Impact Lab – Page 325 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

First Molecular Electronics Chip Developed – Realizes 50-Year-Old Goal

February 2, 2022

The Roswell Molecular Electronics Chip uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and unlimited scalability in sensor pixel density.

A platform for single-molecule measurement of binding kinetics & enzyme activity.

The first molecular electronics chip has been developed, realizing a 50-year-old goal of integrating single molecules into circuits to achieve the ultimate scaling limits of Moore’s Law. Developed by Roswell Biotechnologies and a multi-disciplinary team of leading academic scientists, the chip uses single molecules as universal sensor elements in a circuit to create a programmable biosensor with real-time, single-molecule sensitivity and unlimited scalability in sensor pixel density. This innovation, appearing this week in a peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will power advances in diverse fields that are fundamentally based on observing molecular interactions, including drug discovery, diagnostics, DNA sequencing, and proteomics.

“Biology works by single molecules talking to each other, but our existing measurement methods cannot detect this,” said co-author Jim Tour, PhD, a Rice University chemistry professor and a pioneer in the field of molecular electronics. “The sensors demonstrated in this paper for the first time let us listen in on these molecular communications, enabling a new and powerful view of biological information.”

Metaverse

President Erdoğan of Turkey Intends to Host Virtual Forum in the Metaverse

February 2, 2022

By Godfrey Benjamin

The whole excitement around the metaverse, a virtual world that is projected to be the centre of attraction for social interactions in the future, is arguably not dying down soon, as Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been declared as a fan.

Per the local media channel, the DailySabah, the President has instructed officials of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to conduct work on new developments, including metaverse, cryptocurrencies, and social media, a move that mimics some of South Korea’s politician’s interest in crypto and the metaverse.

Per the reports, the President tasked the key people in the party to explore the listed industry offshoots and analyze their implications for the future. The president is particularly interested in the capabilities of the metaverse and he wants a forum to be organized in the virtual world where he will also be a guest.

Nations adopting innovations hinged on blockchain technology is always good for the industry, and while Turkey may not rank as one with a globally renowned economy, President Erdoğan is a respected leader around the world, and his potential endorsement of the metaverse as a technological revolution can lend a massive upliftment to the niche as a whole.

Aviation

Elroy Air unveils autonomous, hybrid-electric VTOL cargo aircraft – Chapparal

February 2, 2022

The craft’s USP is its end-to-end autonomous vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aerial cargo system.

San Francisco-based Elroy Air, on Wednesday, unveiled its pre-production aircraft model – the Chapparal – fitted with the autonomous aerial cargo system. The craft’s USP is its end-to-end autonomous vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aerial cargo system.

With this system in place, the Chaparral can autonomously pick up cargo in the weight range of 300-500 lbs and deliver it by air up to a distance of 300 miles. Also Read – Wingcopter and UAV LATAM team up for drone delivery operations in Peru David Merrill, Elroy Air co-founder and CEO, said, “The Chaparral is a first-of-kind autonomous air cargo system that builds on more than 100 years of American aviation and aircraft development history.”

Explaining how the Chaparral can transform the future of express logistics, Merril said, “It is built for full end-to-end automation, and will efficiently enable express shipping in thousands of new areas. Essentially, it is a delivery drone that’s faster than ground transport and lower cost than conventional aircraft.” Also Read – Volatus secures first production delivery slot for the Natilus Large Remotely Piloted Cargo Drone Clint Cope, co-founder and president of Elroy Air, said, “We have designed an aircraft that behaves like a hybrid between a rough-and-ready helicopter and a battle-hardened bush plane. It can pick up cargo anywhere with a 50 square foot landing area. The Chaparral will be a vital logistics link for people around the world with unreliable roadways and in remote and rural areas that take longer to reach today.”

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Kerry Vaughn

February 1, 2022

Watch our interview with Kerry on Youtube.

