Ralph Bond, Correspondent/Science and Tech Trends.
December 2021 show notes
Story 1: Caltech’s LEO robot hybrid can skateboard, tightrope walk and fly
Source: USA Today Story by Bailey Schulz
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhpMlI8jb5o
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have built a drone-robot hybrid that can do it all.
Called Leonardo, or LEO for short [which stands for Legs Onboard Drone], the bipedal robot can skateboard, hop, walk a tightrope and fly.
The two and a half-foot-tall robot is the first robot to use multi-joint legs and propeller-based thrusters to control its balance.
LEO’s ability to switch between walking and flying allows it to move through very challenging environments.
And because of its stabilizing propellers, you can poke or prod LEO with a lot of force without knocking the robot over.
The team plans to further improve LEO’s performance, changing its leg design to support more weight.
And they plan to equip the robot with a drone-landing algorithm that would let LEO make its own decisions about whether it should walk, fly, or use a combination of both to get from one location to another.
The researchers said that LEO’s technology could be used to help develop a wide range of robots, such as a flying rotorcraft to explore Mars.
Story 2: How about a giant carbon dioxide vacuum plant to help clean up our climate mess?
Source: CNN Story by Ivana Kottasova
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/world/carbon-capture-storage-climate-iceland-intl-cmd/index.html
See video here: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/2021/10/19/Iceland.mp4
In southwestern Iceland there’s a facility called the “Orca” plant. And it can suck up carbon dioxide in the atmosphere like a giant vacuum cleaner.
Created and operated by a Swiss outfit called Climeworks, the facility has an array of towering metal structures with two rows of six huge fans running across each one.
Here’s how it works:
Powered by geothermal energy [which is abundant in Iceland] the fans suck air into a collector.
Carbon dioxide is then filtered out of the air.
Heat is then applied to remove the carbon dioxide from the filter.
Next, the carbon dioxide is mixed with water and injected underground.
The carbon dioxide mineralizes in the ground, and the water flows away.
The facility opened in September and currently removes about 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide every day, which is roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 800 cars a day.
Reality check – you’d need thousands upon thousands of these plants to have a real impact, but the idea is intriguing.
Story 3: Spiders are much smarter than you think
Source: ArsTechnica.com Story by Betsy Mason
Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/spiders-are-much-smarter-than-you-think/
People tend to associate intelligence with brain size. And it has long been assumed that the smallest brains simply don’t have the capacity to support complex mental processes. But what if they do?
Recently an evolutionary biologist at the University Museum of Bergen in Norway published a paper challenging this assumption, using spiders to make his point.
He claims that behaviors that can be described as “cognitive,” as opposed to automatic responses, could be fairly common among spiders.
He cited orb weavers that adjust the way they build their webs based on the type of prey they are hunting – and ghost spiders that have been taught to associate a reward with the smell of vanilla.
The article also cites other research highlighting the remarkable intelligence of spiders.
For example, a study from the University of Cincinnati noted jumping spiders use their brain power and exceptional vision to find, stalk, and pounce on their prey, rather than building a web and waiting for a meal to arrive.
Story 4: Artificial intelligence used to create lifelike disk jockey
Source: GeekWire.com Story by Alan Boyle
Link: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/bot-hot-tunes-super-hi-fi-wellsaid-labs-use-ai-create-lifelike-dj/
Okay folks, what you just heard was ANDY, or Artificial Neural Disk JockeY.
According to ANDY’s creators — Seattle-based WellSaid Labs and Super Hi-Fi, an Artificial Intelligence-centric production company in Los Angeles — ANDY could be coming soon to a streaming music service near you.
The Super Hi-Fi team claims their AI DJ has the same skills as a seasoned on-air DJ.
The Artificial Intelligence driving ANDY can select the right content for any moment, stitch the content in seamlessly with other content or music, and output all of that together as a fully produced listening experience.
WellSaid Labs’ voice synthesis software is what makes ANDY’s voice so hard to distinguish from a human DJ.
According to the developers, ANDY creates new possibilities in streaming audio, radio, retail marketing and more.
