April 2020 show notes
For more about me, see: https://ralphbond.wixsite.com/aboutme
Story 1: Shape-changing inflatable robot can nab objects and roam on its own
Source: New Atlas.com Story by Nick Lavars
Link: https://newatlas.com/robotics/shape-changing-human-scale-free-roaming-inflatable-soft-robot/
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqgbLb8m77U&feature=emb_logo
- Researchers working in the field of soft robotics hope to bring about a new generation of machines that use supple, inflatable components.
- Scientists at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) have put forward a particularly interesting solution, showing off an inflatable robot that can change shape, grab onto objects and roll in controllable directions while untethered.
- According to the researchers, a significant limitation of most soft robots is that they have to be attached to a bulky air compressor or plugged into a wall, which prevents them from moving
- The basis for the team’s soft robot is a single inflated tube.
- One roller compression device pinches the two ends of the tube together, while another two roller compression devices move up and down the tube, shifting their positions to create another two corners and produce various forms of triangles.
- The researchers call this an “isoperimetric robot,” referring to its ability to change shape dramatically, despite the amount of air inside and its overall length staying exactly the same.
- The idea is that you can change the shape of the soft robot by using simple motors that drive along the tubes, instead of using the slow, inefficient pumps that are normally used
- How it might be used:
- The team imagines these attributes could prove useful in disaster scenarios, where the robot could make its way through tight spaces into a collapsed building, and then reconfigure into a type of support structure.
- And, this robot could be really useful for space exploration – especially because it can be transported in a small package and then operates untethered after it inflates.
Story 2: EV [Electric Vehicle] battery breakthrough claims are usually bull, but this guy won Nobel for lithium-ion
Source: Electrek Story by Bradley Berman – Story posted April 6
- Claims of a breakthrough EV battery seem to come every week or two.
- The reality is that it’s not so easy to bend the laws of physics.
- But the latest claim is offered by John Goodenough, co-inventor of the now ubiquitous lithium-ion battery and winner of a Nobel Prize in chemistry for that previous breakthrough.
- Goodenough, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, revealed a sodium-glass battery technology last week.
- He told IEEE Spectrum: I think we have the possibility of doing what we’ve been trying to do for the last 20 years. That is, to get an electric car that will be competitive in cost and convenience with the internal combustion engine.
- IEEE Spectrum described Goodenough’s approach:
- The new battery technology uses a form of glass, doped with reactive alkali metals like lithium or sodium, as the battery’s electrolyte (the medium between cathode and electrode that ions travel across when the battery charges and discharges).
- As outlined in a research paper and recent patent filing (of which Goodenough, 94, says more are forthcoming), the lithium- or sodium-doped glass electrolyte offers a new medium for novel battery chemistry and physics.
The researchers found that lithium- or sodium-glass battery has three times the energy storage capacity of a comparable lithium-ion battery.
- Moreover, Maria Helena Braga, the co-developer of the lithium-glass battery, says it can be charged in “minutes rather than hours.”
- The sodium-doped glass endows the battery with greater energy density capabilities. It works like an ultra-fast supercapacitor.
- And it’s safe, has long life, and can be developed without the strict dependence on lithium as a raw material.
Goodenough is excited but says there is more to do:
- The next step is to verify that the cathode problem is solved. And when we do that, we can scale up to large-scale cells.
- So far, we’ve made jelly-roll cells, and it looks like they’re working fairly well. So I’m fairly optimistic we’ll get there.
- But the development is going to be with the battery manufacturers. I don’t want to do development. I don’t want to be going into business. I’m 94. I don’t need the money.
Story 3: MIT Will Post Free Plans Online for an Emergency Ventilator That Can Be Built for $100 [worth of parts]
Source: Science Daily March 28 MIT announcement by David L. Chandler
First a quick reminder about ventilators:
- Ventilators in hospitals can keep patients breathing when they no longer can on their own, BUT, as we all know now, they cost around $30,000 each.
