Impact Lab – Page 331 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Robots

S’pore team turning cockroaches into life-saving cyborg bugs at disaster sites

December 14, 2021

The cockroaches can distinguish between human and non-human subjects with 87 per cent accuracy.

SINGAPORE – COCKROACHES ARE KNOWN TO INFILTRATE HOMES THROUGH THE TINIEST OF GAPS, AND THIS INNATE ABILITY NOW HAS ENGINEERS IN SINGAPORE WORKING TO TURN THE PESKY INSECT INTO AN ALLY OF RESCUERS AT DISASTER SITES.

ONE VARIETY OF THE INSECT, IN PARTICULAR, HAS THE TEAM AT NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU) EXCITED – THE MADAGASCAR HISSING COCKROACH.

ON AVERAGE, AN ADULT IS 6CM LONG, 2CM LONGER THAN THE LOCAL VARIETY.

THE SPECIES IS LARGE ENOUGH FOR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR HIROTAKA SATO AND HIS TEAM AT THE SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING TO EQUIP THE BUG WITH A 5.5G “BACKPACK” CONSISTING OF SEVERAL SENSORS, INCLUDING THOSE THAT CAN WARN OF THE PRESENCE OF GASES SUCH AS CARBON DIOXIDE.

THE CYBORG BUGS ALSO CARRY A SMALL INFRARED CAMERA THAT CAN DETECT LIFE BY PICKING UP TEMPERATURE SIGNATURES. THE IDEA IS TO RELEASE A TEAM OF THEM AT A DISASTER SITE.

PROF SATO’S RESEARCH, WHICH STARTED FOUR YEARS AGO, IS BEING CONDUCTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SINGAPORE’S HOME TEAM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AGENCY (HTX) AND ENGINEERING FIRM KLASS ENGINEERING AND SOLUTIONS.

Robots

Segway makes its first foray into sidewalk robot delivery with Coco partnership

December 12, 2021

By Rebecca Bellan

Segway sees a future for sidewalk delivery robots and is now preparing to be the burgeoning industry’s go-to manufacturer.

The company, which has supplied electric scooters for almost all of the major shared micromobility operators, is partnering with Los Angeles-based delivery robot startup Coco to build 1,000 partially automated, remotely piloted sidewalk robots. Coco will begin deploying the robots in Los Angeles and two other U.S. cities during the first quarter of 2022.

This new shipment of Coco 1 robots, as the company is branding them, will add to its existing fleet of 100 Coco 0 units, a “box on wheels” that the company first built to prove out its business model. Coco has also placed an order for an additional 1,200 vehicles, which it expects to be able to deploy by May or June 2022, pending potential contracts, according to Sahil Sharma, SVP of vehicles at Coco.

Segway has been conducting R&D on robotics for years, and even formed a dedicated division in 2016. That was the same year the company unveiled its Loomo robot, which is basically a scooter base with a little robotic head that includes an Intel RealSense RGB-D camera, speech recognition and self-driving capabilities.

Space Flight

NASA backs Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef space station

December 12, 2021

Alexa, book me a ticket to low Earth orbit.

By A. Tarantola

Following October’s news that Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spaceflight company planned to build its own commercial space station in low Earth orbit, NASA announced on Thursday it has selected the program for funding through a Space Act Agreement to further develop the the station’s design. The funding is part of NASA’s Commercial LEO Development program, which aims to “develop a robust commercial space economy in LEO, including supporting the development of commercially owned and operated LEO destinations.”

Space Flight

Rocket Lab Reveals First Details of Neutron Rocket, a Real Rival of SpaceX’s Falcon 9

December 12, 2021

Neutron’s nosecone will not disconnect from the rocket’s body after releasing the upper stage.

By Sissi Cao

NEUTRON WILL BE ABOUT ONE THIRD SHORTER THAN A FALCON 9, BUT WILL WEIGH TWO THIRDS LESS.

New Zealand space startup Rocket Lab has been busy working on a large reusable rocket called Neutron since the company went public on Nasdaq in March. On Thursday, Rocket Lab revealed the first details about the rocket, which could be a serious rival of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in future commercial launch market.

Neutron belongs to a category called medium-class launch boosters. It’s designed to be 131 feet tall and 23 feet in diameter with a maximum payload capacity of 15,000 kilograms (33,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. (For reusable launches, Neutron will be able to carry up to 8,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit.)

While it’s not quite as big as Falcon 9, which stands at 230 feet tall and can lift up to 22,800 kilograms (50,000 pounds) of payloads to low Earth orbit, it’s powerful enough to launch many cargo missions Falcon 9 is currently used for.

Energy

The First U.S. Vessel Powered by a Hydrogen Fuel Cell

December 11, 2021

The Sea Change vessel that will operate in the San Francisco Bay Area.BAE

The system eliminates diesel fuel use and reduces engine maintenance.

BAE Systems recently announced that it has successfully installed a zero-emission propulsion system in the first U.S. hydrogen fuel cell powered marine vessel, the Sea Change.

BAE Systems provided its HybriGen Power and Propulsion solution to Zero Emission Industries for integration on the Sea Change vessel that will operate in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Sea Change project is funded and owned by SWITCH Maritime, an impact investment firm building the first fleet of zero-carbon, electric-drive maritime vessels for adoption by existing ship owners and operators.

DNA, Science & Technology News

$17 million will launch trial of CRISPR cure for sickle cell disease

December 11, 2021

Mark Walters of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland explains how a CRISPR cure for sickle cell disease would benefit patients.

By Robert Sanders

A small clinical trial of a CRISPR cure for sickle cell disease, approved earlier this year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has received $17 million to enroll about nine patients, the first of which may be selected before the end of the year.

