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Over the past two-and-a-half years, a group of students from ETH Zurich have been developing a robot with three spindly legs that was designed to be able to hop like an insect in microgravity. That's right the curious little machine was built for space, specifically for the exploration of small celestial bodies like asteroids and moons. SpaceHopper, as the robot is called, could thus provide us more information to advance our understanding of life's origin, of the origin of water on our planet and of asteroids as potential providers of valuable resources. It has no preferred orientation, so it can go in any direction, and it has nine motors that give it the capability to jump long distances in low-gravity environments. The robot can even self-right after landing, ensuring the safety of any scientific payload it may carry. Since SpaceHopper was made for use on asteroids and moons, which have very little gravity compared to Earth, it has to be tested under conditions similar to those environments first. To see if it will actually work as intended, the students and the European Space Agency have recently taken the robot on a parabolic flight that creates a zero gravity environment when the aircraft freefalls. Apparently, they had no idea if SpaceHopper would be able to move as they intended in zero gravity scenarios and seeing that it actually worked was a "massive weight off [their] shoulders." You can watch SpaceHopper flail about in the test flight below: This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-hopping-robot-with-flailing-legs-could-explore-asteroids-in-the-future-120043940.html?src=rss
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Almost 11 years after Boston Dynamics revealed the Atlas humanoid robot, its finally being retired. The DARPA-funded robot was designed for search-and-rescue missions, but it rose to fame thanks to videos showing off its dance moves andlets be honestrudimentary parkour skills. Atlas is trotting off into the sunset with one final YouTube video, thankfully including plenty of bloopers which are the best parts. Boston Dynamics, of course, has more commercially successful robots in its lineup, including Spot. Its likely not the end of the line for the companys humanoid robots, either. Mat Smith The biggest stories you might have missed Metas Oversight Board will rule on AI-generated sexual images Motorolas Edge 50 phone series includes a wood option Ooni reveals an even bigger pizza oven The best foldable phones for 2024 You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here! NASA confirms its space trash pierced Florida mans roof It was part of a cargo pallet the space station dropped in 2021. Back in March, a piece of space debris hit the roof of a house in Naples, FL, ripped through two floors and (fortunately) missed the son of homeowner Alejandro Otero. On Tuesday, NASA confirmed it was a piece of equipment dumped from the International Space Station (ISS), three years ago. NASA expected the haul of discarded nickel-hydrogen batteries to orbit Earth for between two to four years, before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere. Not the case. Continue reading. A Netflix true crime documentary may have used AI-generated images of a real person Its the messy hands. Netflix Netflix is accused of using AI-manipulated imagery in the true crime documentary What Jennifer Did. Several photos show the usual AI issues: mangled hands and fingers, strange artifacts, curved edges that should be straight and more. If accurate, the report raises serious questions about using such images in documentaries, particularly since the person depicted is currently awaiting retrial. Netflix has yet to acknowledge the report. Continue reading. Insta360s X4 camera is the first 8K 360-degree video And is better than the last model in every way. Engadget When the X3 landed, it was a 360-degree action cam that solved a lot of the usual problems with that camera genre. With the X4, Insta360 has just upgraded everything. The technical improvements focus on video, with the new ability to record footage at up to 8K 30 fps or 5.7k at 60 fps. Slow-mo video has been boosted up to 4K resolution, too. In short, it captures more of everything. The X4 has a 2,290mAh battery, 67 percent bigger than the X3s. According to the press release, it should be able to capture video for up to 135 minutes. The camera is available for $500 now. Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-boston-dynamics-bi-ped-atlas-robot-is-going-into-retirement-111534431.html?src=rss
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The whole world is ragging on a barely functional $700 AI pin at the moment, but what if similar tech was squeezed into a gigantic robot that lives in your home? Thats a worst case scenario for the recently-introduced Menteebot, a human-sized robot thats stuffed to the brim with AI-adjacent bells and whistles. Its being advertised as the personalized AI-based robot you can mentor. It can run, walk sideways and even turn, all with the same balance and control as a human. Manufacturer Mentee Robotics also says itll adjust its gait when lifting heavy objects. It should be able to lift these heavy objects with ease due to the fact that its, well, absolutely gigantic. Many of the models also have no head, which certainly doesnt recall any old-time myths about a scary demon on a horse. Now, weve had humanoid robots for a while. There was Hondas Asimo, which has been sadly discontinued, and the army of nightmare creatures that Boston Dynamics is busy cooking up. Agility Robotics has been building out its robot assistant Digit and Elon Musk, who never makes false promises ever swear to God, says that Tesla is working on a humanoid robot called Optimus. Theres one major difference between the aforementioned bots and Mentees creation. Menteebot is stuffed with AI algorithms, natural language processing models and software that unlocks advanced training techniques. The company says that this means the robot is not bound to a limited set of commands and that it can even hold conversations with humans. As a matter of fact, users issue commands to the robot via natural language. Its a robot with two arms and two legs that can, in theory, do many of the same things we do. The company says that we can train it to do these things. This seems to sort of work like another controversial piece of AI tech, the Rabbit R1. To teach Menteebot a new task, you run a simulated version of the bot through a digital version of the task. The software completes the task over and over until it figures it out. Then the robot should be able to complete the task in the real world. This seems like an extremely lofty promise, but well wait to see the final result. Heres hoping it doesn't hallucinate and do whatever the heck it wants like other bits of AI tech. Menteebot does look quite agile. There are tons of videos of the robot being put through its paces. It can run and the arms and hands present a full range of motion and enough accuracy to perform delicate tasks. To that end, theres a video of it gently handing a piece of dinnerware to a person. While its highly unlikely this robot will live up to the initial promotional materials when it arrives in 2025 (just look at the initial promises Humane made for the AI pin), it still seems pretty darned cool. Theres no announced price, but its certainly going to be a whole lot more than the aforementioned $700 pin. This is an agile humanoid robot that weighs over 150 pounds. Menteebot will be available in two flavors. Theres the residential bot, which is forced to do household chores, and the commercial bot, which is forced to do manual labor. No matter which you choose, for heavens sake, be extra nice to the thing. Dont boss it around. Let it sit at the dinner table. Keep it away from the vast majority of sci-fi. It can watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, maybe, as Data seems like a decent enough role model.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/menteebot-is-a-human-sized-ai-robot-that-you-command-with-natural-language-110052927.html?src=rss
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