Lifeboat Foundation

A team of scientists has developed electronic skin that could pave the way for soft, flexible robotic devices to assist with surgical procedures or aid people’s mobility.

The creation of stretchable e-skin by Edinburgh researchers gives soft robots for the first time a level of physical self-awareness similar to that of people and animals.

The technology could aid breakthroughs in soft robotics by enabling devices to detect precisely their movement in the most sensitive of surroundings, experts say.

A new technology bids to transform the human cognitive process as it has not been shaken up since the invention of printing. The technology that printed the Gutenberg Bible in 1,455 made abstract human thought communicable generally and rapidly. But new technology today reverses that process. Whereas the printing press caused a profusion of modern human thought, the new technology achieves its distillation and elaboration. In the process, it creates a gap between human knowledge and human understanding. If we are to navigate this transformation successfully, new concepts of human thought and interaction with machines will need to be developed. This is the essential challenge of the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

The new technology is known as generative artificial intelligence; GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. ChatGPT, developed at the OpenAI research laboratory, is now able to converse with humans. As its capacities become broader, they will redefine human knowledge, accelerate changes in the fabric of our reality, and reorganize politics and society.

A million here, times a million there. Pretty soon you’re talking about big numbers. So Nvidia claims for its AI accelerating hardware in terms of the performance boost it has delivered over the last decade and will deliver again over the next 10 years.

The result, if Nvidia is correct, will be a new industry of AI factories across the world and gigantic breakthroughs in AI processing power. It also means, ostensibly, AI models one million times more powerful than existing examples, including ChatGPT, in AI processing terms at least.

The devices would not need batteries because they can harvest power from LTE signals instead.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. This is a feature that would allow you to, for instance, know everything that is in your fridge and when it expires.

A new technology developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego can allow that possibility, according to a press release published by the institution on Tuesday.

Continue reading “New tech could transform phones into RFID readers” »

The transient electronic bandage reduces inflammation, and dissolves into your body after use.

Northwestern scientists have created a groundbreaking medical device with the potential to revolutionize healing: an electrotherapy patch that accelerates wound recovery and safely self-dissolves when no longer necessary.

Cost-effective solution for closing wounds.

Continue reading “First-of-its-kind e-bandage speeds wound healing” »

Year 2019 face_with_colon_three

Scientists can finally explain the ‘breakthrough’ experience.

A disruptive new planet-hunting technology, now under study as part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, could literally detect and then look for biosignatures from every Earth 2.0 within a thirty-light-year radius of our solar system.

Known as DICER (The Diffractive Interfero Coronagraph Exoplanet Resolver), the key to this NIAC study’s revolutionary means of detecting these planets is that unlike conventional optical space telescopes — which use curved, highly polished mirrors to collect starlight — this mission would employ flat sets of what are known as diffraction gratings.

Who says you need a conventional telescope to find exoplanets? NASA has funded a ‘Phase I’ study for the development of a whole new means of detecting and then teasing spectra from very nearby exoplanetary earths.

Continue reading “NASA Funds Disruptive Space Tech To Detect Very Nearby ExoEarths” »

“I think I’m probably just as guilty as everybody else,” Toyota Research Institute’s (TRI) senior vice president of robotics, Max Bajracharya, admits. “It’s like, now our GPUs are better. Oh, we got machine learning and now you know we can do this. Oh, okay, maybe that was harder than we thought.”

Ambition is, of course, an important aspect of this work. But there’s also a grand, inevitable tradition of relearning mistakes. The smartest people in the room can tell you a million times over why a specific issue hasn’t been solved, but it’s still easy to convince yourself that this time — with the right people and the right tools — things will just be different.

In the case of TRI’s in-house robotics team, the impossible task is the home. The lack of success in the category hasn’t been for lack of trying. Generations of roboticists have agreed that there are plenty of problems waiting to be automated, but thus far, successes have been limited. Beyond the robotic vacuum, there’s been little in the way of breakthrough.

Over the past year or so, CleanTechnica has published several stories about Sakuu, the innovative battery company located in Silicon Valley (where else?) that is working to bring 3D-printed solid-state batteries to market.

Last June, Robert Bagheri, founder and CEO of Sakuu, said in a press release, “As far as our solid state battery development, we are preparing to unveil a new category of rapid printed batteries manufactured at scale using our additive manufacturing platform. The sustainability and supply chain implications of this pioneering development will be transformational.” Based on the company’s Kavian platform, the rapid 3D-printed batteries will enable customizable, mass scale, and cost effective manufacturing of solid-state batteries while solving fundamental challenges confronting battery manufacturers today, the company said at that time.