Category Archives: Singularity

Just under 402 years ago, in August of 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Southampton, England, bound for America. The 100-foot-long-long, triple-masted wooden vessel with canvas sails took more than two months to cross the Atlantic. It carried 102 passengers, had a max speed of three knots an hour (thats about 6 kilometers or 3.7 miles an hour) and required a crew of 30 to operate.

Earlier this month, another Mayflower crossed the Atlantic, but it couldnt have been more different from its namesake in almost every way. The one similarity was that, well, it was also a boat.

The differences? The new Mayflowerlogically dubbed the Mayflower 400is a 50-foot-long trimaran (thats a boat that has one main hull with a smaller hull attached on either side), can go up to 10 knots or 18.5 kilometers an hour, is powered by electric motors that run on solar energy (with diesel as a backup if needed), and required a crew of zero.

Thats because the ship was navigated by an on-board AI. Like a self-driving car, the ship was tricked out with multiple cameras (6 of them) and sensors (45 of them) to feed the AI information about its surroundings and help it make wise navigation decisions, such as re-routing around spots with bad weather. Theres also onboard radar and GPS, as well as altitude and water-depth detectors.

The ship and its voyage were a collaboration between IBM and a marine research non-profit called ProMare. Engineers trained the Mayflower 400s AI Captain on petabytes of data; according to an IBM overview about the ship, its decisions are based on if/then rules and machine learning models for pattern recognition, but also go beyond these standards. The algorithm learns from the outcomes of its decisions, makes predictions about the future, manages risks, and refines its knowledge through experience. Its also able to integrate far more inputs in real time than a human is capable of.

The training included teaching the algorithm to identify objects in its path like cargo ships, fishing vessels, or shipping containers floating in the water.

For all its training and preparation, though, the Mayflower 400 ended up falling a bit short of its goal.

It set sail from Plymouth, England on April 29 and was meant to take three weeks to arrive in Washington, DCbut a mechanical issue ended up derailing it to the Canadian port of Halifax. Details werent specified, but it may have been something similar to what happened during the ships first attempted voyage in 2021, when a metal component on the backup generator fractured, and solar power alone wasnt enough for the ship to complete its journey.

The Mayflower 400s engineers will doubtless press on, though, and are likely already planning another voyage for the high-tech autonomous ship. Despite the snafus, its pretty amazing to contemplate how far technology has come since the original Mayflower crossed the Atlantic. Makes you wonder what a similar voyage will look like 400 years from now; from hydrogen-powered airships to civilian submarines to faster, sleeker AI-powered solar vessels, it seems anything is possible.

Image Credit: Oliver Dickinson for IBM/ProMare

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An Autonomous Ship Used AI to Cross the Atlantic Without a Human Crew - Singularity Hub

Reducing carbon emissions from roads, railways, and shipping requires implementing a range of solutions simultaneously. As far as cars are concerned, cutting the number of journeys altogether (by making it easier for people to walk and cycle and improving public transport), changing the fuel in vehicles, and making the most of those vehicles already on the road must all play a part. None of these solutions are sufficient on their own.

In 2030, the sale of new diesel and petrol passenger cars will be outlawed in the UK. The future of passenger motoring will be electric. But recent problems supplying parts and the high carbon cost of manufacturing electric vehicles could delay the climate benefits of this transition.

To make best use of existing petrol and diesel burning vehiclesand the carbon that was invested in creating themdrivers and manufacturers can reduce the emissions of a family of compounds called nitrogen oxides, which are linked to respiratory diseases, through better treatment of exhaust fumes. This way, the communities most blighted by air pollution can at least be protected before harmful vehicle emissions are finally eradicated.

My research team is developing a new generation of catalytic convertersthe devices fitted to exhaust pipes to reduce the release of toxic gases. Inspired by chemistry observed on the surface of extremely hot planets such as Venus, we have produced a synthetic material that could improve air quality.

The suns light destroys carbon dioxide (CO) in the atmospheres of planets, producing carbon monoxide (CO). Not fast enough to avert climate change, but enough that atmospheres like Venus should contain far more CO than we observe there.

Our group studies the effects of meteoric material (dust arriving from space) in atmospheres. An iron silicate powder we made which replicates this dust can speed up the conversion of CO to CO. This is what the first catalytic converters in cars were designed to do, since CO is a toxic gas.

That got us thinking about whether this material could help with other problems, such as nitrogen oxide pollution, which exceeds legal limits in the air of many UK cities. Poor air quality from vehicle exhausts costs tens of thousands of lives annually.

Weve found that not only can the powder simultaneously clean up CO and nitrogen oxide emissions, but it can convert nitrogen dioxide (NO, a harmful gas which is specifically regulated) to harmless molecular nitrogen (N) and water at room temperature.

Catalysts for processing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions installed in modern diesel vehicles only work at exhaust temperatures above 150C. Even if your car uses an additive fluid to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions, its unlikely to work while driving slowly when the exhaust is cooler. This is when vehicles emit the most NOoften in traffic jams where the most polluted air can accumulate.

