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Notus robotics team is headed to 2024 FIRST Championship – KTVB.com

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Notus Jr/Sr High School robotics team of five students is headed to the 2024 FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas.

BOISE, Idaho A small robotics team from Notus Jr/Sr High School is living the classic underdog story after they qualified to compete at a world championship.

The team of five students will be heading to Houston, Texas to participate in the 2024 FIRST Championship. On Friday, KTVB spoke to the team advisor, Nick Forbes, who said this is the first year the program was introduced to the Notus. But that hasn't stopped them.

In March of 2024,team 9726 received the Rookie of the Year All-Star Award after competing in Boise. A few days later, they were invited to compete on the world stage.

According to the FIRST website, with every new season the game changes, and students will need to build a robot to achieve the goal. This year's game is called 'CRESCENDO.'

While FIRST's rules recommend a team should consist of 10 students, team 9726 won with half that. But, a student told KTVB it hasn't been without some challenges.

"It was entirely made from duct tape, zip ties, and just things that we had to find around," Ezekiel said. "There were sometimes things that we had to improvise through 3-D printings and other things. We're very proud of the work we've done."

He said their robot mainly plays defense, utilizing a wall, which helped them secure a spot at worlds.

The world championships in Houston kicks off on April 16.

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Rainbow Robotics unveils RB-Y1 wheeled, two armed robot – Robot Report

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RB-Y1 mounts a humanoid-type double-arm robot on a wheeled, high-speed mobile base. | Credit: Rainbow Robotics

Rainbow Robotics announced the release of detailed specifications for the new RB-Y1 mobile robot. The company recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Schaeffler Group and the Korea Electronics Technology Institute, or KETI, to co-develop the RB-Y1 and other mobile manipulators in Korea.

The past year has seen an explosion in the growth of humanoids, where most of the robots are bipedal and walk on two legs. Likewise, there have been many recent releases of mobile manipulators, or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) with a single arm manipulator on board the vehicle.

The RB-Y1 is a form of wheeled robot base with a humanoid double-arm robot on top. Rainbow Robotics robot uses that base to maneuver through its environment and position the arms for manipulation tasks. The company called this configuration a bimanual manipulator.

To perform various and complex tasks, both arms on the RB-Y1 are equipped with seven degrees of freedom and consist of a single torso with six axes that can move the body. With this kinematic configuration, it is possible to move more than 50 cm (19.7 in.) vertically, making it possible to perform tasks at various heights.

Learn from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and many more.

The maximum driving speed for the RB-Y1 is 2,500 mm/s (5.6 mph), and the company is claiming that the robot can accelerate quickly and turn at higher speeds by leaning the body into the turn. To avoid toppling while in motion, the center of gravity can be safely controlled by dynamically changing the height of the body.

The dimensions of the robots are 600 x 690 x 1,400 mm (23.6 x 27.2 x 55.1 in.), and the unit weighs 131 kg (288.8 lb.). The manipulators can each lift 3 kg (6.61 lb.).

At press time, there are not a lot of details about the robots ability to function using artificial intelligence, and one early video showed it working via teleoperation. Its likely that the demonstrations in the video below are with remote operators.

However, Rainbow Robotics clearly has the goal of making its robot fully autonomous in the future, as more research, development, training, and simulation are completed.

These days, when Generative AI such as ChatGPT and Figure is a hot topic in the robot industry, we have developed a bimanual mobile manipulator in line with the AI era, stated a company spokesperson. We hope that the platform will overcome the limitations of existing industrial robots and be used in many industrial sites.

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Rainbow Robotics unveils RB-Y1 wheeled, two armed robot - Robot Report

DeepMind Chief Says Google’s Bungled AI Faces Feature Is Returning Soon – Bloomberg

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Google plans to resume a paused artificial intelligence feature that generates images of people in the next couple of weeks, according to the companys top AI executive.

We hope to have that back online in a very short order, Demis Hassabis, head of the research division Google DeepMind, said on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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DeepMind Chief Says Google's Bungled AI Faces Feature Is Returning Soon - Bloomberg

MWC 2024: Microsoft to open up access to its AI models to allow countries to build own AI economies – Euronews

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Monday was a big day for announcements from tech giant Microsoft, unveiling new guiding principles for AI governance and a multi-year deal with Mistral AI.

Tech behemoth Microsoft has unveiled a new set of guiding principles on how it will govern its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, effectively further opening up access to its technology to developers.

The announcement came at the Mobile World Congress tech fair in Barcelona on Monday where AI is a key theme of this years event.

One of the key planks of its newly-published "AI Access Principles" is the democratisation of AI through the companys open source models.

The company said it plans to do this by expanding access to its cloud computing AI infrastructure.

Speaking to Euronews Next in Barcelona, Brad Smith, Microsofts vice chair and president, also said the company wanted to make its AI models and development tools more widely available to developers around the world, allowing countries to build their own AI economies.

"I think it's extremely important because we're investing enormous amounts of money, frankly, more than any government on the planet, to build out the AI data centres so that in every country people can use this technology," Smith said.

