership stakes, which will be roughly 40% each over time. The remaining equity sits with Argo’s co-founders as well as employees. Argo’s board is comprised of two VW seats, two Ford seats and three Argo seats.

Ford’s announcement in February 2017 that it was investing in Argo AI surprised many. The startup was barely six months old when it was thrust into the spotlight. Its founders, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, were known in the tight knit and often overlapping autonomous vehicle industry; prior to forming Argo, Salesky was director of hardware development at the Google self-driving project (now Waymo) and Rander was the engineering lead at Uber Advanced Technologies Group. But even those insiders who knew Salesky and Rander wondered what to make of the deal.

Medical Breakthrough

Anti-aging technology is coming. Here’s how you can be ready for it

April 27, 2022

Billionaires like Jeff Bezos believe that aging is a disease that can be slowed, stopped, even reversed. But you have to be ready to receive its benefits.

The world’s billionaires are pouring money into age-reversal investments.

Last September, it came out that Jeff Bezos had invested in Altos Labs, a company pursuing biological reprogramming technology. “Reprogramming” is the scientific term for turning old cells young again. It was discovered in 2012 by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who called it a potential “elixir of life.” The Nobel Prize in Medicine Committee seemed to agree.

Bezos—and Altos—aren’t the only ones.

There’s Google-backed Calico Labs, also focused on longevity via reprogramming. And Lineage Cell Therapeutics, backed by BlackRock, Raffles Capital Management, Wells Fargo, and others.

Coinbase Co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong recently invested in a company working to radically extend human healthspan using epigenetic reprogramming therapies. Altogether, the anti-aging industry is expected to grow to over $64 billion by 2026, a 45% increase from its 2020 value ($44 billion).

So, why are billionaires like Jeff Bezos investing in age-reversal or “anti-aging” tech?

Because they have a Longevity Mindset.

Augmented Reality

Nasa ‘holoported’ a doctor onto the International Space Station

April 27, 2022

Nasa flight surgeon, Dr. Josef Schmid gives a space greeting as he is holoported on to the International Space Station. (Credits: ESA/Thomas Pesquet)

By Jeff Parsons

Nasa is taking a step in a distinctly Star Trek direction with a new communication method it tested on the International Space Station (ISS).

It’s called ‘holoporting’ and, as you’d expect, is a mix between a hologram and teleportation.

And it resulted in Nasa flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid appearing on the space station as a hologram and able to talk to the astronauts in real time.

‘This is completely new manner of human communication across vast distances,’ Schmid said.

‘Furthermore, it is a brand-new way of human exploration, where our human entity is able to travel off the planet.

‘Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there. It doesn’t matter that the space station is traveling 17,500 mph and in constant motion in orbit 250 miles above Earth, the astronaut can come back three minutes or three weeks later and with the system running, we will be there in that spot, live on the space station.’

In a nutshell, the process uses bespoke capture technology to record 3D models of people which are then reconstructed, compressed and transmitted in real time.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Ep. 82 with eric yakes

April 27, 2022

Watch our interview with Eric Yakes on Youtube or listen on the Futurati Podcast website.

Eric Yakes graduated with a double major in finance and economics from Creighton University, and 3 years later earned his CFA charter. He began his career at FTI Consulting in their Corporate Finance and Restructuring group and then moved to Lion Equity Partners, a distressed buyout private equity fund. All the while he intently followed Bitcoin, and its development eventually led him to author the book “The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution”.

Solar Power

radical solar allows energy to now be stored for up to 18 years say scientists

April 27, 2022

By Andy Corbley

A pair of Swedish scientists designed a microchip that stores solar energy in liquid, and shipped it to China where three months later it was converted into electricity.

The scientists are hoping to open a Pandora’s box of solar-powered electronics and appliances—expanding solar’s use away from exclusively baseload power generation

Scientists and entrepreneurs are still racing to see who can create the most efficient and effective way of storing solar energy, as PV panels continue to proliferate across the world. These include hugely varied projects which GNN has covered, like ingots of molten aluminum, and deep tunnels that facilitate the lifting and lowering of a huge weight.

This latest newsworthy breakthrough comes from a Dutch-Chinese design team looking for a small, simple way of storing solar energy for the market of smaller electronics.

