NASA Humanoid Will Get to Mars Before Us - http://clapway.com/2015/11/18/nasa-humanoid-will-get-to-mars-before-us123/

A Humanoid Robot Could Be Reaching Deep Space Before Us

NASA is sending MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory one of two 6 foot, 290 lbs humanoid robot to test for future space missions. NASA’s hope is to send this robot to Mars and, if successful, even beyond the Red Planet and onto deeper space.

It’s a very natural step, seeing as the New Horizons has gotten so far into space. NASA will always put manned mission safety first, so a NASA Humanoid in Mars to test the Red terrain is not a bad idea, nor is it a far-fetched one.

A Humanoid Robot Could Be Reaching Deep Space Before Us / nasa.gov

NASA Humanoid Robot: Valkyrie, a. k. a. R5

The NASA humanoid handed over to MIT is part of NASA’s Space Robot Challenge, and its mission is to create better autonomous robots that can go as far as replacing humans in what they call extreme space missions. The challenge is divided into several parts, including robot simulation and a physical robot competition using the Valkyrie robot, also known as R5.

The MIT team, led by Russ Tedrake, was chosen because they’d participated in 2015’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics Challenge. They’ll be getting up to $250,000 per year until 2015 from NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directive to try and get this NASA humanoid to handle deep space exploration and other basic tasks.

NASA Humanoid: Why Do They Want Robots in Space?

NASA expressed that the reason behind wanting to put a Humanoid in space is because they can be of assistance, or maybe even replace humans in very extreme space environments. They can be monitored directly by humans or take care of basic tasks as humans arrive onto these environments. The NASA Humanoid hopes to be able to handle disaster-relief protocols in addition to exploring deep space and assisting astronauts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-YBaYjbqY

NASA Humanoid Will Get to Mars Before Us

EU Fails to Make Car of the Future A Reality - http://clapway.com/2015/11/05/eu-fails-to-make-hiriko-car-a-reality123/

MIT designed the CityCar a few years ago, but after going into development, the now called Hiriko Car or ‘car of the future’ is obsolete. The initial CityCar was a small electric two passenger car with ‘robot wheels’ and a bubble-like design, and most remarkably, the car could fold in itself, fitting seven of the pod-like vehicles can fit into two parking spaces.

The cars were meant to be shared among citizens and used like a bike share and the very idea of revolutionizing urban spaces in this way brought excitement to Europe, who undertook the project and decided to bring it to life. Come 2008, a handful of Spanish companies got together to turn the CityCar into what was later called the Hiriko Car Project. The first car debuted in 2012, and it was acclaimed for the idea it represented and for the change it would bring.

Hiriko

Fast forward three years later, when seven of the associates in the project are under investigation for misuse of public funds and for falsifying documents. The entire project was shut down and its participants laid off, some of which are now suing for severance pay. The project’s assets are frozen, and some former employees have revealed that some parts of the car debuted in 2012 were glued with Velcro and superglue.

Today, the Hiriko Car Project buildings are abandoned, and there hasn’t been word on where that first car lies now. The team behind the initial design at MIT believe it’s probably for the best, since self-driving cars are the new trend, and he is currently developing one that, instead of saving parking space, doesn’t need to be parked at all. The CityCar was the car of the future then, and self-driving cars are the car of the future now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MONIa4zdLdY

 

 

EU Fails to Make Car of the Future A Reality

Drones Are Going to Start Taking Over Airspace - http://clapway.com/2015/11/04/drones-are-going-to-start-taking-over-airspace123/

An automated drone from MIT was able to avoid obstacles at 30mph in unmapped territory. Drones are already more than popular, garnering thousands of dollars on crowd funding websites and the like. Could this be the beginning of a technological take over?

In general, automated devices are given maps with which to navigate, and this drone, weighing 664g, can navigate on its own. The drone, designed by MIT student Andrew Barry, won’t avoid an airliner coming in at 300mph, but that’s only because the technology isn’t developed that far along yet. Highlighting the keyword yet. Barry’s drone, designed to earn him his PhD, can scan 10 meters ahead of its line of sight for obstacles, and it can adjust accordingly. He says that soon enough, drones will be able to brake automatically, just as cars do.

This would indicate giving drones even more intelligence to drive itself away from risk, and return control to the pilot once the obstacle has been bypassed. Thanks to his work, Barry is to join Boston Dynamics, which was acquired by Google 2013, after graduation. All of his work is shared on Github.

