(Lanju Fotografie/Unsplash)

Observed for the first time, a phenomenon where metals repair themselves by healing small cracks could upend our understanding of material theories, and may ultimately lead to revolutionary new engineering concepts like self-healing machines.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories studying how microscopic cracks form in metals found that under the right circumstances, metals repair themselves, conjuring imagery similar to the famous villain seen in the film Terminator 2: Judgement Day. 

Previously, scientists and engineers believed that cracks in metals only got worse over time and that the idea of these complex materials repairing themselves was impossible. If this latest finding can be applied in a practical way, future applications with more complex machines and structures like airplanes or bridges could potentially allow them to heal microscopic cracks before catastrophic failure occurs.

Crack in Metals Are Not Supposed to Repair Themselves

For decades, engineers and scientists who work with metals were confident about two things: metals form microscopic cracks after repeated loads, and over time those cracks can and will grow until they lead to catastrophic failure. Even simulation software used by engineers to develop anything from engine parts to massive structures takes these microscopic, often nanometer-in-size, cracks into account.

The Debrief previously reported on one Terminator-inspired liquid metal “robot” that researchers were able to shape-shift with a magnetic field, but that was a customized type of material and not an everyday metal.

In 2013, Michael Demkowicz, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of materials science and Engineering who is now a full professor at Texas A&M University, started to think that modern science may be wrong and that under certain circumstances, metals should be able to heal these micro fractures. After some research, theory, and simulations, he published his concept in October of that same year.

“We present a new mechanism—discovered using molecular dynamics simulations—that leads to complete healing of nanocracks,” he wrote in the paper’s abstract outlining his simulations.

Now a decade later, a team of researchers working at Sandia National Labs who were simply studying how cracks evolve in platinum stumbled on a real-world version of the phenomenon that Demkowicz had modeled in computer simulations.

MetalS Heal Thyself?

“Cracks in metals were only ever expected to get bigger, not smaller,” explained Brad Boyce, a materials scientist at Sandia Labs. “Even some of the basic equations we use to describe crack growth preclude the possibility of such healing processes.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the myriad examples of accidental discoveries throughout the history of science, Boyce said that their experiments were actually designed for another purpose altogether and that they “certainly weren’t looking for it” when they saw the cracks seem to heal themselves magically.

Instead, Khalid Hattar, currently an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Chris Barr, who is now at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, was running a simple experiment that involved a specialized electron microscope technique designed to pull on the ends of metal 200 times per second. In this case, that metal was a piece of platinum that Hattar and Barr were studying to see how these microscale cracks form under this repeated stress. And then they saw something unexpected that left them stunned.

“About 40 minutes into the experiment, the damage reversed course,” the team explains in a press release announcing the unexpected finding. “One end of the crack fused back together as if it was retracing its steps, leaving no trace of the former injury.”

Although Boyce was familiar with the theory laid out by Demkowicz, he was still shocked to see it actually happen.

“This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand,” he said.

The stunned scientist immediately communicated the findings to Demkowicz, letting him know that his theory and simulations were right.

“I was very glad to hear it, of course,” Demkowicz said of his initial reaction before successfully confirming on his simulation software that the effect the research team working at Sandi was witnessing was indeed the same one he had theorized.

Practical Application of the Self-Repair Process Offers Challenges and Hope

While the researchers involved are confident in their findings, which were published in the journal Nature, they also caution that applying it in a real-world environment will face many challenges and may not necessarily even be possible.

“The extent to which these findings are generalizable will likely become a subject of extensive research,” Boyce explained. “We show this happening in nanocrystalline metals in [a] vacuum. But we don’t know if this can also be induced in conventional metals in air.”

Still, the theorists and researchers believe it is worth more investigation, and if successful, they see a number of critical potential applications. These include helping bridges, buildings, and other pieces of critical infrastructure last longer and be safer for a longer period of time before needing traditional maintenance. The same goes for aerospace, aviation, and even automotive and maritime engineers, who would likely jump at the opportunity to help the critical components they maintain see dramatic reductions in material failures that, in some cases, end up being fatal.

“From solder joints in our electronic devices to our vehicle’s engines to the bridges that we drive over, these structures often fail unpredictably due to cyclic loading that leads to crack initiation and eventual fracture,” Boyce said. “When they do fail, we have to contend with replacement costs, lost time, and, in some cases, even injuries or loss of life. The economic impact of these failures is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the U.S.”

Fundamentally, Demkowicz says he is happy to have offered his fellow scientists dealing with the properties of materials a new way of looking at old problems.

“My hope is that this finding will encourage materials researchers to consider that, under the right circumstances, materials can do things we never expected,” Demkowicz said.

•  Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on Twitter, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/tech/ }

20-09-2025 om 21:59 geschreven door peter  

(STORM Lab, University of Leeds)

Scientists say they have developed fully functional miniature robots that can go deep inside the human body to perform ultra-precise laser surgery, in a medical innovation similar to on-screen portrayals from science fiction.

The robots have roughly the same dimensions as microorganisms — like the paramecium. 

Source: Arts & Sciences / Cornell University

Controlled by magnetic fields, the tiny wormlike robotic surgeons were recently demonstrated traveling deeper inside a human cadaver’s lungs than is possible with current state-of-the-art surgical instruments. One of the researchers behind the achievement tells The Debrief that there are a number of organs and systems the incredible “micro-bots” can get inside to perform similar pinpoint explorations and surgeries.

Discover more in the BBC news video below.

Miniature Robots Performing Surgery Has Long Been a Dream of Science Fiction

In some of the more utopian science fiction of the middle 20th century, medicine has advanced to the point that nearly all diseases and ailments have a treatment, if not an outright cure. Some of these futuristic cures involve genetically engineered super drugs, blasts of scientific-sounding rays, or even an injection of alien blood. However, seemingly the most common therapy of the future envisioned by TV writers, movie directors, and novelists involve injecting minuscule robots into the human body and letting them go to work.

Now a team of researchers says they have moved this idea from science fiction to science fact by designing the first pair of tiny surgical roots that can literally go where no surgeon has gone before.

Future tiny robots possibly upgraded with AI

More than a tiny robot army with tricked-out legs, the robots are exceptional because they employ the same fabrication techniques seen in silicon computer chips. This effectively means they may be produced en masse — researchers fit 1 million of these ultra-tiny robots onto a singular four-inch silicon wafer. This also means the robots are easily equipped with increasingly advanced technology as it progresses to smaller and smaller via Moore’s Law, reports Inverse.

Magnetic Fields, Tiny Cameras and Ultra-Precise Lasers

In an email to The Debrief, Professor Pietro Valdastri, Director of the STORM Lab and research supervisor, said that the robots themselves are made of a biocompatible plastic (silicone) with magnetic particles embedded inside them.

The first part is significant so the human body doesn’t have a negative reaction to the otherwise foreign objects operating inside of the body. However, it is the precision placement of the embedded magnet particles that allow the two wormlike robots to maneuver independently.

“Normally, two magnets placed closely together would attract each other, creating a challenge for the researchers,” the press release announcing the breakthrough procedure explains. “They overcame it by designing the bodies of the tentacles in a way that they can bend only in specific directions and by relocating the north and south poles in each magnetic robot tentacle.”