“This is a radically new way of generating electricity from solar energy,” research leader Kasper Moth-Poulsen, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers University, told Euronews. “It means that we can use solar energy to produce electricity regardless of weather, time of day, season, or geographical location.”

Their design revolves around a specifically-engineered molecule that changes shape when it comes in contact with sunlight, rearranging carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen, to form an isomer—an energy-rich molecule with a different configuration that holds its shape when immersed in liquid.

Art

Holo: A 3D Hologram Inside a Crystal Box, Sold Via Smart Contract

April 27, 2022

Holo: Art selling in the form of an incredibly high-resolution hologram is the next iteration of digital art.

By Nicole Buckler

In a world-first, One of Leonardo Da Vinci works is being sold as a 670-million-pixel hologram. It will be auctioned on April 21, 2022, at 3:30pm PT.

Named a “Holo,” it comes with a smart contract that verifies ownership and its authenticity. The creators say that a tablet or phone screen isn’t enough.

La Bella Principessa will have a starting bid of $100,000. The Old Master artwork can now be viewed without having to know the owner of the artwork, who holds it in their private collection.

The Holoverse is the first company to tokenize historical masterpieces with rights.

Alternative Transportation, Science & Technology News

eVTOL: The flying vehicles that may be the future of transportation

April 27, 2022

A Hexa in the air

By Anderson Cooper

If you’ve ever had the fantasy of soaring over bumper-to-bumper traffic in a flying vehicle, that may be possible sooner than you think. Not with a flying car, but with a battery-powered aircraft called an eVTOL, a clunky acronym for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Dozens of companies are spending billions of dollars to make eVTOLs that will operate like air taxis – taking off and landing from what are called vertiports on the tops of buildings, parking garages or helipads in congested cities. EVTOLs promise a faster, safer and greener mode of transportation – potentially changing the way we work and live. Sound too good to be true? We went for a joyride to find out.

If this looks like an oversized drone I’m about to take off in, that’s pretty much what it is.

It’s a single-seat eVTOL called Hexa, powered by 18 propellers, each with its own battery. No jet fuel required.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

American Research Team Puts New Spin On Old Technique To Produce 3D-Printed Organs

April 26, 2022

A technician checks on a 3D printer as it constructs a model human figure in the exhibition ‘3D: printing the future’ in the Science Museum on October 8, 2013 in London, England. The exhibition, which opens to the public tomorrow, features over 600 3D printed objects ranging from: replacement organs, artworks, aircraft parts and a handgun.

By Michael Leidig

The idea, however, has been beset with technical problems that have, to date, limited the type of organs that can be printed.

With too few organs to go around to satisfy the demand for transplants, scientists are now pinning their hopes on the possibility of 3D-printing technology.

In the United States alone there are an estimated 112,000 people currently waiting for urgent transplants and there is, therefore, plenty of demand for the possibility of 3D-printed organs.

The idea, however, has been beset with technical problems that have, to date, limited the type of organs that can be printed.

But researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology, a private research university in New Jersey, are now pushing through these barriers by revamping a decades-old technique to reproduce any tissue type.

The work, led by Robert Chang, an associate professor in the mechanical engineering department at Stevens’ Schaefer School of Engineering & Science, could open up pathways for 3D printing any kind of organ at any time, even skin directly on an open wound.

Batteries

3D Nanochains could increase battery capacity, cut charging time

April 26, 2022

Nanochains in a coin cell battery. Credit: Henry Hamann/ Purdue University.

How long the battery of your phone or computer lasts depends on how many lithium ions can be stored in the battery’s negative electrode material.

If the battery runs out of these ions, it can’t generate an electrical current to run a device and ultimately fails.

Materials with a higher lithium ion storage capacity are either too heavy or the wrong shape to replace graphite, the electrode material currently used in today’s batteries.

Purdue University scientists and engineers have introduced a potential way that these materials could be restructured into a new electrode design that would allow them to increase a battery’s lifespan, make it more stable and shorten its charging time.

The study, appearing as the cover of the September issue of Applied Nano Materials, created a net-like structure, called a “nanochain,” of antimony, a metalloid known to enhance lithium ion charge capacity in batteries.