Technology enthusiasts, rejoice, for we may soon see the sky plagued with drones. Though many countries have criminalized the usage of drones, or otherwise banned them from certain public areas, it is only a matter of time before drones become an even more widespread invention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qah8oIzCwk

 

Drones Are Going to Start Taking Over Airspace

Researchers from MIT have created a robot to handle your delicates...or rather, your delicate things. #MIT #robot #robothand - http://clapway.com/2015/10/02/mit-robot-hand123/

Robots have gone soft on us, literally. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a robot made of silicone rubber that has the ability to determine the size and shape of an object it is holding. Gone are the days of hard metal robotics: this “soft robot” can actually feel what it is holding, which allows it to figure out how hard to grip an item. The design features a claw-like structure with three fingers, resemblant of a claw inside an arcade game. The difference is that this machine can actually continue to hold onto objects rather than letting them slip out of its grasp.

The FEATURES OF THE Soft Robot

The 3-D printed robot, created by the  Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has a unique silicone rubber structure that provides stability and flexibility, almost allowing it to emulate the versatility of a human hand. This enables it to firmly grasp irregularly-shaped items. According to Daniela Rus, a co-author of this study and the director of CSAIL:”Grasping is an important step in being able to do useful tasks; with this work we set out to develop both the soft hands and the supporting control and planning systems that make dynamic grasping possible.”

The robot is controlled pneumatically, meaning it utilizes pressurized air to move the fingers of the structure. To understand the shape and size of an object, the robot holds sensors inside its finger tips and uses two different kinds of grasps: a full-handed grasp or a pinching grasp, which carries an object between two fingers.

However, in order for the robot to determine how much pressure to place on an item, the research team has to first train the machine, by making it grasp an object ten times. After doing so, the information is inputed into its software. In the future, scientists hope that the robot will be able to learn on its own by engaging in an action – a behavior familiar to all humans and especially to children, as they grow and mature.

Featured image courtesy of Jason Dorfman/CSAIL/MIT.

 

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HERE’s ANOTHER SOFT ROBOT (by soft, we actually mean cute).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTuL0nLmBw8

MIT Robot Hand Can Identify Objects By Feeling

On #obesity, it might not be your fault. And scientists want to help you cure your #hereditary issue. - http://clapway.com/2015/08/20/scientists-discovered-how-obesity-works-to-treat-it-324/

The key gene connected to obesity, responsible for people getting fatter, has finally been figured out. Scientists anticipate this to offer a totally new approach to the problem. It seems like a strict diet and intensive workouts will no longer be the only solutions to obesity, whose mysteries have just been solved.

THE FTO OBESITY GENE

In 2007, researchers found out that there was a gene that was somehow related to obesity, but they were not able to connect it to appetite and other factors. However, now we know that the FTO gene has an evil, faulty version that stores energy from food as fat, and does not let it get burnt.  What the experiments show is quite positive, though, since tests on mice and human cells indicate that this can be reversed and the hope of a drug or other treatment might be developed.

Responsible for this research are scientists from Harvard University and MIT, who published their study online on Wednesday on  the New England Journal of Medicine.

OBESITY IS NOT ALL ABOUT EATING

Melina Slaussnitzer, lead author of the study and genetics specialist at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, says that this discovery is an answer to those who believe that obesity is a choice: “For the first time, genetics has revealed a mechanism in obesity that was not really suspected before,” she says.

Related Post: Vitamin D Pills May Be Dangerous for Teenagers

Dr. Clifforf Rosen, associate editor at the medical journal and scientist at Maine Medical Center Research Institute, says that “it’s a big deal,” and that obesity is not all about eating, but how the FTO gene decides to store energy and use food. With this discovery, “you now have a pathway for drugs that can make those fat cells work differently,” he continued.

BUT THERE IS NO MAGIC PILL

So far, there has not been an obesity drug that would fight the problem long-term targeting metabolism. Most of them just aim at the brain and affect appetite in many different ways, but scientists are positive that this is going to change. Even though we cannot guess how long it might take before a new drug based on the new data becomes available, they say that it will not be something like a magic pill. People will not be able to eat whatever they want without gaining weight and targeting fat pathway could affect other things.

Eating habits and exercise are still important since the gene glitch does not explain all obesity. Actually, FTO was found in 44 percent of Europeans but only 5 percent of blacks suggesting that there are other genes at work, as well.

Manolis Kellis, MIT professor, says that having the glitch doesn’t make you doomed to become obese but may predispose you to it: “People with two faulty copies of the gene (one from Mom and one from Dad) weighed an average of 7 pounds more than those without them. But some were a lot heavier than that, and 7 pounds can be the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy weight.”