When the electricity grid is decarbonized and sufficiently robust to charge millions of electric vehicles, catalytic converters capable of removing nitrogen oxides may still be important. For example, the natural gas fuel in industrial furnaces is likely to be replaced with hydrogen.

Unlike buses and cars running on hydrogen, which produce energy via a reaction in a fuel cell, larger applications such as furnaces in steelworks will burn hydrogen fuel directly. This high-temperature combustion will convert molecular nitrogen in the air to nitrogen oxide pollution, which will need to be removed.

Thats why were excited to be developing a prototype emissions converter that can work in most situations, with the potential to radically reduce toxic emissions from combustion engines and other sources in the future.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Hans / 20749 images

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Cosmic Dust From Venus Is Inspiring New Air Pollution-Busting Technology - Singularity Hub

Hit Reload is a weekly column on everything first-person shooter. This week, Jake unloads his thoughts on the unfortunately named blaster Trepang2, which channels the spirit of Black and F.E.A.R to great effect.

In Trepang2 you play as an amnesiac soldier that has been infused with supernatural abilities. In the Steam Next Fest demo, thats about all youre given before you are turned loose into the world to seek vengeance, teaming up with a mysterious group to mete out punishment.

Is vengeance even possible when you have no memory of your previous life? Trepang2 doesnt care, its too busy handing you an assault rifle to philosophise. Youll likely be too busy too, as smart enemies outnumber and overwhelm you as you try to make do with the gun in your hand and your two abilities: a toggleable slow-motion mode and a cloak that drops you into a blue-hued invisibility, offering just enough time to reposition during a firefight or stalk up to an enemy and get him in a headlock to use as a human shield.

Its heaps of fun, even if the demo only gives you access to a short but sweet prologue filled with corridors and men to wallpaper those corridors with, culminating in a set piece best described as elevators full of men in tactical gear charge at you until everyone dies. Then theres a few arena-based wave defence modes, which dont have the same charm as the prologue but have still kept me amused for a few hours due to the tense nature of the brutal combat.

Trepang2. Credit: Trepang Studios.

To gamers of a certain age, a mysterious commando working with a shadowy group while also having the ability to move in slow motion says one thing: F.E.A.R. In an age of constant remakes, remasters and re-imaginings, Monoliths stellar FPS has never been revisited, but Trepang2 has come along to offer its own interpretation of slow-motion first person blasting.

Theres something about the way Trepang2 has taken the core elements and remixed them the goons attacking you from all sides are in newer tactical gear sure, but this is a pulpy FPS at a time when the genre has largely died out in no small part due to the fact that Activision took Raven Software of Wolfenstein, Singularity and Soldier of Fortune 2 fame and locked them in a room to work on Call of Duty games. This is a game where secret experiments have given you powers and youre more than happy to jab yourself in the arm with a serum that will let you dual wield shotguns. Its B-movie jank, but whos complaining?

F.E.A.R was famous for three things four if you count the terrifying jump scare where monstrous little girl Alma shits you up at the top of a ladder and thats the nailgun, the smart AI and the games slow-motion abilities. All of this took place in the games least memorable feature: dreary light brown corridors just waiting for you to paint the walls with viscera. The sequels did away with the dingy corridors and clean styling and bizarrely lost their identity a little bit. A few hours with Trepang2 and its clear that its nailed the slow motion and the corridors, but theres not enough in the Summer Games Fest demo to see if its ticking all of the boxes just yet.

Trepang2. Credit: Trepang Studios.

I dont think it matters, either way. As a fan of F.E.A.R, obviously I want to see nail guns and proper reverence to a game Ive loved for years. But heres the thing F.E.A.R came out in 2005. Thats coming up on 20 years ago. While in my head I have a list of things I want Trepang2 to adhere to, actually Im in the wrong here its time for a new audience to find things they love. This is the best of both worlds, its clear to see elements of F.E.A.R spattered about the place but this is a game that seems to take its inspiration from a deep love for F.E.A.R. at Trepang Studios.

Now, we get to see Trepang Studios add its own twist. Theres already the ability to mod weapons and even shoot out lights to engage in some light stealth, in addition to grabbing enemies to use as human shields before pulling the pins from their grenades and launching them like an improvised explosive device.

From the demo,Trepang2 appears to be a good game for those looking for that F.E.A.R fix. But its also shaping up to be a solid game on its own merits, and should scratch that itch for a no-nonsense FPS with lashings of gore.

Id still like a nail gun, mind.

You can currently download a free demo for Trepang2 on Steam.

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'Trepang2' is the gold standard for spiritual successors - NME

A little over a year ago, a Scottish company called Orbital Marine Power was getting a two-megawatt tidal turbine up and running in the North Sea. The system was expected to generate enough electricity to power around 2,000 Scottish homes and offset 2,200 tons of CO2 annually.