Story 5: Breakthrough research shows that lithium-ion batteries made with recycled materials can outlast newer counterparts
Source: ScienceNews.com Story by Carolyn Wilke
Link: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/recycled-lithium-ion-battery-charge
A new study from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts states that lithium-ion batteries with recycled cathodes can outperform batteries with cathodes made from pristine materials, lasting for thousands of additional charging cycles.
Growing demand for these batteries — which power devices from smartphones to electric vehicles — may outstrip the world’s supply of some crucial ingredients, such as cobalt.
Ramping up recycling could help avert a potential shortage. But some manufacturers worry that impurities in recycled materials may cause battery performance to falter.
According to the lead materials scientist behind the new study, “…recycled materials can perform as well as, or even better than, virgin materials.”
Using shredded spent batteries, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute extracted the electrodes and dissolved the metals from those battery bits in an acidic solution.
By tweaking the solution’s pH, the team removed impurities such as iron and copper and recovered over 90 percent of three key metals: nickel, manganese and cobalt. The recovered metals formed the basis for the team’s cathode material.
In tests of how well batteries maintain their capacity to store energy after repeated use and recharging, batteries with recycled cathodes outperformed ones made with brand-new commercial materials of the same composition.
Story 6: A New Skin That Helps Robots Feel
Source: InterestingEngineering.com Story by Loukia Papadopoulos
This week, Meta AI researchers, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, announced the development of a new skin that could allow robots to feel.
It’s called ReSkin and it leverages advances in machine learning and magnetic sensing to offer a versatile solution that is ideal for repeated long-term use.
Here’s how it works:
When ReSkin touches something, the plastic it’s made of deforms, changing the magnetic field created by the embedded particles.
A circuit board then tracks these changes and communicates them to artificial intelligence.
How does it feel? The circuit board also communicates these changes as a force (a sense of touch). The novel technology can identify a touch as light as 0.1 newtons of force with an accuracy of 1 millimeter.
ReSkin is also cost-efficient to produce. It amounts to less than $6 each at 100 units and even less at larger quantities. It’s 2-3 mm thick and can be used for more than 50,000 interactions without needing to be replaced.
So far the researchers have trialed ReSkin in robot hands, tactile gloves, arm sleeves, and even dog shoes and have been able to monitor many activities from the skin such as how the gloves grasp and how the shoes walk and rest.
They have concluded that ReSkin is also ideal for fast manipulation tasks like throwing and catching objects.
Best of all, when the skin does finally succumb to wear and tear (after 50,000 interactions) it can be easily stripped off and replaced.
Story 7: New research at Stanford University Points to Solution to Global Blood Shortage
Source: SciTechDaily.com Story by Danielle Torrent Tucker
Link: https://scitechdaily.com/new-model-stanford-researchers-points-to-solution-to-global-blood-shortage/
Stanford researchers have developed a new mathematical model of the body’s interacting physiological and biochemical processes – including blood vessel expansion, blood thickening and flow-rate changes in response to the transfusion of red blood cells – that shows that instead of real blood, plasma expanders could be a substitute that can lower the costs and eliminate blood transfusion’s negative effects.
Plasma expanders consist of solutions of high-molecular-weight starch dissolved in normal saline; they have been in use in transfusion medicine for several decades and have proven to be effective in experimental studies.
Story 8: Kansas City looks to build solar farm by its airport to power the entire city!
Source: Kansas City Star Story by Cortlynn Stark
Link: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article255543411.html
Kansas City is exploring building a 300-megawatt capacity solar farm on a few thousand acres by the Kansas City International Airport.
It would be one of the largest solar farms in the country, let alone one created by a municipality.
The city is currently conducting a feasibility study to see how they could implement it and how much power it would be able to provide.
The Kansas City team believes there’s an opportunity for a solar array on this land to provide power to most or all of the homes and residences in the city. The team notes “This is not just about powering city facilities. It’s about powering the entire city.”
Story 9: Google has a new smartphone app to ease communication for people with severe speech impairments
Source: Engadget.com Story by C. Low
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU2oCVlzEZk
Last month Google announced a new Android smartphone app called Project Relate designed to help people with severe speech challenges more easily communicate with others.
The app can also run the Google speech recognition assistant to activate apps, manage communications, and operate Google smart home devices.