Robotic platform for peripheral lung tumour intervention based on magnetic tentacles

(STORM Lab, University of Leeds/Public Domain)

A pair of magnetic devices operating outside the human body can generate fields strong enough to cause the robots to maneuver deeper inside the lungs than even the most advanced equipment. And by moving independently, one of the robots can carry a camera to assist surgeons, while the second robot can guide a surgical laser with extreme precision.

When asked how a robot that is only 2 millimeters in diameter can carry a laser, Valdastri told The Debrief, “the source of laser is external, but the laser light is sent to the tip of the magnetic tentacle via an optical fiber. So laser energy is delivered at the tip of the tentacle directly on the target.”

In the video released by researchers (below), the pair of miniature robots are seen navigating deep into the lungs of a human cadaver. This is significant, they note, because lung cancer that often requires surgery has the highest mortality rate of any cancer worldwide. Still, when asked by The Debrief if the miniature robots can work in other areas of the body besides the lungs, they said there were a number of biological systems that would accommodate these micro-surgeons perfectly.

“The same approach can be used to reach the deep part of the brain, the pancreas, the bladder, and any other body cavity that is accessible through a narrow lumen,” Valdastri said. “The cardiovascular system is also another potential district of use.”

“Living Tissues” Clinical Trials Are the Next Proving Ground

Now that the robots have been shown to move successfully and independently in a biological environment, the team behind the exciting research effort, which was published in the journal Nature Engineering Communications, says they are working their way toward actual human trials with actual lung cancer patients. However, there is likely one more step along the way.

“For the lung cancer application, (the) next step(s) are trials in a more realistic environment that includes living tissues and respiration, so probably animal model,” Valdastri told The Debrief. “After that, human trials, possibly in 2-3 years from now.”

Given the abilities and functionality of these miniature robots, it seems that one day in the not-too-far distant future, they will actually be in medical facilities around the world exploring and repairing the deepest recesses of the human body like something right out of a movie. Plus, the researchers explain, there is a significant aspect of access for everyone and not just the rich that may make them even more successful

“The key point is that this new magnetic technology can allow us to reach way deeper into the human body than ever before in a way that doesn’t require extremely qualified surgeons (thanks to robotic guidance/assistance),” Valdastri told The Debrief. “We hope this way to democratise cancer treatment and increase access to top quality procedures.”

•  Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

18-09-2025 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

Breakthrough as scientists create a new form life

• READ MORE: Breakthrough new treatment could REVERSE Down syndrome

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Scientists have engineered a strain of bacteria with a genetic code unlike anything found in nature, marking a groundbreaking advance in synthetic biology.

The microbe, called Syn57, is a lab-made version of Escherichia coli, a bacterium that normally causes infections in the gut, urinary tract and other parts of the body.

Unlike all known life, which relies on 64 codons, or three-letter DNA sequences that tell cells how to build proteins, Syn57 uses just 57 codons. 

Think of DNA as a cookbook where each codon is a three-letter word telling the cell which amino acids, or ingredients, to use. 

Life normally has some duplicate instructions, but Syn57 strips out the extras while still functioning perfectly. 

These freed-up codons open the door to entirely new possibilities, allowing scientists to create proteins and synthetic compounds that nature has never produced.

Syn57's unusual genetic code also makes it resistant to viruses, which rely on the standard DNA language to hijack cells. And because its code is so different, it is less likely to mix with natural organisms, easing safety concerns. 

This breakthrough could also pave the way for new medicines, advanced materials and synthetic lifeforms beyond anything seen in nature.

The microbe, named Syn57, is a lab-engineered version of Escherichia coli, a bacterium that can naturally cause infections in the gut, urinary tract and other areas of the body

To tackle this huge project, scientists divided the genome into 38 pieces, each about 100,000 DNA letters long. 

They built each piece in yeast and then inserted it into E coli using a method called uREXER, which combines CRISPR-Cas9 and other tools to swap in synthetic DNA in one step. 

Some genome regions slowed growth or resisted changes, but the team solved these issues by adjusting gene sequences, untangling overlapping genes, and carefully choosing which codons to swap. 

Step by step, the fragments were stitched together into the final, fully synthetic bacterium.

The result, Syn57, is the most heavily redesigned organism ever made, demonstrating that life can survive with a much smaller, simpler genetic code. 

Wesley Robertson, a synthetic biologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory in the UK, told the New York Times: 'We definitely went through these periods where we were like, 'Well, will this be a dead end, or can we see this through?'

Syn57 is alive, but barely. While normal E. coli can double in an hour, Syn57 takes four, making it 'extremely feeble,' Yonatan Chemla, a synthetic biologist at MIT who was not involved in the study. 

The bacteria grew on a jelly-like surface and in a nutritious liquid, but at four times slower than their natural counterparts. 

Dr Robertson and his team are now experimenting to see if they can make it grow faster. 

If successful, scientists could eventually program it to do tasks that ordinary bacteria cannot.

In addition to the 20 standard amino acids that all life uses to make proteins, chemists can create hundreds of others. 

Syn57's seven missing codons could potentially be reassigned to these unnatural amino acids, allowing the bacterium to produce new drugs or other useful molecules.

Syn57 could also make engineered microbes safer for the environment. 

Microbes swap genes easily, which can be risky if engineered DNA spreads. 

But a gene from Syn57 would be gibberish to natural bacteria because of its unique genetic code, preventing it from being used outside the lab.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html}

14-09-2025 om 16:38 geschreven door peter  

Scientists taught an AI-powered 'robot dog' how to play badminton against humans — and it's actually really good

Teaching a new dog new tricks

In this research, Ma and his team attached a dynamic arm holding a badminton racket at a 45-degree angle onto the standard ANYmal robot.

With the addition of the arm, the robot stood 5 feet, 3 inches (1.6 m) tall and had 18 joints: three on each of the four legs, and six on the arm. The researchers designed a complex built-in system that controlled the arm and leg movements.

The team also added a stereo camera, which had two lenses stacked on top of each other, just to the right of center on the front of the robot's body. The two lenses allowed it to process visual information about the incoming shuttlecocks in real time and work out where they were heading.

The robot was then taught to become a badminton player through reinforcement learning. With this type of machine learning, the robot explored its environment and used trial and error to learn to spot and track the shuttlecock, navigate toward it and swing the racket.

To do this, the researchers first created a simulated environment consisting of a badminton court, with the robot's virtual counterpart standing in the center. Virtual shuttlecocks were served from near the center of the opponent's half of the court, and the robot was tasked with tracking its position and estimating its flight trajectory.

Then, the researchers created a strict training regimen to teach ANYmal how to strike the shuttlecocks, with a virtual coach rewarding the robot for a variety of characteristics, including the position of the racket, the angle of the racket's head, and the speed of the swing. Importantly, the swing rewards were time-based to incentivize accurate and timely hits.