Kerry Vaughan is the Program Manager for Early Stage Science at Leverage Research. He studies the history of successful attempts at generating scientific knowledge in nascent fields, the characteristics these attempts share, and the historical relationship between failures in scientific ethics and slowdowns in scientific advance.

Driverless vehicles

John Deere’s First Fully Autonomous Tractor to Begin Plowing This Year

February 1, 2022

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is often the stage for big announcements from even bigger companies and this year has been no exception, with everybody from software and automation developers to automotive and consumer goods manufacturers vying for the attention of the tech-minded.

Stakeholders in the agricultural industry were greeted with some exciting news from industry leader John Deere when the company announced at the CES that its autonomous tractor is production-ready.

Back in 2019, John Deere showed off its prototype at this very event and now says it’s ready for prime time, revealing that it intends to embark on large-scale production in 2022, with the driverless tractors being available to farmers before the end of the year.

Elektrek calls it “a step into the future” as John Deere’s new vehicle will allow farmers to leave the cabs of their tractors after programming the devices to accomplish the task at hand.

Metaverse, Science & Technology News

Personal AI avatars could be metaverse’s killer app

February 1, 2022

Big Tech race is on to define and dominate the metaverse’s projected $800 billion market

By ALEX CONNOCK

Big numbers coming. Microsoft’s US$75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has landed – true to Call of Duty vernacular – “like a bomb” on the $200 billion revenue video games industry.

It heavily arms the Xbox giant for its vision of the metaverse, in which gaming is the marketing adrenaline of this much-touted online future that is to be experienced immersively through virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented reality (AR) glasses. The stock market knocked $10 billion off Playstation maker Sony’s valuation on the news.

The metaverse was also a big noise at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, branded “tech’s hottest trend” by Variety magazine. Product launches included Samsung’s new VR world My House, offering virtual home makeovers; and US beauty tech group Perfect Corp’s AR-driven virtual beauty makeover range, which lets people experiment with cosmetics and accessories using AR.

Certainly the metaverse has been fast-moving, even since (in October 2021) Facebook renamed itself Meta – a bold step when VR only brings in about 3% of the company’s current revenue. But Bloomberg is predicting that the overall metaverse will be generating revenues of $800 billion as soon as 2024 (compared to $500 billion in 2020), so the prize is huge.

About half of that 2024 projection is expected from video games, while a substantial remainder is from live entertainment – and major artists like Ariana Grande and Marshmello have already been holding concerts in the virtual world.

Yet besides niche attractions for early adopters, what about the rest of us? Will we sign up for virtual interaction en masse when the technology is ready in a few years time? Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the metaverse will allow people “to feel present – like we’re right there … no matter how far apart we actually are.”

quantum computing

New Quantum Computing Partnership Makes 100-Qubit Algorithms a Reality

February 1, 2022

ColdQuanta, a leader in cold atom quantum technology, and Classiq, which provides the leading software platform for Quantum Algorithm Design, today announced a partnership to make 100-qubit quantum circuits a reality for companies and researchers that crave quantum computing solutions to their most pressing problems. The partnership combines the power of two industry-leading platforms: ColdQuanta’s cold atom quantum computers and Classiq’s quantum algorithm design software.

Together, this combined solution provides customers the unique ability to create, simulate and execute unique quantum circuits to address a wide range of finance, material science, supply chain and machine learning challenges.

Alternative Transportation

UK Startup Wants to Build 200 Flying Taxi Vertiports in 65 Cities

January 31, 2022

A massive boost for eVTOL infrastructure.

By Chris Young

U.K. startup Urban-Air Port (UAP) announced that it has secured a new investment from Supernal, which was previously the Urban Air Mobility Division of Hyundai Motor Group.

The funds will help it build 200 vertiport sites in 65 cities across the globe over the next five years, a press statement reveals.

AI

Researchers develop an AI light-field Camera that reads 3D Facial Expressions

January 31, 2022

The new technology can capture facial expressions from 3D images with an accuracy of over 80%.