Here’s the problem Google wanted to overcome with this app — Standard speech recognition doesn’t always work well for people with severe speech impairments because the algorithms have not been trained on samples of their unique speech patterns.
The Project Relate app will use custom models trained on each individual user’s speech patterns.
When someone first launches the app, the app will ask them to repeat a few phrases to create a base model to understand the way they speak.
Then, the Project Relate app can do three things:
Transcribe the user’s speech into text that they can copy and paste or show to people on their smartphone screen,
Play back what the user said in a synthesized voice
And communicate with the Google Assistant
Google is now looking for beta testers to help improve the app.
Salute to Google, as this is a major step to improve speech recognition for those with severe speech challenges.
Story 10: America is buying a record number of industrial robots
Source: Reuters News Service
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/12/tech/robot-automation/index.html
Companies in North America added a record number of industrial robots in the first nine months of this year as they struggled to add human workers, according to a report released this month by the Association for Advancing Automation.
Factories and other industrial users ordered 29,000 robots valued at nearly one and a half billion dollars, which is 37% more than during the same period last year.
And here’s another interesting trend – Traditionally, auto companies have long bought the most industrial robots.
But in 2020, combined sales to other types of businesses surpassed the auto sector for the first time – and that trend continues this year.
In the first nine months of this year, automotive industry-related orders for robots grew 20% to 12,544 units, while orders by non-automotive companies expanded 53% to 16,355 robots.
Story 11: These tiny robots inspired by starfish larva move courtesy of ultrasound
Source: TechCrunch.com Story by Brian Heateer
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn30ct9u1UY&t=1s
Robotics researchers have long been fascinated with the prospects of extremely small microrobots.
In specific, microrobots could be a huge help in medicine for targeted delivery of medication and for microsurgical procedures.
But, figuring out how to make these tiny robots move through blood vessels to a target has been a challenge.
For example, how can you make the tiny robots move without batteries and other technologies on board that would make them too large to pass through a blood vessel?
Magnets are often suggested, but a team at ETH Zurich is exploring an altogether different solution: ultrasound.
First the ETH Zurich team made tiny robots, which measure smaller than the diameter of a human hair, using photolithography.
Then they covered the robots with synthetic versions of the hair-like cilia that cover starfish larva.
For starfish larva, these ultra-fine hair-like cilia beat the surrounding water in patterns that create small vortexes, propelling the young larva through the fluid.
The team says it was able to create similar propulsion in its tiny robots by applying ultrasound waves, allowing the microrobots to swim in a controlled path.
Story 12: A German Space Start-Up Uses Candle Wax to Launch Satellites
Source: Autodesk’s Redshift.com Story by Susanne Frank
Link: https://bit.ly/31Lyobp
See related video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEbIR072CMc
HyImpulse is one of several new companies seeking to make Germany the European leader in spaceflight.
In 2023, HyImpulse’s microlauncher rocket will carry small satellites into space using a sustainable hybrid propulsion system powered by paraffin wax.
A wax-powered rocket may sound crazy at first but adding paraffin wax to liquid oxygen helps to make the propulsion system safer.
Here in the US, Stanford University scientists have also explored this approach.
If a rocket that uses traditional fuels crashes, it could seriously contaminate the sea or land.
But because HyImpulse’s rockets use the paraffin wax-based fuel they would not cause an environmental disaster.
And as an added benefit, the paraffin wax used to make the rocket fuel is recyclable – it can be collected and melted down again.
Story 13: Commentary on 50th Anniversary of the Microprocessor
Source: Me
Great article about this historic event: Link: https://www.wired.com/2009/12/1223shockley-bardeen-brattain-transistor/
It was so great last month to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the microprocessor invented by Intel!
But we all need to remember that the microprocessor, and for that matter, all electronics that we know of and take for granted today would not exist were it not for the invention of the transistor.
The invention of the transistor made shrinking down electronics, computers, you name it possible.
The first transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Bell Labs is the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T).
The three individuals credited with the invention of the transistor were William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.
This is a really special and personal thing for me, as my grandfather was a scientist at Bell Labs and was on the team that helped make the miracle of the transistor possible.