Lifeboat Foundation

Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) scientists announced they’ve made significant advances toward creating a chip that can grow DNA strands in a tightly packed, ultra-dense format for large storage capacity at very low cost.

Police departments all over the world are warming up to electric vehicles and their findings after using EVs on a daily basis are encouraging.

Earlier this year, the Westport Police Department in Connecticut shared some interesting conclusions after buying a Tesla Model 3 in December 2019. They found the EV to be not only cheaper to buy than the Ford Explorer SUV they typically use but also more affordable to modify, maintain, and run, leading to savings of about $6,000 a year.

Continue reading “DNA Data Drives Point Toward Exabyte Scale” »

Police departments all over the world are warming up to electric vehicles and their findings after using EVs on a daily basis are encouraging.

Earlier this year, the Westport Police Department in Connecticut shared some interesting conclusions after buying a Tesla Model 3 in December 2019. They found the EV to be not only cheaper to buy than the Ford Explorer SUV they typically use but also more affordable to modify, maintain, and run, leading to savings of about $6,000 a year.

Now, new data is coming in from the UK, where several Tesla Model 3s custom built by Tesla UK as patrol cars have completed nine months of initial trials with the police. Max Toozs-Hobson, account manager and emergency services lead at Tesla, shared the findings on LinkedIn and said the Model 3 police cars have been “getting some great results.”

Scientists from the Division of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Kanazawa University developed a prototype pipe maintenance robot that can unclog and repair pipes with a wide range of diameters. Using a cutting tool with multiple degrees of freedom, the machine is capable of manipulating and dissecting objects for removal. This work may be a significant step forward for the field of sewerage maintenance robots.

Various sewer pipes that are essential to the services of buildings require regular inspection, repair, and maintenance. Current robots that move inside pipes are primarily designed only for visual surveying or inspection. Some robots were developed for maintenance, but they couldn’t execute complicated tasks. In–pipe robots that can also clear blockages or perform complex maintenance tasks are highly desirable, especially for pipes that are too narrow for humans to traverse. Now, a team of researchers at Kanazawa University have developed and tested a prototype with these capabilities. “Our robot can help civic and industrial workers by making their job much safer. It can operate in small pipes that humans either cannot access or are dangerous,” explains first author Thaelasutt Tugeumwolachot.

One of the main challenges with designing a robot of this kind is how to achieve a snug fit inside pipes of different sizes. Previous models can expand or contract their width by only about 60 percent. Here, the researchers used six foldable “crawler” arms around the body of the robot. This adjustable locomotion mechanism allowed it to work in pipes with sizes between 15 to 31 cm, a range of over 100 percent. Another design challenge is how to crowd complex and tough arm mechanism into small space. This robot equipped a compact arm which enables complicated cutting movements by being driven via gear train from several motors inside the robot body.

More than a score of companies are pushing to be early winners in the race for self-driving taxis — robotaxis — with the potential that brings to capture the entire value chain of car transport from your riders. They are all at different stages, and they almost all want to convince the public and investors that they are far along.

To really know how far along a project is, you need the chance to look inside it. To see the data only insiders see on just how well their vehicle is performing, as well as what it can and can’t do. Most teams want to keep those inside details secret, though in time they will need to reveal them to convince the public, and eventually regulators that they are ready to deploy.

Because they keep them secret, those of us looking in from the outside can only scrape for clues. The biggest clues come when they reach certain milestones, and when they take risks which tell us their own internal math has said it’s OK to take that risk. Most teams announce successes and release videos of drives, but these offer us only limited information because they can be cherry picked. The best indicators are what they do, not what they say.

A new “common-sense” approach to computer vision enables artificial intelligence that interprets scenes more accurately than other systems do.

Computer vision systems sometimes make inferences about a scene that fly in the face of common sense. For example, if a robot were processing a scene of a dinner table, it might completely ignore a bowl that is visible to any human observer, estimate that a plate is floating above the table, or misperceive a fork to be penetrating a bowl rather than leaning against it.

Move that computer vision system to a self-driving car and the stakes become much higher — for example, such systems have failed to detect emergency vehicles and pedestrians crossing the street.

Tesla is allowing drivers — yes, the person behind the wheel who is ideally preoccupied with tasks such as “steering” — to play video games on its vehicles’ massive console touchscreens while driving.

“I only did it for like five seconds and then turned it off,” Tesla owner Vince Patton told The New York Times. “I’m astonished. To me, it just seems inherently dangerous.”

The feature has reportedly been available for some time. Given that the company is already facing fierce scrutiny for rolling out its still unfinished Full Self-Driving beta to customers, it’s not exactly a good look.

With the Zappi, Myenergi offers a compact charging station that can charge the electric vehicle in the garage or carport at home with solar power from the roof without any additional components.

The FlyZero aircraft is one of a range of aircraft being designed by the FlyZero program. The new concept will store hydrogen in cryogenic fuel tanks, keeping them at a temperature of minus 250°Celsius (minus 418°Fahrenheit). Two cryogenic tanks will be placed at the rear of the plane, while two smaller “cheek” tanks will be placed near the front of the plane to keep the aircraft balanced. The mid-size aircraft will have a wingspan of 54 meters, each of which will have a turbofan engine attached.

“These designs could define the future of aerospace and aviation,” said U.K. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in the ATI’s statement. “By working with industry, we are showing that truly carbon-free flight could be possible, with hydrogen a frontrunner to replace conventional fossil fuels.”

Continue reading “A New Hydrogen Plane Can Fly Halfway Around the World Without Refueling” »

Formula 1 brakes are some of the most incredible pieces of tech on the planet. They’re able to haul a car doing over 200 mph down to walking speed in a matter of seconds, generating up to 5 g’s of force on deceleration. But how do they work? This video is a nifty explainer.

Scott Mansell of the Driver61 YouTube channel got his hands on a collection of brake system parts from an F1 car, and took the time to explain how each piece works. The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s not one, but two master cylinders. In F1 cars, there’s one for the front brakes, and one for the rear. They’re mounted on a pivoting fork that’s used to adjust brake bias, which is pretty genius.

Continue reading “How Formula 1 Brakes Can Stop a Car Going 200 MPH in Four Seconds” »