GOOD NEWS: a volunteer team of engineers, physicians, computer scientists, and others, based at MIT, is working to implement a safe, inexpensive, portable alternative for emergency use, which could be built quickly around the world.
- Interesting fact – what the team is doing is activating, updating and promoting the implementation of an idea originally proposed back in 2010 by MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.
- Reality check: Right off the top, I want to be clear that this MIT proposal is for an emergency fallback device, not a full replacement for a sophisticated hospital ventilator.
- Here’s what makes the MIT team’s idea so exciting:
- The key to MIT’s simple, inexpensive ventilator is that their machine is based on using a low-cost, normally hand-operated plastic pouch called a bag-valve resuscitator, or Ambu bag for short, which hospitals already have on hand in large quantities.
- What I’m talking about are the flexible handheld bags you’ve seen in person or on a TV show that paramedics use to pump air into the lungs of a patient who has stopped breathing.
- But here’s the catch – operation of Ambu bags is a task for skilled personnel, who are trained in how to evaluate the patient and adjust the timing and pressure of the manual pumping accordingly.
Enter MIT’s low-cost device:
- The clever MIT device places a mechanical paddle on each side of an Ambu bag. The paddles are driven by a small motor to precisely squeeze and release the Ambu bag.
- A key innovation with the MIT device is that it features an adjustable tidal volume up to a maximum of 750 milliliters of air pumped.
- What’s Tidal Volume? Tidal volume is the volume of air delivered to the lungs with each breath a mechanical ventilator produces.
- The device offers Easy to use input knobs that are used to set the desired Tidal volume and number of breaths per minute.
- The MIT prototype also features an assist-control mode and an alarm to indicate over pressurization of the system.
Can any handy do-it-yourself hobbyist make one of these devices?
- Reality check: The researchers emphasize that making this device is not a project for typical do-it-yourselfers to undertake.
- It requires a full understanding of the clinical-technical interface, and the ability to comply with strict U.S. Food and Drug Administration specifications and guidelines.
Okay, the device uses about $100 in parts, but what would the final volume production cost be?
- The researchers estimate the volume production of the device [parts and labor] would be less than $200
How the MIT team is sharing this with the world: Online you can access a PDF guide titled “Design and Prototyping of a Low-cost Portable Mechanical Ventilator”
- I’ll post a link on my website, point your browser to Ralph Bond, and look for the KEX reference
Other notable efforts to quickly create emergency ventilators include work by Dyson and Mercedes F1. There’s even talk about using CPAP machines as an emergency fallback.
Story 4: Singer-songwriter robot can write own lyrics after studying musical greats
Source: Daily Mail [UK] via MSN.com Story by Ryan Morrison
Link: https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB10QxFc?m=en-us&ocid=News
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9OUbqWHOSk&feature=emb_logo
- ‘Bot Dylan’: Singer-songwriter robot called Schimon can write its own lyrics after studying tens of thousands of words penned by the musical greats
- Developed by researchers from the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, the robot collaborates with human musicians and even has an album out in the spring.
- The robot was given a dataset of 50,000 lyrics covering all genres including rock, hip-hop, jazz and progressive as part of its song writing education.
- As well as writing the lyrics the robot can sing them and dance while performing with ‘his band’ made up of Georgia Tech students and researchers.
- Professor Gil Weinberg, creator of Schimon said he works with humans to create music, they are a mixture of songs made by human and robot together.
- When Shimon sings the songs he really does sing.
- He has a unique voice created by collaborators at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and involved creating an AI voice trained on hundreds of other songs.
Story 5: Five construction innovations bridging the labor shortage gap | Construction Dive
Source: ConstructionDive.com Content from Tenna
- The USG Corporation + U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported in December that 89% of contractors are having at least a moderate level of difficulty finding skilled workers.
- The construction industry is facing an acute labor shortage—where more than 250,000 jobs need to be filled in the US.
- High-tech advancements have allowed construction technology to boom, and many firms are working diligently to provide the industry with options to help bridge the labor shortage gap.