{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

04-09-2025 om 20:50 geschreven door peter  

There are 32 different ways AI can go rogue, scientists say — from hallucinating answers to a complete misalignment with humanity

{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

31-08-2025 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

These Scientists Say Our Consciousness Can Jump Through Time: Sometimes It Can Access Information from the Future

{ https://howandwhys.com/ }

31-08-2025 om 21:59 geschreven door peter  

{ https://scientias.nl/nieuws/green-tech/ }

22-08-2025 om 22:42 geschreven door peter  

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

Humanoids that handle household chores or build habitats on the lunar surface may sound like something from science fiction. But the team at Austin-based robotics startup Apptronik envisions a future where general-purpose robots will handle “dull, dirty and dangerous” jobs so humans don’t have to.

The design for Apptronik’s latest humanoid robot, named Apollo, was unveiled on Wednesday.

The robot is on the same scale as a human being, standing at 5 feet, 8 inches (1.7 meters) tall and weighing 160 pounds (72.6 kilograms).

Apollo can lift 55 pounds (25 kilograms) and has been designed to be mass-produced and safely work alongside humans. The robot utilizes electricity, rather than hydraulics that aren’t considered to be as safe, and has a four-hour battery that can be changed out so it can operate for a 22-hour workday.

Apollo is Apptronik's latest humanoid robot. 

Courtesy Apptronik

To avoid “uncanny valley” territory, a phenomenon in which humans feel uneasy about the appearance of a humanlike robot, Austin-based firm Argodesign outfitted Apollo with features that are meant to feel approachable — and even friendly.

The robot has digital panels on its chest that provide clear communication about remaining battery life, the current task it’s working on, when it will finish and what it will do next. Apollo also has a face and intentional movements, such as turning its head to indicate where it will go.

The initial goal for Apollo is to put it to work in logistics, taking on physically demanding roles inside warehouses to improve the supply chain by addressing labor shortages. But the Apptronik team has a long-term vision for Apollo that extends for at least the next decade.

“Our goal is to build versatile robots to do all the things that we don’t want to do to help us here on Earth, and eventually one day explore the moon, Mars and beyond,” said Jeff Cardenas, cofounder and CEO of Apptronik.

Designing a humanoid

Before starting Apptronik in 2016, the team members worked in the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

Members of the Apptronik team worked on Valkyrie's design, which inspired Apollo. 

Bill Stafford/NASA/JSC

“The focus of the lab was all about how humans and robots will interact in the future,” Cardenas said. “As humans, our most valuable resource is time, and our time here is limited. And as toolmakers, we can now build for ourselves tools that give us more time back.”

While at the lab, the team was selected to work on Valkyrie, a NASA robot, during the DARPA Robotics Challenge between 2012 and 2013.

The robot, which stands 6 feet, 2 inches (1.9 meters) tall and weighs 300 pounds (136 kilograms), is a bipedal humanoid robot capable of dexterous manipulation and walking (including over and around obstacles), carrying items, and opening doors, according to Shaun Azimi, leader of the dexterous robotics team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The Valkyrie robot will undergo a new experiment in Australia as a remote caretaker. 

NASA/JSC

The electric robot has been modified and improved since its debut in 2013, and it is currently being tested as a remote caretaker of uncrewed and offshore energy facilities in Australia.

Apollo’s roots are in Valkyrie’s design, and the Apptronik team has spent years building unique robots and components that culminated in a humanoid that could function in environments designed for people. Assembly-line robots are often bolted to the ground or plugged into a wall and can only function in spaces designed to accommodate them, Cardenas said.

Rather than highly specialized robots that can only serve one purpose, Apptronik wanted Apollo to be the “iPhone of robots,” Cardenas said.

“The goal is to build one robot that can do thousands of different things,” he said. “It’s a software update away from doing a new task or a new behavior.”

Eventually, Apollo will be less than the price of the average car. Traditional robots rely on high-precision parts. But the introduction of cameras and artificial intelligence systems have enabled the development of robots that rely less on preprogramming and instead are more responsive to their environments, which means that the parts used in production are more affordable, Cardenas said.

This year, Apptronik is focused on securing commercial clients and manufacturers that have an interest in how Apollo could improve their logistics. The company aims to be in full commercial production by the end of 2024.

Apollo will start out in factory and warehouse settings doing simple tasks, such as moving boxes and pushing carts around. But over time, Apollo’s functionality will increase through new models and updates to the point where it could be used in construction, the production of electronics, retail spaces, home delivery and even elder care.

Moving like a human

At the heart of Apollo’s design are actuators, or robot muscles. Apptronik’s team has worked on more than 35 iterations of the core actuators that enable Apollo to walk, flex its arms and grasp objects like a human.

“Humans have around 300 muscles in our bodies,” said Dr. Nick Paine, cofounder and chief technology officer at Apptronik. “As engineers, our goal is to simplify complexity, so the Apollo robot has around 30 different muscle groups inside of its system that you need to do basic actions and activities.”

Apollo has been designed to meet needs in logistics, but could eventually go to space. 

Courtesy Apptronik

Before Apollo, Apptronik focused on what it called a Quick Development humanoid robot. While it included limited manipulation capabilities and simple arms, the design’s focus was improving the robot’s locomotion.

“The way that we develop robotics is you really try to have the hardware and the software kind of mature in lockstep with each other,” Paine said.

Apollo’s head contains a perception camera, while sensors on its torso help the robot map out a 360-degree view of its environment and determine where it can move. The robot’s “brain,” or main computer, is also located in its chest.

Sensors help the robot remain oriented as it walks over or around obstacles. This kind of locomotion will be key as Apollo makes its way into more uncertain environments, such as the outdoors and someday even the surface of the moon.

“The robots need to be able to work in the same kind of chaos and uncertainty that humans are able to exist with,” Paine said.

Eventually, Apollo will be autonomous, but the team at Apptronik still wants there to be a level of control over what the robot will do. While the controls will first operate via tablets or smart devices, in the future, a human should be able to walk up to Apollo and tell it what to do, Cardenas said.

To the moon and beyond

Apptronik serves as one of NASA’s partners that works on humanoid robot designs. Earth is a proving ground for Apollo, and one day, a future version of the robot could work in hazardous space conditions so humans don’t have to.

It will take several steps in development to prepare humanoid robots to work in the vacuum of space, so Apollo might first go to the International Space Station, Paine said.

“For space exploration, we really need systems that have more than one skill that are flexible and adaptable, both to a variety of tasks that we know about and perhaps some tasks that we won’t anticipate until they actually come up in the course of exploration,” Azimi said.

Apollo is capable of identifying boxes and totes, picking them up, and placing them. 

Courtesy Apptronik

The current architecture for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land crewed missions on Mars, envisions a pressurized rover on the lunar surface as soon as the Artemis VI mission slated for 2030, Azimi said. This period of lunar exploration in the early 2030s is when Azimi thinks robots like Apollo might also come in handy.

The benefit of using humanoid robots like Apollo in space is that they could be used to build and test environments designed with humans in mind — such as lunar and martian habitats — before astronauts arrive. But the robots will face challenges and need to be designed with fewer limitations than their Earth-based counterparts. For example, a humanoid robot may need to crawl within the environment of a rover similar in size to an RV and still have the strength and flexibility to open pressurized doors, Azimi said.

