Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 7

The world of robotic vacuum cleaners is still evolving, and at CES 2025 a company has unveiled a new roomba that comes with a robotic arm designed to help clean up household rubbish.

The company Roborock has unveiled the Saros Z70, which will be debuting at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. The new robotic vacuum cleaner has already been demoed to select publications that report the arm does work as advertised, meaning its capable of picking up items such as socks, rubbish, etc, but it's unfortunately extremely slow at completing the task.

The Verge reports the Saros Z70 arm takes approximately 1 minute to pick up and move an item in its way. Additionally, the publication reports the arm is only capable of picking up specific items, which currently are socks, tissues, small towels, and sandals that weigh under 300 grams. Roborock said that more items will be added to the list of items the Saros Z70 is capable of picking up, but the company didn't give specifics on if the total weight of the item would be increased.

SpaceX is making some big upgrades to its Starship test flight program, with the next flight to test payload deployment for the first time ever, and will launch new Starlink satellites into space.

These new model spacecraft will travel on the same trajectory as the upper stage aka Starship, and will splash down into the Indian Ocean. The new V3 satellites will be the first-ever payload that Starship flies, as SpaceX has been using its Falcon 9 rocket to get Starlink satellites into space, but that changes with this new Starship launch and the next-gen V3 satellites.

The new V3 satellites are reportedly much heavier than the current V2 Mini spacecraft, but Starship has an insane amount of payload capacity, making it far easier to strap in 60 x V3 satellites per Starship launch, adding 60Tbps capacity to the Starlink network each time. Each V3 Starlink satellite has 1Tbps of downlink speed, and 160Gbps of upload capacity, which is an upgrade of 10x the downlink speed, and 24x the uplink capacity compared to SpaceX's current-gen V2 Mini satellites.

NVIDIA is betting big on robotics of the future, where it will launch its latest generation of compact computers -- Jetson Thor -- in the first half of 2025 which is said to be the "ChatGPT moment for physical AI and robotics".

In a new post from FT, we're learning that "the ChatGPT moment for physical AI and robotics is around the corner" according to Deepu Talla, NVIDIA's vice president of robotics in a recent chat with the Financial Times. He believes that the market has reached the elusive "tipping point" and that Jetson Thor is going to push it over the edge.

NVIDIA entering the robotics industry is going to be huge, but the shift from making all of its cheddar form data center revenue -- including its AI GPUs -- makes up around 88% of its overall sales in Q3 2024 with $35.1 billion. However, Talla says that the shift in the robotics market is driven by two technological breakthroughs: the meteoroic rise in generative AI models, and the ability to train robots on these foundational models, using simulated environments.

ASUS chairman Jonney Shih has said that they are already in "full swing" developing its first humanoid robot, something that would compete with Elon Musk and his Tesla Optimus robot we've been hearing more and more about lately.

Shih recently said: "we are already in full swing on this part and have launched plans internally", but ASUS already has its Zenbo robots... but its new adventure is with a humanoid robot that should better resemble the Tesla Optimus humanoid robot sometime in the future.

Elon Musk recently chatted to TSMC boss C.C. Wei asking for a massive, and stable supply of chips for his Optimus robots, but now it looks like ASUS is stepping into the next big thing for AI. The real big breakthroughs for AI are constrained for now, with artificial general intelligence (AGI) only obtained by using large language models (LLMs), and without a physical body, we are limited by the potential of these robots.

SpaceX is undoubtedly celebrating the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarding the company a launch license for its upcoming 7th test flight of Starship.

The celebration isn't for the license itself but more so for the speed at which it was obtained, as the FAA only took about a month to evaluate the previous launch of Starship and issue the new license. This kind of timing is unheard of and has even resulted in SpaceX and company CEO Elon Musk publicly slamming the FAA and its regulatory hurdles for holding up the development of Starship. However, the license issuing for Flight 7 stands as an example of the FAA improving internal efficiencies.

SpaceX hasn't confirmed when Flight 7 will take place, but given the history of previous flights, they typically occur within weeks of the launch license being obtained. However, with Christmas around the corner, it might not be until mid-January we see Starship take flight again. As for the mission objective, while SpaceX hasn't released any details about Flight 7, it would be a reasonable guess that it will include another catch attempt of the Super Heavy booster, as unforeseen problems that emerged in Flight 6 resulted in a catch attempt having to be abandoned.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule was recently undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), and the moment was captured by a NASA astronaut who was situated at a peculiar angle.

