Impact Lab – Page 323 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Robots

Rise of the robots: How restaurants can automate without losing the human touch

February 10, 2022

Instead of adopting tech to replace humans, employers should use digital tools that make jobs more satisfying.

By Raju Malhotra

The following is a guest post by Raju Malhotra, chief product and technology officer at PAR Technology Corporation.

Greetings, fellow human!

Robots seem to be everywhere these days, at least in the restaurant business. A week doesn’t go by without industry trades and mainstream press bringing us headlines like “Robots take over major casual dining chains.”

Robots are flipping burgers and frying chicken wings, and driverless bots and drones are delivering meals to hungry customers. No wonder those headlines include words like “take over” — at this rate, it’s starting to feel as if androids will replace all of us pretty soon.

Aviation

China unveils new 7,000mph ‘winged rocket’ hypersonic plane that could fly from New York to Beijing in ONE HOUR

February 10, 2022

By Tariq Tahir

PLANS for hypersonic plane capable of flying between Beijing and New York in an hour have been unveiled by a Chinese company.

The “rocket with wings” is being designed to fly at an astonishing 7,000mph and tests are reportedly due to begin next year.

Scientists hope it will be ready to take to the air by 2024.

The futuristic plane is being developed by Space Transportation, which hopes to conduct a full point-to-point flight by the end of the decade, reports Space.com.

A video released by the company shows the plane detaching from the wing powered by rockets after take-off, before continuing to its destination.

Meanwhile, the wing and boosters then land back on the launch pad.

When it arrives, the plane will land using three legs that unfold from the rear.

The company boasts it will be able to link New York with the capital of China in just an hour.

“We are developing a winged rocket for high-speed, point-to-point transportation, which is lower in cost than rockets that carry satellites and faster than traditional aircraft,” the firm told Chinese media.

Hyperloop

Virgin Hyperloop wants to revolutionize freight transport

February 9, 2022

Hyperloop developer working with global airports, ports for cargo movement systems

By Noi Mahoney

Virgin Hyperloop wants to accelerate the global supply chain using battery-powered pods gliding through sealed tubes at speeds of up to 670 mph.

The company is in discussions with airports and port facilities around the world to create a pilot program for cargo shipment services, said Ryan Kelly, Virgin Hyperloop’s vice president of marketing and communications.

“We aim to execute these projects by the end of 2024,” Kelly told FreightWaves. “The U.S. is definitely one of the places where we have multiple airports that have shown interest in the pilot, a vision of what we were proposing for the next decade. There’s also a lot of conversation going on in India and there’s also conversations going on in Europe as well.”

The Virgin Hyperloop pilot will most likely begin with connecting airports to logistics warehouses or connecting one airport cargo facility to another airport.

“Obviously COVID-19 has changed the world, especially in the cargo industry and supply chain,” Kelly said. “It has had humongous effects on an infrastructure that has been updated in some ways and in other ways, for big infrastructure and mass infrastructure, it has not.”

Blockchain, Science & Technology News

FDA: Blockchain-Based Food Tracking Bound for Widespread Adoption

February 9, 2022

By VICTORIA CAMPISI

A new rule could boost blockchain-based food tracking.

The rule, expected next November, would require the food industry to maintain records associated with the critical tracking events on the supply chain, according to Frank Yiannas, deputy commissioner for food policy and response at FDA, as reported by The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 1).

Events include growing, receiving, transforming, creating and shipping food products.

The Food Safety Modernization Act Proposed Rule for Food Traceability wouldn’t require companies to maintain electronic records. However, it is believed many would employ digital systems including blockchain to comply, Yiannas explained.

Blockchain is the distributed ledger technology supporting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is a decentralized technology spread across many computers that manages and records transactions.

AI, Science & Technology News

DeepMind’s AlphaCode AI writes code at a competitive level

February 9, 2022

By Devin Coldewey

DeepMind has created an AI capable of writing code to solve arbitrary problems posed to it, as proven by participating in a coding challenge and placing — well, somewhere in the middle. It won’t be taking any software engineers’ jobs just yet, but it’s promising and may help automate basic tasks.

The team at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is aiming to create intelligence in as many forms as it can, and of course these days the task to which many of our great minds are bent is coding. Code is a fusion of language, logic and problem-solving that is both a natural fit for a computer’s capabilities and a tough one to crack.

Of course it isn’t the first to attempt something like this: OpenAI has its own Codex natural-language coding project, and it powers both GitHub Copilot and a test from Microsoft to let GPT-3 finish your lines.

DeepMind’s paper throws a little friendly shade on the competition in describing why it is going after the domain of competitive coding:

Recent large-scale language models have demonstrated an impressive ability to generate code, and are now able to complete simple programming tasks. However, these models still perform poorly when evaluated on more complex, unseen problems that require problem-solving skills beyond simply translating instructions into code.

AI, Science & Technology News

AI “Nanny” Being Created by Chinese Scientists to Grow Babies in Robot Wombs

February 8, 2022

Researchers say the technology could help with imminent population crisis, with birth rates in China at their lowest level in six decades.