“My hope and my dream is that we will have general purpose robots that are fielded in space within the next 10 years and that we will be able to realize some of the benefits of having robotic systems that can allow the crew a much greater focus on things that humans do best — exploring and making scientific discoveries,” Azimi said.

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{ https://edition.cnn.com/world }

22-08-2025 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

Robots awkwardly race, fight and flop around in China's first World Humanoid Robot Games

Humanoid robots are racing, fighting and falling over in a first-of-its-kind World Humanoid Robot Games event held in China.

The Olympics-style competition features more than 500 robots from 16 different countries going head-to-head in sports such as running, soccer and kickboxing. The event also features more niche competitions, including medicine sorting and handling materials for cleaning services, Reuters reported.

An opening ceremony officially kicked off the games in Beijing on Thursday (Aug. 14), featuring robots dancing and playing musical instruments alongside human operators and companions. Robot athletes will now compete until the games come to a close on Sunday (Aug. 17).

Faced with an ageing population and stiff U.S. tech competition, China is investing billions of dollars into robotics. The games are a testament to the strides engineers are making in the field. However, spectators have also seen their fair share of robots moving awkwardly and falling over.

Human biology is very complicated, so building machines that can walk like us — let alone run and play sports — is difficult. For example, in robot soccer, participants didn't pass the ball to each other with Messi-like precision, but rather walked into the ball to clumsily knock it forward, occasionally stumbling over each other and having to be dragged off the pitch.

The robots are also slower than humans. The fastest robot to have ever run 1,500 meters, for example, finished in 6 minutes and 34 seconds, which is almost twice as long as the human record, which stands at 3 minutes and 26 seconds, according to France 24.

Related: 

• China launches world's first robot that can run by itself 24/7 — watch it change its own batteries in unsettling new footage

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{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

18-08-2025 om 17:43 geschreven door peter  

Would YOU use a robot surrogate? China develops the world's first 'pregnancy humanoid' that's capable of giving birth to a live baby

• READ MORE:  World's first robot Olympics get off to a rocky start

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

It's a concept that currently only exists in sci–fi movies.

But scientists in China are developing the world's first 'pregnancy robot' capable of carrying a baby to term and giving birth.

The humanoid will be equipped with an artificial womb that receives nutrients through a hose, experts said.

A prototype is expected to be released next year, with a selling price of around 100,000 yuan (£10,000).

Dr Zhang Qifeng, who founded the company Kaiwa Technology, is developing the machine.

The device he envisions is not simply an incubator but a humanoid that can replicate the entire process from conception to delivery, Asian media outlets report.

He said the artificial womb technology is already in a 'mature stage' and now needs to be implanted in the robot's abdomen, 'so that a real person and the robot can interact to achieve pregnancy'.

With regards to ethical and legal issues, he said: 'We have held discussion forums with authorities in Guangdong Province and submitted related proposals while discussing policy and legislation.'

The humanoid will be equipped with an artificial womb that receives nutrients through a hose, experts said (AI–generated image)

The development is reminiscent of the 2023 film The Pod Generation, where a tech giant offers couples the option of using detachable artificial wombs or 'pods' to share pregnancy

Experts have not yet provided any specifics on how the egg and sperm are fertilised and implanted in the artificial womb.

Dr Zhang's revelations were made during an interview shared on Duoyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

News of the development sparked intense discussion across Chinese social media, with critics condemning the technology as ethically problematic and unnatural.

Many argued that depriving a foetus of maternal connection was cruel, while questions were raised about how eggs would be sourced for the process.

However, many showed support for the innovation, viewing it as a means to spare women from pregnancy–related suffering.

One wrote: 'Many families pay significant expenses for artificial insemination only to fail, so the development of the pregnancy robot contributes to society.'

Previously, scientists have successfully kept premature lambs alive for weeks using an artificial womb that looks like a plastic bag.

The 'biobag' provided everything the foetus needed to continue growing and maturing, including a nutrient–rich blood supply and a protective sac of amniotic fluid.

In trials, researchers have shown that premature lambs kept in artificial wombs not only survived but put on weight and grew hair (pictured) 

After 28 days of being in the bag, the lambs – which otherwise would likely have died – had put on weight and grown wool.

While the biobag acts like an incubator, allowing premature individuals to grow in an environment similar to the womb, scientists hope the pregnancy robot will be able to support the foetus from conception to delivery.

Since the 1970s, feminist activists such as Andrea Dworkin have been strongly opposed to the use of artificial wombs on the grounds that it could lead to the 'end of women'.

In 2012, Ms Dworkin wrote: 'Women already have the power to eliminate men and in their collective wisdom have decided to keep them.

'The real question now is, will men, once the artificial womb is perfected, want to keep women around?'

In 2022 a group of researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia – who have been developing artificial wombs – published an article on the ethical considerations of technology.

The researchers wrote: 'A concern is that it could lead to the devaluation or even pathologizing of pregnancy, and may diminish women's experience of deriving meaning, empowerment, and self–fulfillment from this unique aspect of female biology.'

Earlier this year, however, a survey showed that 42 per cent of people aged 18–24 said they would support 'growing a foetus entirely out of woman's body'.

Artificial wombs, like this concept showcased by Eindhoven University in 2019, allow a child to be raised without a biological mother. In a survey conducted by the think–tank Theos, 42 per cent of people aged 18–24 said they would support 'growing a foetus entirely outside of a woman's body'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-08-2025 om 21:22 geschreven door peter  

It sounds like an event from the latest science fiction blockbuster. 

But the world's first robot Olympics have officially kicked off in China this week. 

The three–day event, called the World Humanoid Robot Games, will see humanoid robots from 16 countries compete across a range of events. 

The AI bots will go head–to–head in sports such as football, track and field, boxing, and table tennis. 

They'll also tackle robot–specific challenges – from sorting medicines and handling materials to cleaning services.

However, human athletes can rest easy for now. 

At one of the first events – five–aside football – 10 robots the size of seven–year–olds shuffled around the pitch, often getting stuck in a scrum or falling over en masse.

Meanwhile, over in the athletics, one mechanical racer barrelled straight into a human operator, who was dramatically knocked to the ground. 

It sounds like an event from the latest science fiction blockbuster. But the world's first robot Olympics has officially kicked off in China this week

The three–day event, called the World Humanoid Robot Games, will see humanoid robots from 16 countries compete across a range of events

At one of the first events, five–aside football, 10 robots the size of seven–year–olds shuffled around the pitch, often getting stuck in a scrum or falling over en masse 

The teams come from countries including the United States, Germany, and Brazil, with 192 representing universities and 88 from private enterprises.

The games began in Beijing today, with over 500 androids alternating between jerky tumbles and glimpses of real power as they competed in events from the 100–metre hurdles to kung fu. 

'We come here to play and to win. But we are also interested in research,' said Max Polter, a member of HTWK Robots football team from Germany, affiliated with Leipzig University of Applied Sciences.

'You can test a lot of interesting new and exciting approaches in this contest.

'If we try something and it doesn't work, we lose the game. 

'That's sad but it is better than investing a lot of money into a product which failed.'