One of the technologies cited in the article is Tybot, a robot that ties rebar for a bridge project in Pittsburgh.
I looked into this, and here’s information from Construction Equipment magazine:
See a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYCDDVARZJU&feature=emb_logo
- Developed by Advanced Construction Robotics, Tybot is ready to provide a solution to the labor shortage affecting road and bridge contractors.
- The rebar-tying robot was developed by Steve Muck, CEO of Brayman Construction in Pennsylvania, and Jeremy Searock, former technical program manager of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center, in an effort to find a robotic business solution to the labor shortage in construction.
- The autonomous rebar-tying robot is attached on a frame that can expand to 140 feet and senses each rebar intersection.
- Tybot ties off the rebar connection, then moves to the next intersection to repeat the process.
- The equipment needs only one human to supervise the process, freeing up valuable human workers for other tasks.
- Brayman Construction tested the Tybot robot in Beaver County, Pennsylvania earlier this year and is now set to begin selling their product next Spring under the name Tybots LLC.
Story 6: Scientists Develop Focus-Free Camera with Flat Lens
Source: SCI News March 18
Link: http://www.sci-news.com/physics/focus-free-camera-flat-lens-08239.html
- A team of researchers from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and Oblate Optics, Inc. has created a camera that does not require focusing.
- Dr. Rajesh Menon, a scientist at the University of Utah noted “Our flat lenses can drastically reduce the weight, complexity and cost of cameras and other imaging systems, while increasing their functionality.”
- Such optics could enable thinner smartphone cameras, improved and smaller cameras for biomedical imaging such as endoscopy, and more compact cameras for automobiles.
- The team’s flat lenses can maintain focus for objects that are about 6 m (20 feet) apart from each other.
- They use nanostructures patterned on a flat surface rather than bulky glass or plastic to achieve the important optical properties that control the way light travels.
- Dr. Menon noted “This new lens could have many interesting applications outside photography such as creating highly efficient illumination for LIDAR that is critical for many autonomous systems, including self-driving cars.”
- “The design approach we used could be expanded to create optical components with any number of properties such as extreme bandwidth, easier manufacturability or lower cost.”
- “The new lens eliminates the need for focusing and allows any camera to keep all the objects in focus simultaneously,” Dr. Menon said.
- “Conventional cameras also use multiple lenses to keep different colors of light in focus simultaneously. Since our design is very general, we can also use it to create a single flat lens that focuses all colors of light, drastically simplifying cameras even further.”
- Work to ensure that the lenses could be mass manufactured is also needed before they could be commercialized.
- “This research is a good example of how abandoning traditional notions can enable devices previously considered impossible. It serves as a good reminder to question dictates from the past,” Dr. Menon said.
- The team’s work was published in the journal Optica.
Story 7: Artificial intelligence translates thoughts into text using brain implant
Source: Yahoo News Story by Anthony Cuthbertson
Link: https://news.yahoo.com/artificial-intelligence-translates-thoughts-text-110030208.html
- Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that can translate a person’s thoughts into text by analyzing their brain activity.
- Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, developed the AI to decipher up to 250 words in real time from a set of between 30 and 50 sentences.
- The algorithm was trained using the neural signals of four women with electrodes implanted in their brains, which were already in place to monitor epileptic seizures.
- The volunteers repeatedly read sentences aloud while the researchers fed the brain data to the AI to unpick patterns that could be associated with individual words.
- The average word error rate across a repeated set was as low as 3 per cent.
- According to the researchers: “Taking a cue from recent advances in machine translation, we trained a recurrent neural network to encode each sentence-length sequence of neural activity into an abstract representation, and then to decode this representation, word by word, into an English sentence.”
Story 8: Ikea acquires AI imaging startup Geomagical Labs to supercharge room visualizations
Source: Tech Crunch Story by Ingrid Lunden
Link: https://tcrn.ch/3dZd9EP
See the app via this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=SVv5zJZNZtU&feature=emb_logo
- Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings and decor giant, was one of the first to launch augmented reality applications, partnering with others to develop smart home devices and launching a business unit to build that out further.