The artificial intelligence nanny has arrived. Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) may now be used in conjunction to optimize the generation of human life, marking a significant milestone in the science.

Robotics and artificial intelligence can now assist in the development of newborns via the use of algorithms and artificial wombs, which is eerily similar to what we see in the cult classic, The Matrix.

According to the South China Morning Post, Chinese experts in Suzhou have pioneered the development of the latest technological breakthrough. However, there are concerns about the ethical implications of raising human beings in an artificial environment.

The discoveries were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Biomedical Engineering by Suzhou-based scientists. The AI nanny, according to the researchers, might aid in the growth of human kids in a “long-term embryo culture device.”

This artificial womb is a big machine containing compartments for individual fetuses. The infants will be fed as they would be in a real womb if they are in the chamber, which will be filled with an optimized mix of “nutritious fluids.”

AI

This AI Learned the Design of a Million Algorithms to Help Build New AIs Faster

February 8, 2022

By Jason Dorrier

The skyrocketing scale of AI has been hard to miss in recent years. The most advanced algorithms now have hundreds of billions of connections, and it takes millions of dollars and a supercomputer to train them. But as eye-catching as big AI is, progress isn’t all about scale—work on the opposite end of the spectrum is just as crucial to the future of the field.

Some researchers are trying to make building AI faster, more efficient, and more accessible, and one area ripe for improvement is the learning process itself. Because AI models and the data sets they feed on have grown exponentially, advanced models can take days or weeks to train, even on supercomputers.

Might there be a better way? Perhaps.

Virtual Reality

‘Virtual surgeons’ to be able to join operations anywhere

February 8, 2022

A company pioneering technology to allow surgeons to virtually ‘scrub in’ to any operating room in the world is partnering with Vodafone to speed up adoption in Europe.

The Proximie platform was developed with funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), as part of the medicines manufacturing challenge’s Digital Health Technology Catalyst.

It will help reduce variations in care and ensure every patient receives the best healthcare every single time.

Space Flight

Not rocket science: SpinLaunch hurls payloads into orbit

February 9, 2022

Besides offering an incredibly cool way to get stuff into space, SpinLaunch promises to reduce the cost of a launch by 20-fold.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Rockets are so big because they require enormous amounts of fuel.
SpinLaunch’s method does away with much of that fuel by hurling payloads into space using a giant centrifuge.
The machine generates wicked g-forces: around 10,000 times the force of gravity, enough to tear the skin and muscle off a human being.

For the last 70 years, we have been punching our way into space. Using massive rockets the size of skyscrapers, we have relied on high explosives to blast our way out of Earth’s gravity well. While riding into space on a pillar of flame is certainly an impressive way to reach orbit, it is incredibly expensive, which limits our access to the potential of the high frontier. But what if there was a better, cheaper way to get payloads into orbit? What if, rather than blasting our way into space, we simply hurled them up there like a stone from a catapult? If that sounds like an insane idea, then it is time that you were introduced to SpinLaunch, a company that has already taken its first steps in turning that crazy idea into a reality.

The problem with rockets is summed up in what is called the rocket equation. This neat little piece of physics says that, since the chemical energy locked in fuel is what is needed to get a payload into space, you need to haul all that fuel along for the ride and burn it up as you climb skyward. That is why rockets are so big. They must carry fuel to launch the rest of the fuel. SpinLaunch’s method is to do away with the need for most of that fuel.

Aviation

This drone flies using da Vinci’s 530-year-old helicopter design

February 7, 2022

Leonardo’s aerial screws actually can work when built with modern materials, University of Maryland engineers find with a drone called Crimson Spin.

By Stephen Shankland

In the late 1480s, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a clever design for a one-person helicopter propelled by an “aerial screw.” You may have seen his drawings and wondered whether one of the choppers could ever take flight.

Now we know the answer. The Italian genius was right.

Starting in 2019, a University of Maryland engineering team designed and tested the underlying technology as part of a design contest. Then over the last year and a half, team member Austin Prete built Crimson Spin, an unmanned quadcopter drone using da Vinci’s screwlike design, and flew it on several brief journeys.

2022 CES

Next Industries Tactigon SKIN wearable 3D mouse recognizes your voice and gestures

February 7, 2022

This mouse makes presentations and games much more interactive.

Have more fun working with the Next Industries Tactigon SKIN wearable 3D mouse.

This workspace and gaming gadget adds gesture and voice control to your PC, games, PowerPoint, robotics projects, and more.

That’s right; it responds to hand movements and recognizes 48 different gestures. Then, with its voice control, you can zoom, open and close programs and much more via voice command.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Jeff Booth

February 6, 2022

Watch our interview with Jeff on Youtube.

Jeff Booth is a visionary leader who has lived at the forefront of technology change for 20 years. In January 2020, Jeff released his first book titled “The Price of Tomorrow – Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future”, in which he offers his provocative thesis about the current state of our economies and what must happen to enable a brighter future.

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