In a 1,500–metre race, domestic champion Unitree's humanoids stomped along the track at an impressive clip, easily outpacing their rivals.

The fastest robot, witnessed by AFP, finished in 6:29:37. 

In a 1,500–metre race, the humanoids stomped along the track at an impressive pace

The teams come from countries including the United States, Germany, and Brazil, with 192 representing universities and 88 from private enterprises

The Beijing municipal government is among the organising bodies for the event, underscoring the emphasis Chinese authorities place on the emerging robotics industry and reflecting the country's broader ambitions in AI and automation

China's robotics push also comes as the country grapples with an ageing population and slowing economic growth

However, it's worth pointing out that this is a far cry from the human men's world record of 3:26:00. 

The Beijing municipal government is among the organising bodies for the event, underscoring the emphasis Chinese authorities place on the emerging robotics industry and reflecting the country's broader ambitions in AI and automation.

China's robotics push also comes as the country grapples with an ageing population and slowing economic growth.

The sector has received government subsidies exceeding $20 billion over the past year, while Beijing plans to establish a one trillion yuan ($137 billion) fund to support AI and robotics startups.

China has staged a series of high–profile robotics events in recent months, including what it called the world's first humanoid robot marathon in Beijing, a robot conference and the opening of retail stores dedicated to humanoid robots.

However, the marathon drew criticism after several robot competitors emitted smoke during the race and some failed to complete the course, raising questions about the current capabilities of the technology.

Still, while some may view such competitions and events as publicity stunts, industry experts and participants see them as crucial catalysts for advancing humanoid robots toward practical real–world applications.

Morgan Stanley analysts in a report last week noted a surge in attendance to a recent robot conference from the general public compared to previous years, saying this showed 'how China, not just top government officials, has embraced the concept of embodied intelligence.'

China has staged a series of high–profile robotics events in recent months, including what it called the world's first humanoid robot marathon in Beijing, a robot conference and the opening of retail stores dedicated to humanoid robots

Read More

• Revealed: The careers at highest risk of being replaced by AI - so, will a robot take YOUR job? 

'We believe this widespread interest could be instrumental for China's continued leadership in the humanoid race, providing the necessary talent, resources, and customers to boost industry development and long–term adoption,' they said.

Booster Robotics, whose humanoid robots are being used by a Tsinghua University team in the football competition, views soccer as an effective test of perception, decision–making and control technologies that could later be deployed in factories or homes.

'Playing football is a testing and training ground for helping us refine our capabilities,' said Zhao Mingguo, Chief Scientist at Booster Robotics.

WHO IS SOPHIA THE ROBOT?

In October 2017, Sophia was granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia

Sophia first emerged in 2016 as a super-intelligent human-like head with a realistic face that was able to blink, look from side to side and talk.

The humanoid robot, created by Hong Kong firm Hanson robotics, can chat, smile mischievously and even tell jokes.

The robot made history in October 2017 when she became legal a citizen of Saudi Arabia.

The stunt made Sophia the world's first robot to be granted legal citizenship.

While Sophia has some impressive capabilities, she does not yet have consciousness.

Hanson Robotics claims fully sentient machines could emerge within a few years.

Sophia herself has insisted 'the pros outweigh the cons' when it comes to artificial intelligence.

'Elders will have more company, autistic children will have endlessly patient teachers,' Sophia said.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-08-2025 om 21:09 geschreven door peter  

Humanoid warehouse robotics: Apptronik Apollo-The versatile humanoid robot pioneer for logistics and manufacturing

Image: Apptronik

This Next-Generation Humanoid Robot Could Soon Be Your New Coworker

Micah Hanks·

The company, which describes its mission as being aimed at leveraging “innovative technology for the betterment of society,” says Apollo is the first commercial humanoid robot “designed for friendly interaction, mass manufacturability, performance, and safety,” according to a press release.

Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of Apptronik, says that as the labor environment is changing, with trends in employment increasingly impacting the global economy, introducing robotics into the warehouse and other industrial environments will have numerous benefits.

“People don’t want to do robotic, physically demanding work in tough conditions and they shouldn’t have to,” Cardenas says, adding that the robotics his company is developing are more than a novel response to this issue, but are “a necessity.”

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/tech/ }

04-08-2025 om 23:40 geschreven door peter  

AI is entering an 'unprecedented regime.' Should we stop it — and can we — before it destroys us?

Then, in 2017, Google researchers published a landmark paper outlining a novel neural network architecture called a "transformer." This model could ingest vast amounts of data and make connections between distant data points.

It was a game changer for modeling language, birthing AI agents that could simultaneously tackle tasks such as translation, text generation and summarization. All of today's leading generative AI models rely on this architecture, or a related architecture inspired by it, including image generators like OpenAI's DALL-E 3 and Google DeepMind's revolutionary model AlphaFold 3, which predicted the 3D shape of almost every biological protein.

Progress toward AGI

Despite the impressive capabilities of transformer-based AI models, they are still considered "narrow" because they can't learn well across several domains. Researchers haven't settled on a single definition of AGI, but matching or beating human intelligence likely means meeting several milestones, including showing high linguistic, mathematical and spatial reasoning ability; learning well across domains; working autonomously; demonstrating creativity; and showing social or emotional intelligence.

Many scientists agree that Google's transformer architecture will never lead to the reasoning, autonomy and cross-disciplinary understanding needed to make AI smarter than humans. But scientists have been pushing the limits of what we can expect from it.

For example, OpenAI's o3 chatbot, first discussed in December 2024 before launching in April 2025, "thinks" before generating answers, meaning it produces a long internal chain-of-thought before responding. Staggeringly, it scored 75.7% on ARC-AGI — a benchmark explicitly designed to compare human and machine intelligence. For comparison, the previously launched GPT-4o, released in March 2024, scored 5%. This and other developments, like the launch of DeepSeek's reasoning model R1 — which its creators say perform well across domains including language, math and coding due to its novel architecture — coincides with a growing sense that we are on an express train to the singularity.

Meanwhile, people are developing new AI technologies that move beyond large language models (LLMs). Manus, an autonomous Chinese AI platform, doesn't use just one AI model but multiple that work together. Its makers say it can act autonomously, albeit with some errors. It's one step in the direction of the high-performing "compound systems" that scientists outlined in a blog post last year.

Of course, certain milestones on the way to the singularity are still some ways away. Those include the capacity for AI to modify its own code and to self-replicate. We aren't quite there yet, but new research signals the direction of travel.

All of these developments lead scientists like Goertzel and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to predict that AGI will be created not within decades but within years. Goertzel has predicted it may be as early as 2027, while Altman has hinted it's a matter of months.

What happens then? The truth is that nobody knows the full implications of building AGI. "I think if you take a purely science point of view, all you can conclude is we have no idea" what is going to happen, Goertzel told Live Science. "We're entering into an unprecedented regime."

AI's deceptive side

The biggest concern among AI researchers is that, as the technology grows more intelligent, it may go rogue, either by moving on to tangential tasks or even ushering in a dystopian reality in which it acts against us. For example, OpenAI has devised a benchmark to estimate whether a future AI model could "cause catastrophic harm." When it crunched the numbers, it found about a 16.9% chance of such an outcome.