- And investing in relevant startups, and even picking up of logistics startups to expand its reach.
- Now Ikea has acquired Geomagical Labs, an AI imaging startup based out of Mountain View.
- Geomagical Labs has not had a lot of fanfare, but quietly it’s been developing a number of computer vision-based technologies.
- Its first product — which allows a user to quickly scan a room using any smartphone, render that into a panoramic 3D picture in a few minutes, remove all the furniture in it, and then, in the words of Geomagical’s founder and CEO Brian Totty, “play dress up” by adding in new items to scale”
- Their app will be implemented by Ikea into its website and apps to let people start to create more accurate visualisations of their spaces, and how they would look with Ikea pieces in them.
Story 9: Need to Get Outside? These 5 National Parks Offer Virtual Tours You Can Take from the Comfort of Home
Source: Travel + Leisure Magazine Story by Andrea Romano
Link: https://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/national-parks/virtual-national-parks-tours
Google Arts & Culture has teamed up with five national parks in the U.S. so people can enjoy the beauty of the natural world while sitting safely on their couch.
These parks feature different climates and environments from across the country, including famous desert vistas and snowy terrains.
The parks include:
- Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska
- Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii
- Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
- Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
- Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
Story 10: An unlikely coronavirus hero? Self-driving cars
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Courtney Linder
Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a31401964/self-driving-cars-coronavirus/
- A Chinese self-driving delivery company called Neolix has been deploying fleets of its self-driving vans to transport medical supplies and food to areas of the country hit hardest by COVID-19, including the epidemic’s epicenter in Wuhan.
- The small vans even have the capacity to disinfect city streets—now empty due to quarantine measures.
- After seeing how useful autonomous technologies can be in the midst of a global health crisis, the Chinese government has even offered up a pretty attractive incentive for companies that would like to purchase and operate delivery vans: 60 percent off of the price tag.
- With that in mind, Neolix expects to manufacture and sell 1,000 vans by the end of the year.
- While the U.S. does not have sweeping federal laws pertaining to self-driving vehicles and operation on public streets, companies like Waymo, Uber, and Argo AI have close relationships with city and state level governments where testing is conducted in states like California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida, among others.
Story 11: USC experts explore new technologies to combat COVID-19
Source: USC News Release Gary Polakovic – March 27
Link: https://news.usc.edu/167401/new-technology-coronavirus-usc-experts-virtual-reality-smartphone-apps/
In response to the coronavirus health crisis, USC researchers have made a hard pivot, adapting labs and lessons learned from treating other diseases to help check the virus and save lives.
Among tools at their disposal, USC scientists and engineers turn to new technologies unavailable during past pandemics.
Tools such as supercomputers, software apps, virtual reality, big data and algorithms are now in play.
They are using the tools to find ways to search and destroy coronavirus DNA, turn smartphones into personal protection devices and use people-friendly simulators to help cope with the crush of medical cases.
Two examples cited in the announcement:
- Virtual humans can help doctors and nurses respond
- The “battle buddy” virtual human agent can interpret data from wearable devices, analyze language responses, administer psychological assessment questions and respond accordingly.
- It could be used to screen sick patients, monitor patient recovery or help hospital staff answer calls or patient questions.
- Smartphone apps could monitor symptoms and track COVID-19 spread
- USC has teamed with a Bay Area company to make a phone app to record and analyze coughs and symptoms and compare it to an individual’s social interactions using GPS. It’s all about using data from individuals that becomes a source we can use to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
- In a parallel project, experts at USC Viterbi are developing a smartphone app to alert people when they’ve been near an infected person.
Story 12: Dyson invented a ventilator for coronavirus patients within 10 days, report says
Source: C/Net Story by Corinne Reichert – March 26
- Called the CoVent, 10,000 units of the new system are being supplied to the UK’s National Health Service after the company received a request from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to CNN.
- The ventilators will be ready in early April, according to CNN, with Dyson also set to donate 5,000 CoVent machines globally.