Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transportation – Page 21

Self-driving vehicles can be imperfect

Researchers from three of Virginia’s premier universities, including the University of Virginia’s Homa Alemzadeh, aim to take the risk out of self-driving vehicles by overcoming inevitable computer failures with sound engineering.

Cutting-edge research from three top Virginia universities, led by the University of Virginia’s Homa Alemzadeh, is on a mission to revolutionize the safety of self-driving vehicles. With a substantial $926,737 grant from the National Science Foundation, this powerhouse team is dedicated to pinpointing and neutralizing potential computer failures in autonomous vehicle systems.

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By harnessing this insight, they aim to fortify the resilience of the entire system and proactively eliminate safety risks. Alemzadeh, a trailblazing associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, is joined by the esteemed William & Mary professor of computer science, Evgenia Smirni, and the visionary lead investigator and George Mason University assistant professor of computer science, Lishan Yang.

Science of Knots Could Help Us Imagine Our Universe’s Weird Shape

When you look at your surrounding environment, it might seem like you’re living on a flat plane. After all, this is why you can navigate a new city using a map: a flat piece of paper that represents all the places around you.

This is likely why some people in the past believed the Earth to be flat. But most people now know that is far from the truth.

You live on the surface of a giant sphere, like a beach ball the size of the Earth with a few bumps added. The surface of the sphere and the plane are two possible 2D spaces, meaning you can walk in two directions: north and south or east and west.

Apptronik’s humanoid robots take the first steps toward building themselves

I wondered when this would start!

“This means that should everything go according to plan, the humanoid robot will eventually be put to work building itself.” 🤖 🤖

Apptronik, an Austin-based maker of humanoid robots, on Tuesday announced a new pilot partnership with American supply chain/manufacturing stalwart, Jabil. The deal arrives two weeks after Apptronik announced a $350 million Series A financing round aimed at scaling up production of its Apollo robot.

The Jabil deal is the second major pilot announced by Apptronik. It follows a March 2024 partnership that put Apollo to work on the Mercedes-Benz manufacturing floor. While the company tells TechCrunch that its partnership with the automaker is ongoing, it has yet to graduate beyond the pilot stage.

In addition to test running the humanoid robot on its factory floor, this new deal also finds Florida-based Jabil and Apptronik becoming manufacturing partners. Once Apollo is determined to be commercially viable, Jabil will begin producing the robot in its own factories. This means that should everything go according to plan, the humanoid robot will eventually be put to work building itself.

Multinational research project shows how life on Earth can be measured from space

Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth.

An ambitious, multinational research project funded by NASA and co-led by UC Merced civil and environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir demonstrated that Earth’s biodiversity can be monitored and measured from space, leading to a better understanding of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Hestir led the team alongside University of Buffalo geography Professor Adam Wilson and Professor Jasper Slingsby from the University of Cape Town on BioSCape, which collected data over six weeks in late 2024.

Two NASA aircraft and one South African aircraft flew over South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region — one of the most biodiverse places on the planet — to collect ultraviolet, visual, thermal and other images. That data, combined with field work by the large team of scientists from the United States and South Africa, provides a comprehensive look at the region’s biodiversity, or life systems.

Microcomb chips show potential for centimeter-level GPS precision

Optical atomic clocks can increase the precision of time and geographic position a thousandfold in our mobile phones, computers, and GPS systems. However, they are currently too large and complex to be widely used in society.

Now, a research team from Purdue University, U.S., and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has developed a technology that, with the help of on-chip microcombs, could make ultra-precise optical atomic clock systems significantly smaller and more accessible—with significant benefits for navigation, autonomous vehicles, and geo-data monitoring.

The research is published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Pushing the limits of ‘custom-made’ microscopy: 3D imaging of light-sensitive samples now 1,000 times faster

EMBL tech developers have made an important leap forward with a novel methodology that adds an important microscopy capability to life scientists’ toolbox. The advance represents a 1,000-fold improvement in speed and throughput in Brillouin microscopy and provides a way to view light-sensitive organisms more efficiently.

“We were on a quest to speed up ,” said Carlo Bevilacqua, optical engineer in EMBL’s Prevedel team and lead author on a paper published about this in Nature Photonics.

“Over the years, we have progressed from being able to see just a pixel at a time to a line of 100 pixels, to now a full plane that offers a view of approximately 10,000 pixels.”

Self-driving lab transforms electronic polymers discovery

Plastic that conducts electricity might sound impossible. But there is a special class of materials known as “electronic polymers” that combines the flexibility of plastic with the functionality of metal. This type of material opens the door for breakthroughs in wearable devices, printable electronics and advanced energy storage systems.

Yet, making thin films from electronic polymers has always been a difficult task. It takes a lot of fine-tuning to achieve the right balance of physical and . Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have created an innovative solution to this challenge with artificial intelligence (AI).

They used an AI-driven, automated materials laboratory, a tool called Polybot, to explore processing methods and produce high-quality films. Polybot is located at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne.

Brain os And The (Re)Evolution of Human Intelligence

Everyone is talking about AI. Do you think it will surpass human intelligence? And what consequences will this have?

We need to focus primarily on how artificial intelligence will transform the workforce and job market. For instance, AI will be a key component of humanoid robots’ brains. Tesla is already producing them, and I believe that within the next 5 years, every automotive company is likely to produce their own version. This makes sense because automotive companies already have the assembly lines and engineering expertise to produce all the small components needed to build them. We’re already amazed by what AI can do today—imagine what it will do in 5 or 10 years, and then think about what it could do when integrated into a humanoid robot. It’s already confirmed through commercial orders with current manufacturers that major fast-food franchise chains and other chains, for example, in the transportation sector, will test humanoid robots within their processes. AI is already skilled in programming tasks and will soon be able to enhance itself.