ByDipayan Mitra

Researchers from Korea’s one of the best science and technology universities, KAIST’s Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, have developed a new artificial intelligence-powered light field camera that can read 3D facial expressions.

The highly capable camera uses a technique that uses infrared light to read facial expressions. Professors Ki-Hun Jeong and Doheon Lee led the research team which developed this artificial intelligence-enabled technology.

The research named ‘Machine-Learned Light-field Camera that Reads Facial Expression from High-Contrast and Illumination Invariant 3D Facial Images’ was published in Advanced Intelligent Systems.

Prof Ki-Hun Jeong said, “The sub-miniature light-field camera developed by the research team has the potential to become the new platform to quantitatively analyze the facial expressions and emotions of humans.”

Medical Breakthrough

SCIENTISTS BUILD NEW DEVICE THAT MAY HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND ‘SEE’ IN INFRARED

January 31, 2022

Infrared goggles can even help wearers navigate in darkness, say researchers

By Vishwam Sankaran

A new device that can help blind people navigate and avoid obstacles was developed by scientists using infrared goggles and an array of vibrating pads on the forearm.

Unlike canes and many other tools commonly available to visually impaired people for navigation, the new device enables the full use of their hands, according to a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study on the device that was posted in the preprint repository arXiv this month.

“The most common tool available to them is the cane. Although the cane allows good detection of objects in the user’s immediate vicinity, it lacks the ability to detect obstacles further away,” researchers Manuel Zahn and Armaghan Ahmad Khan from the Technical University of Munich in Germany wrote in the study.

The new device also does not interfere with the user’s sense of hearing – which is extensively used by the visually impaired – according to the scientists.

It uses a pair of infrared cameras inserted in 3D-printed prototype goggles to capture a stereoscopic image that a small computer uses to create a map of the surrounding area.

Virtual Reality

New VR Boots Allow Users to ‘Physically’ Explore Virtual Spaces

January 30, 2022

They could solve VR’s ‘infinite walking’ problem.

By Chris Young

One of the surprising issues with virtual reality headsets to date has been user safety — get too immersed in the experience and you might find yourself leaping and bounding in virtual reality only to smash against the floor in your momentarily-forgotten physical reality.

One firm, Ekto VR, believes it may have a solution to this problem with its new “EKTO ONE” boots, a report from YankoDesign reveals. The company’s new technology allows users to walk on the spot in order to traverse a virtual space.

Alternative Transportation

Boeing Invests $450 Million in Wisk to Fund Moonshot Self-Flying Air Taxi Project

January 30, 2022

Wisk is developing an autonomous electric eVTOL that can seat three to four passengers.

By Sissi Cao

CERTIFICATION FOR SELF-DRIVING EVTOLS COULD BE YEARS AWAY.

Boeing said on Monday it has agreed to invest $450 million in the air taxi startup, Wisk Aero, to fund the development of a fully autonomous, electric aircraft that could one day fly millions of commuters in the world’s busiest cities. The funding around is one of the largest in the nascent eVTOL (electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicle) industry.

Wisk was created in 2019 as a joint venture between Boeing and a unit of Kitty Hawk, the flying company founded by Google cofounder Larry Page that was developing an autonomous two-seater eVTOL called Cora. Cora is currently being tested as Wisk’s fifth-generation eVTOL. The investment from Boeing will fund the company’s development of the sixth-generation aircraft, a larger vehicle designed to seat three to four passengers, Wisk said.

Wisk seeks to certify the sixth-generation vehicle for urban taxi use in the U.S., Europe and Asia, CEO Gary Gyson told Observer in an interview last year.

The certification process could take years, however, especially for an unpiloted aircraft like Wisk’s. Wisk declined to disclose its estimated timeline for obtaining the FAA flight approval, but acknowledged that it may come after piloted eVTOLs get certified.