Impact Lab – Page 337 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Mazda Is Working on a New Hydrogen Rotary Engine: Report

August 28, 2021

Remember the RX-8 Hydrogen RE? Probably not, but it’s proof that Mazda has done this before.

While most of the automotive world pivots toward battery-electric, Mazda is apparently following in part-owner Toyota’s footsteps in betting on hydrogen. What’s more, the Hiroshima automaker is said to be pairing the niche energy tech with another niche propulsion method: the rotary. If a new report from Japan’s Best Car Web is to be believed, Mazda is currently working on a hydrogen rotary engine, that is, a rotary engine that runs on hydrogen instead of gasoline.

Decrypted via Google Translate, “Although it is a small scale, development has progressed. As the world has suddenly turned to decarbonization, the view that ‘hydrogen rotary is an important technology’ is rapidly expanding,” a Mazda official reportedly told the publication.

drones, Science & Technology News

UK looks at drones, 3D printing to fix its dimpled roads

August 28, 2021

By Ishveena Singh

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) is launching a multimillion-pound initiative to improve local roads across England. Among other things, this program aims to explore the use of drones and 3D printing technology when it comes to finding and fixing potholes.

According to a bunch of measures announced by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, new and innovative technology such as drones and 3D printing will take center stage in helping England to perk up its dimpled roads that many have likened to the surface of the moon.

The condition is so bad that councils in England and Wales had to fill up 1.7 million potholes in the financial year 2020-21 alone – which is equal to one being fixed every 19 seconds. So now, a red-faced government is committing funds to use advanced technology, such as drones to spot defects in roads and 3D printing to repair cracks.

drones, Science & Technology News

Qualcomm launches world’s first drone platform with both 5G, AI tech

August 27, 2021

By Ishveena Singh

Qualcomm has unveiled the world’s first drone platform and reference design that will tap in both 5G and AI technologies. The chipmaker’s Flight RB5 5G Platform condenses multiple complex technologies into one tightly integrated drone system to support a variety of use cases, including film and entertainment, security and emergency response, delivery, defense, inspection, and mapping.

The new solution is purpose-built for autonomous drones, with Qualcomm aiming to give developers an easy-to-use platform to create premium drones right out of the box.

The Flight RB5 5G Platform is powered by the chipmaker’s QRB5165 processor and builds upon the company’s latest IoT offerings to offer high-performance and heterogeneous computing at ultra-low power consumption.

Along with breakthrough camera capabilities that can deliver 4K HDR video, 200MP photo, and 7-camera concurrency, the platform supports 5G and long-range Wi-Fi 6 connectivity to enhance safer beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) flights.

Cancer

Cancer therapy breakthrough in vitro using self-assembled drugs

August 26, 2021

ONE of the most challenging aspects of cancer treatment is the huge variety of different tumours that can occur with each one potentially requiring a different solution because unfortunately, one drug does NOT fit all.

In addition, another major issue of many current drugs is their poor selectivity towards cancers resulting in problems such as normal tissue toxicity, severe side effects and the development of drug resistance.

Now, a team of scientists at the University of Huddersfield is researching how to combat these challenges by using “self-assembled” drugs and although the research is in its very early stages, they’ve already had a breakthrough.

Alternative Transportation

Hyperloop included in $1.2 trillion US infrastructure bill

August 26, 2021

Hyperloop, the futuristic transportation system first envisioned by Elon Musk, is included in a landmark trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that passed through the US Senate on Tuesday.

The two companies are currently leading the development of a commercial Hyperloop system – Virgin Hyperloop and Hyperloop TT – both with hopes of revolutionizing the way people travel.

The original Hyperloop concept, first laid out by Tesla and SpaceX bosses in a 2012 whitepaper, involves shooting pods filled with people through vacuum tubes at speeds in excess of 1,000 kilometers per hour.

The promises made by this “fifth mode of transportation”, as Mr. Musk calls it, have so far failed to be realized in a commercial operation – a fact in a manifesto published last year by renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen titled Was “It’s time to build”.

quantum computing

A Simple Crystal Could Finally Give Us Large-Scale Quantum Computing, Scientists Say

August 26, 2021

By lenexweb

Vaccine and drug development, artificial intelligence, transport and logistics, climate science – these are all areas that stand to be transformed by the development of a full-scale quantum computer. And there has been explosive growth in quantum computing investment over the past decade.

Yet current quantum processors are relatively small in scale, with fewer than 100 qubits – the basic building blocks of a quantum computer. Bits are the smallest unit of information in computing, and the term qubits stems from “quantum bits”.

While early quantum processors have been crucial for demonstrating the potential of quantum computing, realizing globally significant applications will likely require processors with upwards of a million qubits.

Our new research tackles a core problem at the heart of scaling up quantum computers: how do we go from controlling just a few qubits, to controlling millions? In research published today in Science Advances, we reveal a new technology that may offer a solution.

Robotics

Inflatable robotic hand gives amputees real-time tactile control

August 26, 2021

by Jennifer Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Caption:An MIT-developed inflatable robotic hand gives amputees real-time tactile control. The smart hand is soft and elastic, weighs about half a pound, and costs a fraction of comparable prosthetics. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

For the more than 5 million people in the world who have undergone an upper-limb amputation, prosthetics have come a long way. Beyond traditional mannequin-like appendages, there is a growing number of commercial neuroprosthetics—highly articulated bionic limbs, engineered to sense a user’s residual muscle signals and robotically mimic their intended motions.