A CURE IS ON THE WAY

With more than half a billion obese people in the world, the necessity of a drug which can hit obesity in its nucleus is getting bigger and bigger. The experiments, as the journal describes, anyway, show that scientists are already getting close to creating a new pill that will change the way experts fight obesity and the diseases it hosts.

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Need some ways to lose weight? Consider Thin Ice:

Scientists Discovered How Obesity Works to Treat It

Just because they"re #tiny, doesn"t mean #plankton does not greatly #effect our #world and #oceans. - http://clapway.com/2015/07/23/ocean-acidification-leads-to-drop-in-plankton-population-227/

Due to the ocean’s continued absorption of carbon dioxide, it continues to acidify. This acidification is having a notable effect on the oceanic ecosystem, most notably in the phytoplankton. In fact, the continued acidification is a direct result of the drop in plankton population.

Ocean Acidification

A study published in the Nature Climate Change journal done by researchers at MIT is bringing about a new outlook on the ocean. The researchers developed several models to predict global warming and the effects it would have on the planet. One of the models looked at the acidification of the ocean in particular. The model and further research has shown that the ocean has absorbed up to 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans have released into the atmosphere.

Why Ocean Acidification is Bad

The ocean constantly absorbing carbon dioxide slowly–though consistently–raises its pH levels. This conflicts with the survival of many microorganisms. The organisms are not accustomed to the higher pH levels, and they will suffer from the increase.

Many phytoplankton species will be over-saturated with the carbon dioxide and will begin to die out, leading to a massive drop in plankton population. Studies show that there are actually a few species of plankton that would flourish in high levels of pH, but that would also be bad, as those particular species play a different role in the ecosystem, and would invade certain habitats if their numbers grew.

The Drop in Plankton Population – How it Affects Everything

A drop in plankton population is significantly worse than it sounds. One of the largest parts that plankton play in the ecosystem is to be a food source for various creatures. Obviously, they are at the bottom of the food chain, so they essentially feed everything in the ocean. Everything in the ocean would suffer from the drop in plankton.

New studies also show that plankton actually release aerosols that naturally help cool the earth, so if they died out, the earth would warm at an even greater rate than it is right now. As creatures so small, it is often hard to see their significance, but even the smallest species play a large part on this earth.

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Maybe big things come in small packages. MUSIO is proof:

 

Ocean Acidification Leads to Drop in Plankton Population

A less chaotic, more orderly moving molecular world is strange to consider. - http://clapway.com/2015/06/15/on-molecular-motion-freezing-cold-molecules-123/

If you’ve never thought about the temperature of molecules, these MIT researchers will have changed that fact. Cold molecules are now a plaything in MIT’s laboratory. In successfully cooling a gas of sodium potassium (NaK) molecules to a temperature of 500 nanokelvin (only a hair above absolute zero), they have done it — they have proven the theory griping scientists for decades.

The Molecular Motion Theory

Molecules surround us, in matter and space, in constant motion and interaction with one another. They move extremely fast, too. This is true of molecules at temperate temperatures. However, researchers have long suspected that if they were to be able to cool the temperature of a molecule to nearly absolute zero, the new cold molecules would subdue in a screeching halt, no longer frenzied in motion. The idea is that they would actually move more unanimously.

A Union of Cold Molecules

A less chaotic, more orderly moving molecular world is strange to consider. It’s so foreign because the reality is so different. No surprise there as collisions with other molecules were way less likely in their less frenzied, slowed motions. According to Physicists at MIT,  molecules “exhibited very strong dipole moments — strong imbalances in electric charge within molecules that mediate magnet-like forces between molecules over large distances.”

A professor in the physics department, Martin Zwierlein believes that with knowing normal temperature molecules are brimming with high energy, and the cold molecules become steadied, brings us closer to finding out the temperatures where quantum mechanics interacts hugely with the motion of molecules. In that case, these sodium potassium molecules would move like matter waves rather than randomly frenetically. Researchers have published their findings in Physical Review Letters.

Sodium Potassium (NaK) Molecule Dumbbell

Every single molecule — even the simples of them — is made up of atoms bonded to form its structure. Imagine a dumbell with the weights on either end representing individual atoms. The bar is the bond that holds the structure together. At simplest, they are held together by electromagnetism. MIT researchers tested on and cooled sodium potassium (NaK) molecules. NaK’s structure included a single sodium atom and a single potassium atom.

How To Cool Molecules

It is easier to make cold molecules that have a simple sort of form, imaginably (they move so freely). The tools the MIT research team used included a cooling laser to evaporatively cool cloud of individual sodium and potassium atoms. They were then made to bond using an electromagnetic field. They did this with a Feshbach resonance.