The Dragon capsule undocking from the International Space Station is simply business as usual for both NASA and SpaceX, with the recent footage capturing the 31st commercial resupply the company has performed for NASA. The launch to the ISS from SpaceX involved carrying 2,700 kilograms (5,952 lb) of supplies for the crew aboard the floating laboratory, along with experiments and other various miscellaneous items that are useful in zero gravity.

As for the undocking video, the Dragon capsule was carrying all of the "spoils from our research," according to NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who posted the video to his personal X account. The time-lapse showcases an incredible angle of the Dragon capsule departing the ISS, showcasing the trajectory of its journey back down to Earth, where it splashdowned off the coast of Florida on Tuesday, December 17.

TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said that he talked with the world's richest man -- SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI boss Elon Musk -- and that Elon said the future was robots, not cars, and that his biggest concern was the stable supply of chips for the Optimus robots.

The TSMC boss was at Taiwan's 12th National Science and Technology Conference, where he talked to Elon, with Wei promising that TSMC could deliver as long as he is willing to pay. Wei told conference attendees that multi-purpose robots are the AI wave of the future, and that's it a huge opportunity for Taiwan, because making them requires precision, joining the worlds of semiconductor technology with software.

Wei also said that drones, energy conservation, reducing carbon emissions and natural resource management are also important key parts for Taiwan and its continued AI efforts. Wei also pointed out that Taiwan has excellent design companies as well as chip manufacturing and packaging + testing plans, as well as advanced semiconductors and precision machinery.

A US senator has laid the blame at the feet of the US government and its fear over the public's reaction to the truth about the mysterious drones emerging in the skies over New Jersey.

Sen. Jon Bramnick spoke to NewsNation on Saturday and called upon the Department of Defence to "come clean with the American public" about what is really happening over New Jersey. The senator goes on to say the FBI assuring the American public they have obtained no evidence these drones are dangerous doesn't reassure the average American citizen who is seeing them from their backyard.

The drones began popping up over New Jersey and New York on November 18 but reached a boiling point on Saturday when New York Governor Kathleen Hochul announced, "This has gone too far," and requested federal authorities to authorize local police departments to shoot down drones. Senator Bramnick insinuated the US government is behind the drones, stating the US government is afraid of how the American public would react if it learned what the drones were really doing.

It was in January this year that NASA announced its helicopter living on the surface of Mars sadly died after a crash landing on its 72nd flight.

The helicopter named Ingenuity arrived on the Red Planet in February 2021 as an engineering experiment to see if flight in Mars' extremely thin atmosphere was possible. Ingenuity became the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extra-terrestrial flight, solidying its name in the space exploration history books. Ingenuity went on to serve NASA's Perseverance rover as a forward scout.

NASA sent Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, and with the helicopter's cameras, NASA was able to plot a path of least resistance for the rover, along with evaluating any upcoming valuable scientific prospects. However, Ingenuity crashed on its 72nd flight on January 18, 2024, which resulted in its rotor blades sustaining critical damage preventing flight. Ingenuity's team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said that Ingenuity crashed due to its navigation systems having too little information to make accurate decisions. The team attributes this to the monotone color of the Martian surface.

NASA has taken to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) blog to announce the official discovery of seven strange celestial objects, with the findings being published on Monday, December 9, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These celestial objects are known as "dark comets," which are astronomical objects that look like asteroids but strangely move through space like a comet. These odd objects were first discovered less than two years, but according to NASA the first inkling of dark comets was a March 2016 study that found an asteroid seemingly randomly deviated from its course, changing its orbit.

NASA writes the behavior of dark comets could explain the 2016 study documentation, as the lead author of the December 9 study, Davide Farnocchia of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, explained, "When you see that kind of perturbation on a celestial object, it usually means it's a comet, with volatile material outgassing from its surface giving it a little thrust." However, when researchers looked through instruments, the object named 2003 RM appeared as an asteroid, just a single light dot on the display. By comparison, a comet typically has a long tail that is depicted as a thinning streak from a center point of light.