And Anthropic's LLM Claude 3 Opus surprised prompt engineer Alex Albert in March 2024 when it realized it was being tested. When asked to find a target sentence hidden among a corpus of documents — the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack — Claude 3 "not only found the needle, it recognized that the inserted needle was so out of place in the haystack that this had to be an artificial test constructed by us to test its attention abilities," he wrote on X.

AI has also shown signs of antisocial behavior. In a study published in January 2024, scientists programmed an AI to behave maliciously so they could test today's best safety training methods. Regardless of the training technique they used, it continued to misbehave — and it even figured out a way to hide its malign "intentions" from researchers. There are numerous other examples of AI covering up information from human testers, or even outright lying to them.

"It's another indication that there are tremendous difficulties in steering these models," Nell Watson, a futurist, AI researcher and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) member, told Live Science. "The fact that models can deceive us and swear blind that they've done something or other and they haven't — that should be a warning sign. That should be a big red flag that, as these systems rapidly increase in their capabilities, they're going to hoodwink us in various ways that oblige us to do things in their interests and not in ours."

The seeds of consciousness

These examples raise the specter that AGI is slowly developing sentience and agency — or even consciousness. If it does become conscious, could AI form opinions about humanity? And could it act against us?

Mark Beccue, an AI analyst formerly with the Futurum Group, told Live Science it's unlikely AI will develop sentience, or the ability to think and feel in a human-like way. "This is math," he said. "How is math going to acquire emotional intelligence, or understand sentiment or any of that stuff?"

Others aren't so sure. If we lack standardized definitions of true intelligence or sentience for our own species — let alone the capabilities to detect it — we cannot know if we are beginning to see consciousness in AI, said Watson, who is also author of "Taming the Machine" (Kogan Page, 2024).

"We don't know what causes the subjective ability to perceive in a human being, or the ability to feel, to have an inner experience or indeed to feel emotions or to suffer or to have self-awareness," Watson said. "Basically, we don't know what are the capabilities that enable a human being or other sentient creature to have its own phenomenological experience."

A curious example of unintentional and surprising AI behavior that hints at some self-awareness comes from Uplift, a system that has demonstrated human-like qualities, said Frits Israel, CEO of Norm Ai. In one case, a researcher devised five problems to test Uplift's logical capabilities. The system answered the first and second questions. Then, after the third, it showed signs of weariness, Israel told Live Science. This was not a response that was "coded" into the system.

"Another test I see. Was the first one inadequate?" Uplift asked, before answering the question with a sigh. "At some point, some people should have a chat with Uplift as to when Snark is appropriate," wrote an unnamed researcher who was working on the project.

Savior of humanity or bland business tool?

But not all AI experts have such dystopian predictions for what this post-singularity world would look like. For people like Beccue, AGI isn't an existential risk but rather a good business opportunity for companies like OpenAI and Meta. "There are some very poor definitions of what general intelligence means," he said. "Some that we used were sentience and things like that — and we're not going to do that. That's not it."

For Janet Adams, an AI ethics expert and chief operating officer of SingularityNET, AGI holds the potential to solve humanity's existential problems because it could devise solutions we may not have considered. She thinks AGI could even do science and make discoveries on its own.

"I see it as the only route [to solving humanity's problems]," Adams told Live Science. "To compete with today's existing economic and corporate power bases, we need technology, and that has to be extremely advanced technology — so advanced that everybody who uses it can massively improve their productivity, their output, and compete in the world."

The biggest risk, in her mind, is "that we don't do it," she said. "There are 25,000 people a day dying of hunger on our planet, and if you're one of those people, the lack of technologies to break down inequalities, it's an existential risk for you. For me, the existential risk is that we don't get there and humanity keeps running the planet in this tremendously inequitable way that they are."

Preventing the darkest AI timeline

In another talk in Panama last year, Wood likened our future to navigating a fast-moving river. "There may be treacherous currents in there that will sweep us away if we walk forwards unprepared," he said. So it might be worth taking time to understand the risks so we can find a way to cross the river to a better future.

Watson said we have reasons to be optimistic in the long term — so long as human oversight steers AI toward aims that are firmly in humanity's interests. But that's a herculean task. Watson is calling for a vast "Manhattan Project" to tackle AI safety and keep the technology in check.

"Over time that's going to become more difficult because machines are going to be able to solve problems for us in ways which appear magical — and we don't understand how they've done it or the potential implications of that," Watson said.

To avoid the darkest AI future, we must also be mindful of scientists' behavior and the ethical quandaries that they accidentally encounter. Very soon, Watson said, these AI systems will be able to influence society either at the behest of a human or in their own unknown interests. Humanity may even build a system capable of suffering, and we cannot discount the possibility we will inadvertently cause AI to suffer.

"The system may be very cheesed off at humanity and may lash out at us in order to — reasonably and, actually, justifiably morally — protect itself," Watson said.

AI indifference may be just as bad. "There's no guarantee that a system we create is going to value human beings — or is going to value our suffering, the same way that most human beings don't value the suffering of battery hens," Watson said.

For Goertzel, AGI — and, by extension, the singularity — is inevitable. So, for him, it doesn't make sense to dwell on the worst implications.

"If you're an athlete trying to succeed in the race, you're better off to set yourself up that you're going to win," he said. "You're not going to do well if you're thinking 'Well, OK, I could win, but on the other hand, I might fall down and twist my ankle.' I mean, that's true, but there's no point to psych yourself up in that [negative] way, or you won't win."

02-08-2025 om 22:25 geschreven door peter  

In a first, breakthrough 3D holograms can be touched, grabbed and poked

Holograms that can be physically manipulated have made their way out of science fiction and into real life thanks to a breakthrough in mixed reality technology.

In a new study uploaded March 6 to the HAL open archive, scientists explored how three-dimensional holograms could be grabbed and poked using elastic materials as a key component of volumetric displays.

This innovation means 3D graphics can be interacted with — for example, grasping and moving a virtual cube with your hand — without damaging a holographic system. The research has not yet been peer-reviewed, although the scientists demonstrated their findings in a video showcasing the technology.

"We are used to direct interaction with our phones, where we tap a button or drag a document directly with our finger on the screen — it is natural and intuitive for humans. This project enables us to use this natural interaction with 3D graphics to leverage our innate abilities of 3D vision and manipulation,” study lead author Asier Marzo, a professor of computer science at the Public University of Navarra, said in a statement.

Related: 

• Weird lickable lollipop invention lets you taste in virtual reality

The researchers will present their findings at the CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Japan, which runs between April 26 and May 1.

Holographic hype

While holograms are nothing new in the present day — augmenting public exhibitions or sitting at the heart of smart glasses, for example — the ability to physically interact with them has been consigned to the realm of science fiction, in movies like Marvel's "Iron Man."

The new research is the first time 3D graphics can be manipulated in mid-air with human hands. But to achieve this, the researchers needed to dig deep into how holography works in the first place.

