Where Innovation Meets Imagination
Astronauts Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni arrived in Saudi Arabia amidst celebrations and an official welcome home.
They have accomplished the country’s successful and historic scientific mission to space aboard the ISS.
They have finished their quarantine and conducted all the medical tests required to evaluate the effects of microgravity on the human body. [Read more…] about Saudi Arabia’s first astronauts return home after historic scientific mission to space
Nvidia researchers show how training in simulation enables the transfer of complex manipulation skills to a robot hand with project DeXtreme
The human hand is one of the most remarkable outcomes of millions of years of evolution. The ability to pick up all sorts of objects and use them as tools is a crucial differentiator allowing us to shape the world around us.
For robots to work in the everyday human world, the ability to deftly interact with our tools and the environment around them is critical. Without that capability, they will continue to be useful only in specialized domains such as factories or warehouses.
While it has been possible to teach robots with legs how to walk for some time, robots with hands have generally proven to be much trickier to control. A hand with fingers has more joints, and they must move in specific coordinated ways to accomplish a given task. [Read more…] about Reinforcing the value of simulation: Teaching dexterity to a real robot hand
John Wikswo, founder and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education and Gordon A. Cain University Professor, is the principal investigator of a $1 million award from the National Science Foundation.
The object is to build a pathbreaking “robot scientist” – a fully automated microfluidic system for parallel, independent, long-duration, machine-guided experiments.
The target organisms are the single-cell eukaryotic yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, commonly known as brewer’s and baker’s yeast, the bacterium Escherichia coli and other microbes used in commercial biotechnologies, and the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells used to produce antibody-based drugs and vaccines. [Read more…] about Wikswo and VIIBRE team to build third-generation ‘self-driving lab’ with $1 million from National Science Foundation
Scientists have invented a ‘robo-starfish’ which give us more insights into aquatic life, as Adam Conner-Simons, or MIT CSAIL, reports. (See video below.)
Biologists have long experienced the challenges of documenting ocean life, with many species of fish proving quite sensitive to the underwater movements of humans.
As a possible solution, computer scientists have been developing special marine robots that can stealthily move among their carbon-based counterparts. In 2018, for example, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) fabricated a soft robotic fish that autonomously swam with real fish along the coral reefs of Fiji.
However, the complex dynamics of how water moves – and its ability to quickly ruin some perfectly good electronics systems – have made underwater robots especially difficult to develop compared to ones for air or land. [Read more…] about MIT CSAIL’s robo-starfish enables closer study of aquatic life
Over the past several months, the world has been dealing with the first major global pandemic in more than a generation.
It has disrupted economies far and wide, cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and laid bare many of the weaknesses of the global medical industry.
One of those weaknesses has been the difficulty that multiple countries have faced in scaling up laboratory capacity to meet the demand for PCR testing created by the crisis. [Read more…] about Recent Breakthrough May Enable the Automated Laboratory of the Future
Interview with George Papanikolopoulos, CEO of CASP, which is developing a software solution to what he describes as ‘a real industrial problem’
Reflect is one of the experiments that successfully passed to Phase II of the first Open Call in ESMERA, the EU agency that has a multimillion-euro budget to help robotic startups.
Being one of the 12 experiments that started in ESMERA in the summer of 2019, Reflect proved its concept to external evaluators and has been selected as one of the currently five final experiments in Phase II. [Read more…] about Interview: Startup Reflect developing new solution to ‘a real industrial problem’
ESMERA, the EU-funded program to develop the European robotics sector, has released a list of 20 new “experiments” that will receive support from the organisation.
The 20 new experiments started within the ESMERA project as of May 1st, 2020. The word “ESMERA” is short for European SMEs Robotic Applications.
Within the project’s second Open Call, which ended in December 2019, 69 applications were registered, all proposing to solve either a pre-defined robotics challenge or bringing with them their own challenge provider and challenge. [Read more…] about ESMERA releases list of 20 new robotics projects in line to receive €75,000 each
Five robotic technology experiments have moved into the final phase of a competition run by Esmera, the European Union-funded project set up to develop innovative technologies.
The five entrants are:
They have all been selected to move into the second phase of Esmera, which is an abbreviation of European SMEs Robotic Applications. [Read more…] about Five robotic technology innovations move to final phase of Esmera competition
Scientists at Iowa State University have developed new nanoscale technology to image and measure more of the stresses and strains on materials under high pressures.
As the researchers reported in the journal Science, that matters because, “Pressure alters the physical, chemical and electronic properties of matter.”
Understanding those changes could lead to new materials or new phases of matter for use in all kinds of technologies and applications, said Valery Levitas, a paper co-author and Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering at Iowa State University, the Vance Coffman Faculty Chair and professor in aerospace engineering. [Read more…] about Iowa scientists create nanoscale sensors to ‘better see how high pressure affects materials’
Atoun Inc. is beginning a work-site trial of Powered Wear with arm support function at the end of May, 2019.
The prototype to be tested is the Powered Wear “Atoun Model Y” for the waist-attached arms support part.
By adding the arms support function to the previous waist support function, work efficiency increases up to 37.7% compared to when Powered Wear is not used.
[Read more…] about Atoun begins trial of Powered Wear with new arm support function