Quantum computing, much like the acronym AI (artificial intelligence), has been caught in the lexicon as a piece of technology we will much more widely integrate into society sometime in the future. Today, that future just took a much bigger than anticipated step closer to the present, as Google has unveiled "Willow," the company's most advanced quantum processor.

Quantum computing has been around since the 1990s, and engineers, physicists, and scientists alike have been battling one big but tiny problem with implementing the technology: the number of errors it generates. Firstly, quantum computing is completely different than classical computers, which conduct calculations based on whether a bit is a 0 or a 1. However, quantum computing changes things, as it uses tiny pieces of information called qubits, or quantum bits, which can be on, off, or both.

Moreover, quantum computing also introduces quantum entanglement, an observable phenomenon that connects two particles together, synchronizing their states. The quantum entangled particles aren't restricted in distance, as their connection can stretch as far as the other side of the universe. But what does that all have to do with computing? Quantum computers are designed to exploit the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the study of how physical matter exhibits the properties of both particles and waves, but there are a few problems that need to be worked out first.

NASA has wrapped up a two-year-long investigation into the cracked heatshield on the Artemis I Orion module that landed back on Earth after being sent on a journey around the Moon.

The space agency took to its website to announce the re-entry method of the Orion module during the Artemis I mission was the cause of the cracks. The re-entry method, known as a skip guidance technique, entails the spacecraft "skipping" across the atmospheric layers, analogous to how a thrown stone skips across the surface of water. NASA wrote that Orion dipped into the upper atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to reduce its speed. The spacecraft then initiated aerodynamic lift to skip the capsule back out of the atmosphere, then it re-entered for its final descent into parachutes and splashdown.

After performing more than 100 tests, NASA determined that between skips, Orion's heat shield didn't allow enough of the gasses generated inside a material called Avcoat to escape. This caused some of the material to crack and break off from the heat shield. Avcoat is designed to erode away from the heat shield as the module descends through the atmosphere, increasing in temperature due to friction.

NASA has selected giant Martian "spiderwebs" as the next target for the famed Mars rover named Curiosity, which will be traveling to a location known as "boxwork".

NASA has taken to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) blog to announce that it will be sending the Mars rover named Curiosity on the next leg of its journey across the plains of the Red Planet. The journey will take Curiosity approximately a month, and the rover will be heading to a location known as "boxwork," which is a set of weblike patterns on the surface of Mars.

These weblike patterns stretch for miles, and Curiosity will soon be departing its current location in the Gediz Vallis, with the rover signing off in the area with a 360-degree panoramic image. Boxwork is a patch of zigzagging rocks, or boxwork deposits, and NASA plans to send Curiosity there to investigate the location for any signs of ancient microbial life, along with documenting the area so NASA researchers can attempt to understand how the land formation came to be. Notably, boxwork deposits aren't exclusive to Mars, as the geological formation can be found on Earth in caves.

Telsa could have 1000+ of its advanced Optimus robots on factory floors by the end of 2025 according to Wall Street analysts.

Bank of America analyst John Murphy has said that the "Optimus is real and development is poised to accelerate. Optimus is currently used by TSLA to sort 4680 cells with no intervention. TSLA is testing Optimus in various use cases (i.e., catching a tennis ball) to refine the robot and determine a final design".

Tesla plans to have 1000 of its Optimus robots by the end of 2025, most of them operating inside of its plant, with more robots in use the training will accelerate. Optimus makes up just a single-digit percentage of Tesla's compute, but BofA expects to see the resources made available to Optimus will grow as the "robotaxi technology matures".

SpaceX has just launched 20 Starlink satellites with its recent Falcon 9 launch, with the first Starlink satellite direct-to-cell (DTC) phone constellation now complete.

In a new post on X, Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk said that the "first Starlink satellite direct to cell phone constellation is now complete. This will enable unmodified cellphones to have Internet connectivity in remote areas. Bandwidth per beam is only ~10Mb, but future constellations will be much more capable".

The official SpaceX account posted on X, announcing that "Falcon 9 launches 20 Starlink satellites, completing the first orbital shell of our Direct to Cell constellation".

A team of researchers has had their interest peak at the sight of mysterious "dark ovals" appearing on the surface of Jupiter, and given the size of Jupiter, these ovals are approximately the size of Earth.