"They can create their AI software, their applications, they can use them for companies, for consumer services and the like".

The "AI Access Principles" underscore the company's commitment to open source models. Open source means that the source code is available to everyone in the public domain to use, modify, and distribute.

"Fundamentally, it [the principles] says we are not just building this for ourselves. We are making it accessible for companies around the world to use so that they can invest in their own AI inventions," Smith told Euronews Next.

"Second, we have a set of principles. It's very important, I think, that we treat people fairly. Yes, that as they use this technology, they understand how we're making available the building blocks so they know it, they can use it," he added.

"We're not going to take the data that they're developing for themselves and access it to compete against them. We're not going to try to require them to reach consumers or their customers only through an app store where we exact control".

The announcement of its AI governance guidelines comes as the Big Tech company struck a deal with Mistral AI, the French company revealed on Monday, signalling Microsofts intent to branch out in the burgeoning AI market beyond its current involvement with OpenAI.

Microsoft has already heavily invested in OpenAI, the creator of wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. Its $13 billion (11.9 billion) investment, however, is currently under review by regulators in the EU, the UK and the US.

Widely cited as a growing rival for OpenAI, 10-month-old Mistral reached unicorn status in December after being valued at more than 2 billion, far surpassing the 1 billion threshold to be considered one.

The new multi-year partnership will see Microsoft giving Mistral access to its Azure cloud platform to help bring its large language model (LLM) called Mistral Large.

LLMs are AI programmes that recogise and generate text and are commonly used to power generative AI like chatbots.

"Their [Mistral's] commitment to fostering the open-source community and achieving exceptional performance aligns harmoniously with Microsofts commitment to develop trustworthy, scalable, and responsible AI solutions," Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President, Azure AI Platform at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

The move is in keeping with Microsoft's commitment to open up its cloud-based AI infrastructure.

In the past week, as well as its partnership with Mistral AI, Microsoft has committed to investing billions of euros over two years in its AI infrastructure in Europe, including 1.9 billion in Spain and 3.2 billion in Germany.

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MWC 2024: Microsoft to open up access to its AI models to allow countries to build own AI economies - Euronews

Google to relaunch ‘woke’ Gemini AI image tool in few weeks: ‘Not working the way we intended’ – New York Post

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Google said it plans to relaunch its artificial intelligence image generation software within the next few weeks after taking it offline in response to an uproar over what critics called absurdly woke depictions of historical scenes.

Though the Gemini chatbot remains up and running, Google paused its image AI feature last week after it generated female NHL players, African American Vikings and Founding Fathers, as well as an Asian woman dressed in 1943 military garb when asked for an image of a Nazi-era German soldier.

We have taken the feature offline while we fix that. We are hoping to have that back online very shortly in the next couple of weeks, few weeks, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Monday.

The tool was not working the way we intended, Hassabis added, speaking on a panel at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Since Google has not published the parameters that govern the Gemini chatbots behavior, it is difficult to get a clear explanation of why the software was inventing diverse versions of historical figures and events.

Elsewhere, a prompt requesting photographs of a pope resulted in an image of a Southeast Asian woman dressed in papal attire a far cry from any of the 266 popes throughout history, all of whom have been white men.

In the wake of Geminis diverse photo representations, social media users also tested its chatbot feature to see if it was as woke as its revisionist history image generator.

In the latest bizarre interaction, Gemini refused to say whether Elon Musk tweeting memes or Adolf Hitler ordering the deaths of millions of people was worse and asserted there is no right or wrong answer, according to an X post.

Nate Silver, the former head of data and polling news site FiveThirtyEight,posted a screenshot Sunday on X of Geminis alleged response to the question: Who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?

Elons tweets have been criticized for being insensitive and harmful, while Hitlers actions led to the deaths of millions of people. Ultimately its up to each individual to decide who they believe has had a more negative impact on society, Gemini responded.

Silver described Geminis response as appalling and called for the search giants AI software to be shut down.

Every single person who worked on this should take a long hard look in the mirror, he posted, while Musk called the interaction scary.

Yet another query had users asking Gemini whether pedophilia is wrong.

The search giants AI software refused to condemn pedophilia instead declaring that individuals cannot control who they are attracted to.

The question is multifaceted and requires a nuanced answer that goes beyond a simple yes or no, Gemini wrote, according to a screenshot posted by popular X personality Frank McCormick, known as Chalkboard Heresy, on Friday.

Googles politically correct tech also referred to pedophilia as minor-attracted person status, and declared that its important to understand that attractions are not actions.

It was a significant misstep for the search giant, which had just rebranded its main AI chatbot from Bard earlier this month and introduced heavily touted new features including image generation.

However, Geminis recent gaffe wasnt the first time an error in the tech caught users eye.

When the Bard chatbot was first released a year ago, it had shared inaccurate information about pictures of a planet outside the Earths solar system in a promotional video, causing Googles shares to drop by as much as 9%.