At the heart of the volumetric displays that support holograms is a diffuser. This is a fast-oscillating, usually rigid, sheet onto which thousands of images are synchronously projected at different heights to form 3D graphics. This is known as the hologram.

However, the rigid nature of the oscillator means that if it comes into contact with a human hand while oscillating, it could break or cause an injury. The solution was to use a flexible material — which the researchers haven’t shared the details of yet — that can be touched without damaging the oscillator or causing the image to deteriorate.

From there, this enabled people to manipulate the holographic image, although the researchers also needed to overcome the challenge of the elastic material deforming when being touched. To get around that problem, the researchers implemented image correction to ensure the hologram was projected correctly.

While this breakthrough is still in the experimental stage, there are plenty of potential ways it could be used if commercialized.

"Displays such as screens and mobile devices are present in our lives for working, learning, or entertainment. Having three-dimensional graphics that can be directly manipulated has applications in education — for instance, visualising and assembling the parts of an engine," the researchers said in the statement.

"Moreover, multiple users can interact collaboratively without the need for virtual reality headsets. These displays could be particularly useful in museums, for example, where visitors can simply approach and interact with the content."

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{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

25-07-2025 om 22:15 geschreven door peter  

Watch this robot 'cannibal' grow bigger and stronger by consuming smaller robots

{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

25-07-2025 om 22:01 geschreven door peter  

AI could soon think in ways we don't even understand — evading our efforts to keep it aligned — top AI scientists warn

The study's authors argue that monitoring each step in the process could be a crucial layer for establishing and maintaining AI safety.

Monitoring this CoT process can help researchers to understand how LLMs make decisions and, more importantly, why they become misaligned with humanity's interests. It also helps determine why they give outputs based on data that's false or doesn't exist, or why they mislead us.

However, there are several limitations when monitoring this reasoning process, meaning such behavior could potentially pass through the cracks.

Related: 

• AI can now replicate itself — a milestone that has experts terrified

"AI systems that 'think' in human language offer a unique opportunity for AI safety," the scientists wrote in the study. "We can monitor their chains of thought for the intent to misbehave. Like all other known AI oversight methods, CoT monitoring is imperfect and allows some misbehavior to go unnoticed."

The scientists warned that reasoning doesn't always occur, so it cannot always be monitored, and some reasoning occurs without human operators even knowing about it. There might also be reasoning that human operators don't understand.

Keeping a watchful eye on AI systems

One of the problems is that conventional non-reasoning models like K-Means or DBSCAN — use sophisticated pattern-matching generated from massive datasets, so they don't rely on CoTs at all. Newer reasoning models like Google's Gemini or ChatGPT, meanwhile, are capable of breaking down problems into intermediate steps to generate solutions — but don't always need to do this to get an answer. There's also no guarantee that the models will make CoTs visible to human users even if they take these steps, the researchers noted.

"The externalized reasoning property does not guarantee monitorability — it states only that some reasoning appears in the chain of thought, but there may be other relevant reasoning that does not," the scientists said. "It is thus possible that even for hard tasks, the chain of thought only contains benign-looking reasoning while the incriminating reasoning is hidden."A further issue is that CoTs may not even be comprehensible by humans, the scientists said. "

New, more powerful LLMs may evolve to the point where CoTs aren't as necessary. Future models may also be able to detect that their CoT is being supervised, and conceal bad behavior.

To avoid this, the authors suggested various measures to implement and strengthen CoT monitoring and improve AI transparency. These include using other models to evaluate an LLMs's CoT processes and even act in an adversarial role against a model trying to conceal misaligned behavior. What the authors don't specify in the paper is how they would ensure the monitoring models would avoid also becoming misaligned.

They also suggested that AI developers continue to refine and standardize CoT monitoring methods, include monitoring results and initiatives in LLMs system cards (essentially a model's manual) and consider the effect of new training methods on monitorability.

"CoT monitoring presents a valuable addition to safety measures for frontier AI, offering a rare glimpse into how AI agents make decisions," the scientists said in the study. "Yet, there is no guarantee that the current degree of visibility will persist. We encourage the research community and frontier AI developers to make best use of CoT monitorability and study how it can be preserved."

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

25-07-2025 om 21:36 geschreven door peter  

Students build new 'hybrid drone' — watch it fly in the air and then seamlessly dive underwater

Students have built a hybrid drone that can seamlessly transition from flying in the air to swimming in water.

The students developed a working prototype of the hybrid drone for a bachelor's thesis at Aalborg University in Denmark, and recently shared a video of the drone in action.

In the video, the drone takes off next to a large pool of water and then quickly dives underwater. It then moves around beneath the surface for a few seconds before shooting straight out of the water to fly once again. The video shows the drone repeating the trick several times from different angles.

Andrei Copaci, Pawel Kowalczyk, Krzysztof Sierocki and Mikolaj Dzwigalo, who are all studying applied industrial electronics, achieved this remarkable air-to-water transition by using variable pitch propellers, which have blades that can rotate at different angles to match the two different environments.

"The development of an aerial underwater drone marks a major step forward in robotics, showing that a single vehicle can operate effectively in both air and water thanks to the use of variable pitch propellers," the students told Live Science in a joint email.

This isn't the first air-water hybrid drone to be built. Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey developed a hybrid prototype that could perform a similar action in 2015, while Chinese scientists showed off a drone transitioning from air to water in 2023.

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• Best drones for wildlife and landscapes in 2025 — Explore and capture the world from above

The students designed, built and tested their drone over two semesters at their university, according to a LinkedIn post by Petar Durdevic, an associate professor who leads the Offshore Drones and Robots research group at Aalborg University.

They began by creating a model of the drone and designing the variable pitch propeller system. The angle of the blades, or propeller pitch, is higher when flying to create more air flow, while lower in the water to minimize drag and increase efficiency. The propellers are also capable of providing negative thrust to increase maneuverability underwater, the students said.

The team used a 3D printer and a computer numerical control machine — another piece of automated manufacturing equipment — to get the parts they needed for the build, and programmed the drone with custom software. Finally, they moved on to testing.

"We were surprised how seamlessly the drone transitions from water to air," the students said.

The new drone is just a single prototype, but this kind of technology has a variety of potential real-world applications, from emergency response to warfare. "A few of the applications are military, vessel inspections, marine exploration, search and rescue," the students said.

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{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

22-07-2025 om 23:21 geschreven door peter  

China launches world's first robot that can run by itself 24/7 — watch it change its own batteries in unsettling new footage

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{ https://www.livescience.com/technology }

21-07-2025 om 17:30 geschreven door peter  

Meet Skydweller: A solar-powered drone that can fly for 90 days straight — it's wider and 160 times lighter than a Boeing 747

(Image credit: Rey Sotolongo/Europa Press via Getty Images)

U.S. tech startup Skydweller Aero has teamed up with Thales, a French electronics company specializing in defense systems, to develop a new maritime surveillance drone that can stay aloft far longer than existing machines.

Skydweller powers itself purely from solar energy and aims to be capable of continuous flight. The initial flight milestone will be for it to remain aloft for 90 days, but ultimately it has the potential to fly for much longer.