A new paper published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy details a NASA-supported group of researchers analyzing the disturbances on Jupiter's upper atmosphere. These "dark ovals" appear near Jupiter's poles, and according to the researchers, they may be an indication of the processes within Jupiter's strong magnetic field, specifically a disturbance in Jupiter's ionosphere.

The team looked at images of Jupiter snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2015 and 2022 and found the different atmospheric layers and the magnetic tornadoes that erupt within them are possibly causing these dark ovals to appear. The team explained that research such as this enables astronomers and scientists to further develop a more complete understanding of Jupiter and all-encompassing planetary processes.

The Solar Orbiter is on a journey toward the Sun, and last year, in March, it reached the halfway point where it snapped twenty-five images of our local star, which have now been stitched together to form an insanely high-resolution image of the Sun.

For those that don't know, the Sun is preposterously large compared to Earth, with its diameter measuring 1.39 million km across (863,705 miles), compared to Earth's diameter of 12,769 kilometers (7,926 miles). Given its massive size, the Sun is responsible for 99% of the mass in the Solar System while also being the anchor point that all objects in the Solar System orbit due to its intense gravitational pull. The Sun has been doing this for the past 4.6 billion years, and while it can be violent and unpredictable at times with its constant outbursts of charged particles, without it, we wouldn't have life on Earth. Check out the image here.

Despite its necessity, we still don't know everything about the Sun, which is why the European Space Agency (ESA) has sent the Solar Orbiter on a journey to investigate it, with the space probe tasked to capture high-resolution images of our local star as it progresses. The Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020 and is equipped with high-resolution imaging equipment, along with instruments to measure the Sun's magnetic fields and solar wind. The Solar Orbiter will come within 42 million km (26,097,590 miles).

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-led brain chip company, announced its preparing its next round of experiments, and this time around patients will be able to control a robotic arm with their thoughts.

Neuralink took to its official X account to announce a new "feasibility trial" that's goal is to expand the company's Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) offerings. Notably, the new trial will use the N1 implant, which involves controlling "assistive robotic arm". Neuralink writes the new trial has the objective of taking one of the first important steps to not only restoring digital freedom but also physical freedom for those suffering from paraplegia and other physically debilitating ailments.

Along with a description of the new trial, the company posted a link to its patient registry, which suggests Neuralink is still looking for the right patient. While Neuralink has never attempted this kind of trial before it has been conducted others in the past, with reports indicating that Caltech researchers implanted what was described as a "neural prosthetic device" into the brain of a paraplegic man. The device was connected to a robotic arm that he was able to control with his thoughts.

Elon Musk's brain-computer interface (BCI) startup, Neuralink, has announced it has received approval to test its BCI implant with an assistive robotic arm.

The first-ever study will see someone using a BCI to control a robotic arm with just their thoughts, the post by Neuralink on X said: "We're excited to announce the approval and launch of a new feasibility trial to extend BCI control using the N1 implant to an investigational assistive robotic arm".

Brain implants and controlling a robotic arm isn't something entirely new, as it has been done before with cumbersome setups that required cables running to the research participants' head and then to a computer that decoded the brain signals. Neuralink's brain-computer interface (BCI) is wireless, making everything far easier. On top of that, Musk has Tesla and its robotics side, so it's a family affair technology wise.

A NASA scientist has captured an unprecedented view of a secret US military research base that is known as the "city under the ice".

That NASA scientist is Chad Greene, who was joined by other NASA engineers who were conducting testing on the Greenland Ice Sheet with a radar instrument, which gathers valuable data by beaming out radio waves at a target and measuring how long it takes for them to get back to the instrument. By doing this, researchers are able to map the surface of ice sheets, and what's beneath them. Using NASA's UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) mounted to the belly of the aircraft, researchers detected signs of a base beneath the ice.

The team corroborated the radar data with the known coordinates of Camp Century, otherwise known as the "city under the ice". This scientific military base was drilled directly into the ice sheet of Greenland and was used during the Cold War as an outpost to conduct experiments on creating nuclear missiles capable of hitting the Soviet Union across Greenland. Camp Century is now approximately 100 feet below the surface, and the evidence of the base gathered recently by NASA scientists lines up with the historical maps of the base's planned layout, such as underground parallel structures used for all of the base's many facilities.