The funds — $8.4 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and $8.6 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) — were awarded to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, which will coordinate the four-year clinical study in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA.

The trial will be among the first to apply CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology in humans to snip out the mutated beta-globin gene that causes the disease and replace it with the correct version, which should cure the patient and prevent the painful symptoms and early death that accompany the disease.

This will be the only trial to deliver the Cas9 enzyme and the correct beta-globin gene into a patient’s stem cells without using a virus. The therapy, referred to as CRISPR_SCD001, involves inserting the beta-globin gene and Cas9 enzyme into stem cells via electroporation after the cells have been removed from the patient’s bone marrow. The corrected stem cells are then reinfused to multiply and repopulate the patient’s bone marrow.

drones

Meet SNAG: Tiny bird-inspired drone-robot hybrid can fly through the air before perching on branches – and could be used in search and rescue missions

December 11, 2021

By JONATHAN CHADWICK

SNAG is a 3D-printed robotic bird with landing capabilities inspired by a falcon
It has a motorized claws that can take-off, land and grasp a variety of branches
Engineers claim SNAG could be used for wildlife monitoring and search & rescue
Tests in an Oregon forest have shown it can land and take off from tree branches

Engineers have created a falcon-inspired robot that can take-off, land and grasp branches just like a real bird – and even catch objects in the air.

Developed by a team at Stanford University, SNAG (stereotyped nature-inspired aerial grasper) replicates the impressive grasp of peregrine falcons.

In place of bones, SNAG has a 3D-printed skeletal structure – which took 20 iterations to perfect – as well as motors and fishing line in place of muscles and tendons.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Corey Hoffstein

December 10, 2021

Watch on Youtube

Listen on the Futurati Podcast website
Corey Hoffstein is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Newfound Research as well as an enthusiast of cryptocurrencies and various crypto projects. Newfound is a quantitative asset management firm seeking to help investors proactively navigate the risks of investing through better diversification.

3D Printer

Future Buildings Could Be Made From 3D Printed Microbes

December 10, 2021

New “living materials” could be used to make new objects ranging from small medical devices to skyscrapers.

By Neel V. Patel

The hype around 3D printing shows no signs of waning anytime soon, and for good reason: It’s a fast, inexpensive way to manufacture all kinds of different objects and structures, especially when conventional building materials are unavailable. A few scientists have a radical idea for what the next big leap in 3D printing could be: making things using living microbes.

Yes, it sounds weird as hell and not just a little creepy, but stay with us here. A group of researchers in the U.S. have just proved it’s possible to create 3D printed structures using E. coli. These “living materials,” illustrated in a new Nature Communications paper, could pave a path for more sustainable construction of objects that could also be programmed to help improve people’s health or remove toxins from the environment.

“Our group has always been interested in engineering biology to make materials,” Northeastern University chemist and study co-author Neel Joshi told The Daily Beast. “In the same way that a seed has a set of genetic instructions to produce a tree, we want to provide biological cells with a set of genetic instructions that program them to make material structures with prescribed properties.”

Robots, Science & Technology News

Team builds first living robots—that can reproduce

December 10, 2021

AI-designed Xenobots reveal entirely new form of biological self-replication—promising for regenerative medicine

By Joshua Brown, University of Vermont Communications

(BURLINGTON, Vermont) – To persist, life must reproduce. Over billions of years, organisms have evolved many ways of replicating, from budding plants to sexual animals to invading viruses.

Now scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction—and applied their discovery to create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots.

The same team that built the first living robots (“Xenobots,” assembled from frog cells—reported in 2020) has discovered that these computer-designed and hand-assembled organisms can swim out into their tiny dish, find single cells, gather hundreds of them together, and assemble “baby” Xenobots inside their Pac-Man-shaped “mouth”—that, a few days later, become new Xenobots that look and move just like themselves.

And then these new Xenobots can go out, find cells, and build copies of themselves. Again and again.

“With the right design—they will spontaneously self-replicate,” says Joshua Bongard, Ph.D., a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont who co-led the new research.

The results of the new research were published November 29, 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Virtual Reality

A virtual world pioneer has doubts about the metaverse

December 9, 2021

Philip Rosedale American businessman, founder of Second Life

By Stephen Totilo

Early metaverse architect Philip Rosedale is no longer confident the metaverse will be a huge hit, despite the surging interest from Meta (fka Facebook) and many other companies.

Driving the news: Rosedale, who evangelized the concept of an immersive virtual world while overseeing the storied platform “Second Life” a decade ago, shared more tempered thoughts in an interview with Axios.

Of the metaverse, he says: “I think what we’ve learned — and somewhat with some sadness, given the work that I’ve done, I would have to agree — is that it’s not for everybody, and maybe it’s never for everybody.”
And of Meta’s chances of succeeding with their new metaverse project: “Well, I hope they don’t.”

Aviation

Zuri’s Hybrid VTOL Nailed Its First Hover Flight, It Boasts a Range of 447 Miles

December 9, 2021

By Cristina Mircea

It started in 2017 with a simple sketch and three years later, an experimental aircraft was born. Now, Czech Republic-based manufacturer Zuri releases a video with the first hover test of its hybrid VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) flying machine. 7 photos

Zuri carried the test back in September, but it only shared the video now, boasting of achieving a true milestone in developing its aircraft.

The VTOL with a wingspan of 36 ft (11 m) took off and achieved its first hover flight at an airport near Zbraslavice. Even though it was just a short hover up to 9.8 ft (3 m) altitude, it was still a great opportunity for the team to measure several performance parameters of the motors and control systems, parameters they couldn’t obtain during the aircraft’s ground performance tests.