But this high-tech dexterity comes at a price. Neuroprosthetics can cost tens of thousands of dollars and are built around metal skeletons, with electrical motors that can be heavy and rigid.

Now engineers at MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have designed a soft, lightweight, and potentially low-cost neuroprosthetic hand. Amputees who tested the artificial limb performed daily activities, such as zipping a suitcase, pouring a carton of juice, and petting a cat, just as well as—and in some cases better than —those with more rigid neuroprosthetics.

Science & Technology News, SpaceX

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Shoots for the Moon—by 2024 or Sooner

August 25, 2021

A SpaceX rocket, carrying astronauts, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 23, 2021.

By Al Root

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk said his space company can be ready to go to the moon in the next three years.

Musk said in a Saturday Twitter post responding to a question about the timeline that SpaceX’s lunar lander would be ready for its moon mission “probably sooner” than 2024.

SpaceX won NASA’s lunar lander contract in April, beating Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin and Leidos (ticker: LDOS) unit Dynetics for the job.

The NASA program, dubbed Artemis, is slated to take astronauts, including women, to the moon in 2024. SpaceX will make a reusable lander it calls Starship that will eventually carry people to Mars if Musk’s ultimate ambitions are realized.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

From Exploration to 3D Printing Colonies: NASA Wants 3D Printing Simulation Included in ISS Cargo for Materials

August 25, 2021

By Aubrey Clarke

NASA is including the Redwire Regolith Print (RRP), a printing system, in their preparation for the future Artemis lunar missions. They intend to use the moon’s dusty soil (officially known as regolith) as a printing raw material. Instead of hauling tons of heavy equipment from Earth, the plan is to use readily available resources on the moon to build what is needed.

Engineers want to 3D print with regolith from the moon for a long time, and in fact, they have proven the procedure on Earth possible. Bringing a 3D printer to ISS for testing is a significant step toward making the technology suitable for deployment. The researchers would like to know if printing without gravity is possible and what the strength of the printed material should be.

NASA is including the Redwire Regolith Print (RRP), a printing system, in their preparation for the future Artemis lunar missions. They intend to use the moon’s dusty soil (officially known as regolith) as a printing raw material. Instead of hauling tons of heavy equipment from Earth, the plan is to use readily available resources on the moon to build what is needed.

Engineers want to 3D print with regolith from the moon for a long time, and in fact, they have proven the procedure on Earth possible. Bringing a 3D printer to ISS for testing is a significant step toward making the technology suitable for deployment. The researchers would like to know if printing without gravity is possible and what the strength of the printed material should be.

Robots, Science & Technology News

Nanorobots will prevent root canal treatment failures

August 25, 2021

Nanosized robots will traverse the slender dentinal tubules and target the hard-to-reach bacteria.

By Rajeev Chitguppi

An indigenously developed nanorobotic technology will deploy nanosized robots that will traverse the slender dentinal tubules and target the hard-to-reach bacteria, which are primarily responsible for the root canal treatment failures.

Many root canal treatment cases fail due to incomplete debridement of certain pathogenic bacteria – inaccessible to instrumentation due to their deep location inside the dentinal tubules. Researchers, including those from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have developed nanorobotic technology to solve this problem. The technology involves nanosized robots that will traverse the slender dentinal tubules and target the hard-to-reach bacteria.

AI, Science & Technology News

Samsung Introduces Its Own AI-Designed Chip

August 24, 2021

By Asif Razzaq

Samsung is making cutting edge chips by using artificial intelligence. The South Korean company has partnered with Synopsys, a leading chip design software firm, to create the new AI-powered features in their latest line of computer processor designs.

Synopsys has a new tool that can help companies design and create chips with AI. The DSO.ai software can optimise the chip designs, which will accelerate semiconductor development to unlock novel chip designs, according to industry watchers. With years of cutting-edge semiconductor designers available for training algorithms to emulate human intelligence, this could be Synopsis’s next breakthrough technology!

Robots, Science & Technology News

Skunk Works’ Factory Of The Future Will Use Roaming Robots To Rapidly Assemble Top Secret Aircraft

August 24, 2021

Skunk Works’ knack for innovation enters the “digital” age with a factory able to spit out advanced aircraft faster and cheaper than ever before.

BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK

Lockheed Martin’s famous Skunk Works advanced projects division has opened a new cutting-edge manufacturing facility at its campus in Palmdale, California, which is part of the U.S. Air Force’s Plant 42. The company says that the technologies it will employ in this new “factory of the future,” blandly named Building 648, will help it drastically speed up and otherwise improve how it designs and produces advanced aerospace vehicles, including stealth fighters and drones, hypersonic missiles, and more. Beyond that, however, this factory is the centerpiece of a larger transformation going on within Skunk Works that could potentially revolutionize the development and production of even very advanced aerospace concepts, industrial capabilities that could be increasingly essential for the U.S. military to maintain its competitive edge.

The War Zone was among a select group of outlets given an opportunity to visit Skunk Works and attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 215,000-square foot Building 648, which Lockheed Martin representatives have described as an “intelligent, flexible, advanced manufacturing facility,” on Aug. 10, 2021, as well as tour other relevant portions of the overall facility at Palmdale. The factory is the “cornerstone” of approximately $400 million worth of investments the company has made to help expand its capabilities and capacity at what is formally known as Plant 10 in recent years, which has already led directly to the creation of 1,500 new jobs since 2018