The Feshbach resonance technique was invented by another MIT physicist named Herman Freshbach. It creates a rather weak bond, however. The MIT team strengthened the bond with another technique again involving lasers. It was with this technique they were able to bring down the temperature and frenetic movement to its lowest. The cold molecules were now relatively chemically stable, especially in their kinetic energy state. The sodium potassium (NaK) molecule gas turned out to be quite stable. Zweirlein says that now we’re at 500 nanokelvins and this is already an accomplishment. With that, 10 degrees colder is an ideal for the future.

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A notebook for your best molecular science data as well as travel notes:

 

https://youtu.be/IhjE7kUwfv8

On Molecular Motion -- Freezing Cold Molecules

New Origami Robot Folds Up, Self-Destructs - http://clapway.com/2015/05/30/new-origami-robot-folds-up-self-destructs123/

A new origami robot with autonomous functions is turning heads. This new robot can fold itself up, move on its own and, if needed, can self-destruct when commanded to. The robot was created by scientists from both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where a team recently engineered the world’s first four-legged AI robot cheetah) and the Technische Universität München in Germany.

The team behind this creation presented the robot at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Seattle, Washington, hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This is a conference that takes place annually for scientists to showcase their new inventions.

Features of the New Origami Robot

The origami robot was designed by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. The current model is 1.7 centimeters in length and is a third of a gram in weight. It has a neodymium magnet with layers of polystyrene and PVC. If the robot’s materials are heated, it can transform itself into other shapes — hence the “origami” part of its name.

The use of Magnetic Field Propulsion

Instead of intricate wiring, the robot uses a magnetic field for propulsion. The field is made of four special coils that power the robot’s movements with cycles of 15 on and off Hertz of power. It can be commanded to walk, swim or roll. When exposed to acetone, the robot can be made to self-destruct. Researchers are also trying to find a way to make it possible for it to self-destruct in regular water.

New Origami Robot Has Many Possible Uses

The new robot is said to have several possible applications. It could potentially be used for medical procedures. To do this, a smaller version of the current model would have to be manufactured. It would be inserted into the patient’s bloodstream, and will navigate to the area of operation. After operating on the patient, it would be made to self-destruct by dissolving in the patient’s stomach.

Another possible use of the origami robot is planetary exploration. Various sizes and models of the robot could collect soil or rock samples, and fit through tiny openings to study objects that are otherwise impossible to reach.

This new origami robot is just one of the examples of new technology that can someday help us execute our jobs in an easier, safer and more effective manner.

New Origami Robot Folds Up, Self-Destructs

VIDEO: MIT Builds AI Robot Cheetah That Jumps Hurdles - http://clapway.com/2015/05/29/video-mit-builds-ai-robot-cheetah-that-jumps-hurdles123/

One of the newest technological undertakings by scientists all over the world is the use of artificial intelligence. It comes as no surprise, then, that researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have constructed a robot cheetah that can both see and engage in athletic challenges. This technological creation is the first of its kind — the first four-legged robot powered by artificial intelligence known to man.

Jumping over hurdles like a human runner

The new cheetah machine acts like its namesake predator would in the wild: it is fashioned to be able to detect its surroundings and obstacles, and physically bound over them. In the conducted experiment, the robot cheetah was able to jump over hurdles that were 18 inches tall at the average speed of five miles per hour, with a 90 percent success rate. What’s fascinating is that the actual jumps weren’t programmed; merely the ability to jump was programmed into the mechanical cheetah. The robot is entirely self-ruling: it is equipped with a LIDAR system that enables it to “see” the obstacles, and then to jump over them. This is the same kind of system that is built in self-driving cars.

It works like this: lasers employed by the LIDAR system create a three-dimensional map of the robot’s surroundings, giving the robot cheetah its “eyes.” This allows the cheetah to “plan” its own path. It can approach an obstacle, and estimate its height and the distance between them. The robot cheetah can subsequently assess and adjust its position to jump, before increasing the power in its “kick” to cross the hurdle.

New AI strides: managing the balance and energy of the robot cheetah

Sangbae Kim, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, is part of the team that has designed and engineered this miraculous undertaking. To him, there is no physical behavior more dynamic than a running jump. The most important thing to keep in mind in the experiments is to manage the balance and energy of the robot cheetah, and to figure out ways for it to sustainably handle impact after it lands.

Currently, the team wants to optimize the robot’s energy efficiency. To do this, the robot cheetah would have to barely jump over the obstacle. A solution to this would most likely take more computation time.

The team at MIT plans to demonstrate the robot cheetah and its running jump next weekend at the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Pomona, California.

VIDEO: MIT Builds AI Robot Cheetah That Jumps Hurdles