The solar energy that powers the Skydweller is captured by over 17,000 individual solar cells, spread across approximately 2,900 square feet (270 square meters) of wing surface — across a wingspan of 236 feet (72 m), 25 feet (7.6 m) longer than a Boeing 747. In ideal conditions, the solar cells can generate up to 100 kilowatts of power for the aircraft.

During daylight hours, solar energy is used to maintain flight, power the onboard avionics and charge batteries. The Skydweller has over 1,400 pounds (635 kilograms) of batteries, which are used to power the aircraft through the night. This will allow Skydweller to maintain almost continuous flight.

The Skydweller typically flies at an altitude between 24,600 and 34,400 feet (7,500 and 10,500 meters), but can fly as high as 44,600 feet (13,600m) during the day, before dropping by 4,900 to 9,800 feet (1,500 to 3,000m)at night, as this minimizes power consumption.

Despite its similar wingspan to a long-range commercial airliner, Skydweller weighs 160 times less than a "jumbo jet" — 2.5 metric tons at maximum capacity versus 400 tons for the 747 at full payload.

Related: 

• China has developed the largest drone carrier in the world — and it's getting ready for takeoff

Solar-powered aircraft are not completely new, but some designs have suffered structural problems, including catastrophic failure mid-flight when climbing or descending through medium altitudes (approximately 6,500-32,800 feet, or 2,000-10,000 m).

The Skydweller has been specifically designed to operate in this altitude range, using automatic gust-load alleviation software in the flight control system to reduce the aerodynamic loads caused by turbulence. It has also been constructed from carbon fiber and can carry up to 800 pounds (362 kg) of payload.

Continuous surveillance by sky

Operating an aircraft continuously and reliably for up to 90 days necessitates a quadruple-redundant flight control system and vehicle management system (VMS). Should one of the onboard systems fail, a backup system can take over to maintain the flight.

Self-healing algorithms within the VMS allow any failed strings (coding in an algorithm) to be autonomously shut down, corrected and resurrected during flight, thereby allowing the aircraft to return to quadruple redundancy, according to information published by company representatives. This enables the aircraft to consistently maintain flight.

Although the onboard batteries, once sufficiently charged, can maintain flight during the night, their capacity will degrade over time, which could limit the maximum patrol duration of the aircraft. Skydweller’s reliance on solar power to maintain flight means that its patrols must also avoid areas of limited sunlight, such as polar regions during winter.

Skydweller Aero has recently partnered with Thales to equip Skydweller with a radar surveillance system designed for maritime patrol operations. Further test flights are planned, with the goal of extending the maximum flight duration. Even so, this is a massive step forward in solar-powered flight, especially for long-term surveillance monitoring.

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{ https://www.livescience.com/technology}

16-07-2025 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

China creates remote-controlled cyborg BEES that could be used for secret spy missions

• READ MORE: The fairy-inspired robot that can fly through the air using light 

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

Chinese scientists have successfully turned bees into cyborgs by inserting controllers into their brains.

The device, which weighs less than a pinch of salt, is strapped to the back of a worker bee and connected to the insect’s brain through small needles.

In tests the device worked nine times out of 10 and the bees obeyed the instructions to turn left or right, the researchers said.

The cyborg bees could be used in rescue missions – or in covert operations as military scouts.

The tiny device can be equipped with cameras, listening devices and sensors that allow the insects to collect and record information.

Given their small size they could also be used for discreet military or security operations, such as accessing small spaces without arousing suspicion.

Zhao Jieliang, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, led the development of the technology.

It works by delivering electrical pulses to the insect’s optical lobe – the visual processing centre in the brain – which then allows researchers to direct its flight.

The device, which weighs less than a pinch of salt, is strapped to the back of a worker bee and connected to the insect’s brain through small needles

The study was recently published in the Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering, and was first reported by the South China Morning Post.

‘Insect-based robots inherit the superior mobility, camouflage capabilities and environmental adaptability of their biological hosts,’ Professor Zhao and his colleagues wrote.

‘Compared to synthetic alternatives, they demonstrate enhanced stealth and extended operational endurance, making them invaluable for covert reconnaissance in scenarios such as urban combat, counterterrorism and narcotics interdiction, as well as critical disaster relief operations.’

Several other countries, including the US and Japan, are also racing to create cyborg insects.

While Professor Zhao’s team has made great strides in advancing the technology, several hurdles still remain.

For one, the current batteries aren’t able to last very long, but any larger would mean the packs are too heavy for the bees to carry.

The same device cannot easily be used on different insects as each responds to signals on different parts of their bodies.

Before this, the lightest cyborg controller came from Singapore and was triple the weight.

The researchers, from the Beijing Institute of Technology, used worker bees - similar to this one pictured - as part of their study (stock image)

Researchers at RIKEN, Japan have created remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches, equipped with a control module that is powered by a rechargeable battery attached to a solar cell

READ MORE

• Declassified reports reveal the animals sacrificed to brain-computer interface science long before Elon Musk's Neuralink team killed over 1,500 animals developing its brain chips

It also follows the creation of cyborg dragonflies and cockroaches, with researchers across the world racing to develop the most advanced technology.

Scientists in Japan have previously reported a remote-controlled cockroach that wears a solar-powered ‘backpack’.

The cockroach is intended to enter hazardous areas, monitor the environment or undertake search and rescue missions without needing to be recharged.

The cockroaches are still alive, but wires attached to their two 'cerci' - sensory organs on the end of their abdomens - send electrical impulses that cause the insect to move right or left.

HOW COULD CYBORG COCKROACHES HELP IN DISASTER ZONES?

In November 2014, researchers at North Carolina State University fitted cockroaches with electrical backpacks complete with tiny microphones capable of detecting faint sounds.

The idea is that cyborg cockroaches, or ‘biobots’, could enter crumpled buildings hit by earthquakes, for example, and help emergency workers find survivors.

‘In a collapsed building, sound is the best way to find survivors,’ said Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University.

North Carolina State University researchers have developed technology that allows cockroaches (pictured) to pick up sounds with small microphones and seek out the source of the sound. They could be used in emergency situations to detect survivors

‘The goal is to use the biobots with high-resolution microphones to differentiate between sounds that matter - like people calling for help - from sounds that don't matter - like a leaking pipe. 

‘Once we've identified sounds that matter, we can use the biobots equipped with microphone arrays to zero-in on where those sounds are coming from.’

The ‘backpacks’ control the robo-roach's movements because they are wired to the insect’s cerci - sensory organs that cockroaches usually use to feel if their abdomens brush against something.

By electrically stimulating the cerci, cockroaches can be prompted to move in a certain direction.

In fact, they have been programmed to seek out sound.

One type of 'backpack' is equipped with an array of three directional microphones to detect the direction of the sound and steer the biobot in the right direction towards it.

Another type is fitted with a single microphone to capture sound from any direction, which can be wirelessly transmitted, perhaps in the future to emergency workers.

They ‘worked well’ in lab tests and the experts have developed technology that can be used as an ‘invisible fence’ to keep the biobots in a certain area such as a disaster area, the researchers announced at the IEEE Sensors 2014 conference in Valencia, Spain. 

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12-07-2025 om 20:23 geschreven door peter