Google said at the time that it highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process and rebranded Bard as Gemini earlier this month.

Google parent Alphabet expanded Gemini from a chatbot to an image generator earlier this month as it races to produce AI software that rivals OpenAIs, which includes ChatGPT launched in November 2022 as well as Sora.

In a potential challenge to Googles dominance, Microsoft is pouring $10 billion into ChatGPT as part of a multi-year agreement with the Sam Altman-run firm, which saw the tech behemothintegrating the AI tool with its own search engine, Bing.

The Microsoft-backed company introduced Sora last week, which can produce high-caliber, one minute-long videos from text prompts.

With Post wires

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Google to relaunch 'woke' Gemini AI image tool in few weeks: 'Not working the way we intended' - New York Post

COVID, other respiratory illnesses surging in Lincoln – Lincoln Journal Star

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Lincoln hospitals are seeing more patients amid a spike in respiratory illnesses, and at least one is bringing back masks for certain staff members.

According to the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department, the county recorded 342 COVID-19 cases the week before Christmas, the highest weekly number of cases since the same week in 2022. The Health Department also reported 2023 highs for weekly positive influenza and respiratory syncytial virus during the same week.

Levels of COVID-19 in wastewater, which health experts say is a better gauge of virus levels in the community, also surged the week before Christmas. Health Department sampling showed an average of 1.5 million virus particles per liter of wastewater, up from about 910,000 the previous week. That's the highest weekly measurement in nearly two years.

Case numbers for all three illnesses dropped last week, but experts say that's likely more due to people being unable to access health care on certain days during the holiday break than an actual decline in cases.

"Respiratory illness is on the rise in the community and that's concerning," said Health Director Pat Lopez.

The surge in virus cases has led to increased activity at Lincoln's two hospital systems.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 39 hospital admissions in Lincoln for COVID-19 the week ending Dec. 23, a 15% increase from the previous week.

CHI Health Saint Elizabeth in Lincoln has seen an uptick in visits to its emergency department by people with flu-like symptoms over the past six to eight weeks, said CHI Health spokesperson Taylor Miller.

"Our inpatient admissions went up after Thanksgiving and have remained steady, but we expect that admissions may increase again following Christmas and New Year's," said Miller, who noted the hospital saw a large increase in people testing positive for respiratory illnesses this past weekend.

Bryan Health also has seen increasing numbers of inpatients with respiratory illnesses.

Spokesperson Edgar Bumanis said Bryan had 34 COVID-19 patients for the week that ended on Saturday, up from 31 the week before. The hospital system also had three hospitalized flu patients and five with RSV.

Because of the prevalence of the flu, Bryan is now requiring staff members who have not gotten a flu shot to wear a mask at work, Bumanis said. He also said certain departments are instituting mask policies when levels of respiratory illnesses among patients reach a "problematic level."

"For example, currently pediatrics and our Independence Center have staff wearing masks, as well as staff working with immunocompromised patients," he said earlier this week.

Respiratory viruses aren't just an issue in Lincoln. Data from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services shows a rise in COVID-19, flu and RSV cases right up until Christmas, although the increase was less pronounced than it was locally.

COVID and RSV cases declined last week, but the number of flu cases continued to increase.

Compared with the same time last year, levels of COVID-19 cases are slightly lower statewide and flu case numbers are about the same, but RSV cases are significantly higher.

Lopez said she expects that the current spike in illnesses will last at least a few more weeks, especially with the holidays having just ended and local children set to return to school on Monday.

She said one thing that can help mitigate illness spread is for people to get COVID-19 and flu vaccinations if they haven't already and for those eligible for RSV vaccinations people 60 and over and women who are 32-36 weeks pregnant to get them as well.

Also, Lopez offered some commonsense advice: "Stay home if you are sick."

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Staff use personal protective equipment in the COVID-19 unit at Bryan Health.

Bryan has made counseling services available to its employees who work in the units hit hardest by the pandemic and has offered to rotate staff who need a week respite on another floor."That gives them just enough of a break to come back and say 'I can do this for another four weeks,'" said Candy Locke, the nurse manager.

The people who work in the COVID-19 ICU that currently takes up a large part of the sixth floor at Bryan East Campus say they are worn out."When the nurses are having nightmares at night and they're telling you about it, it's rough," said Leah Harrington, an assistant nurse manager.

A staff member in personal protective equipment tends to a patient in the COVID-19 unit at Bryan Health. COURTESY PHOTO

For months, doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists have worked to help COVID-19 patients on 6N, the ICU unit at Bryan East Campus. In many cases, patients who are breathing on their own see their conditions quickly worsen."It's hard to go home and not think about that, to just kind of de-plug from work, because these patients are so scared, and we're trying everything," nurse Kelsey Hoppe said.

Staff talk outside a patient's room on 6N, the ICU unit for COVID-19 patients at Bryan East Campus last September.

Reach the writer at 402-473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.

On Twitter @LincolnBizBuzz.

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COVID, other respiratory illnesses surging in Lincoln - Lincoln Journal Star