Meanwhile, a similar ocean turbine called Kairyu was already in the water off the coast of Japan, undergoing a three-year trial to harness the power of deep ocean currents. The trial was deemed a success, and detailed in a report published by Bloomberg recently.

Ocean turbines are essentially an underwater version of wind turbines, functioning much the same way; the movement of waterwhether from tides or currentsturns blades that are attached to a rotor, turning the rotor and powering a generator.

The biggest tidal power plant in the world is Sihwa Lake station in South Korea, which has a capacity of 254 megawatts (MW), followed by a 240MW station in La Rance, France (this is also the worlds oldest tidal plant, built between 1961-1966).

Both these plants use whats called a barrage, which is a long underwater wall (the barrage at the La Rance plant, for example, is 476 feet long) with gates that open and close with the tides in a way that capitalizes on their energy production potential. This setup works well for generating high quantities of power with multiple turbines; Sihwa Lake has 10 turbines and La Rance has 24.

Kairyu works a little differently. The 330-ton turbine is designed to harvest energy from ocean currents (as opposed to tides). The system is made up of three connected cylindrical pods. The middle pod, which sits several feet higher than those on either side, holds a connector for the power transmitter as well as a device to adjust buoyancythat is, to enable the array to move to deeper or shallower water and thus capitalize on variations in the currents strongest spots.

The pods on either side both have turbine blades on one end that are 36 feet long, and they rotate in opposite directions to stabilize the generators position underwater. They also each contain a generator, a controller, and various measurement instruments.

Kairyu will be anchored to the seafloor, with its pods floating about 160 feet below the waters surface. The system will sit along the Kuroshio current, one of the largest ocean currents in the world. It starts east of the Philippines and flows north-east past Taiwan and Japan. Oceanographer Steven Jayne described it as the strongest current in the Pacific Ocean, and also one of the most intense air-sea heat exchange regions on the globe. It influences climate as far as North America.

The current flows at a rate of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) per second, and Kairyus trial period showed that the tidal turbine system could steadily generate 100 kilowatts of power (50 per turbine unit) with a rate flow speed of three knots (thats about 3.45 nautical miles per hour). Because ocean currents dont change speed or direction much, systems like Kairyu could generate power some 70 percent of the time versus more intermittent sources like onshore wind (29 percent) and solar (15 percent). Japans New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization estimates this current could generate up to 200 gigawatts of reliable energy.

Being an island nation, it seems only logical that Japan should harness ocean currents for energy; according to Ken Takagi, a professor of ocean technology policy at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, theres more potential for ocean current turbine power than offshore wind in the area. Ocean currents have an advantage in terms of their accessibility in Japan, he told Bloomberg. Wind power is more geographically suited to Europe, which is exposed to predominant westerly winds and is located at higher latitudes.

The Japanese are hoping power from the ocean will be a significant contributor to the countrys renewable energy stock and help it meet its net zero carbon emissions target by 2050. Building the submerged transmission lines that will carry the energy Kairyu generates to the grid will be no small project, but the tidal turbine is expected to be up and running in the next decade.

Image Credit: IHI Corporation

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Japan's Kairyu Sea Turbine Will Harvest the Never-Ending Power of Deep Ocean Currents - Singularity Hub

Screenshot: YouTube

Welcome friends, to the Steve Carell Vortexthat place where all Steve Carell fandoms collide into one unholy singularity of comedy (with occasional affecting dramatic turns). In this magical wonderland of brand synergy, Thats what she said and Welcome to Marwen can interact in perfect harmony; you can love lamp, 40-year-old virgins, and catching foxes all in one fell swoop. And you can, of course, enjoy a professionally crafted, officially licensed version of The Office opening recreated by the Minions from Minions, because hey, why in the name of Steve couldnt you do that thing?

Minions Opening Credits - The Office US

Hence the above video, posted, not to the depths of Tik Tok or some bizarre fan channel, but to the official The Office YouTube page, in which the various interchangeable yellow monsters you know and fear from Carells Despicable Me franchiseinstead invade Scranton, apparently working in a paper company run by Carells character Gruwhos supposedly set to Rise whenever the second Minions movie ever actually manages to come out

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If nothing else, its a staggering amount of thought and effort to put into such a weird concept; eagle-eyed viewers will see references to a whole host of Officein-jokes, including a Prison Mike callback, that time Dwight wore a terrifying human face mask, and, of course, the famed Kevins famous chili scene. (Is it driving us nuts that the Minion who drops the chili is labeled Otto, instead of Kevin? Trick question, baby: Were already in the Steve Carell Vortex!) You will also get to see a Pam Minion and a Jim Minion suck face for a second, in case that was something you needed to fill out your personal sexual awakening bingo card this afternoon.

The much-delayed Minions: The Rise Of Gru is supposedly due out on July 1, 2022; meanwhile, were holding out hopes to see the Minions address Carells turn as Vices Donald Rumsfeld, next.

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Brand synergy eats its own tail as The Office recreates its intro with Minions - Yahoo Entertainment

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SentinelOne (NYSE: S), an autonomous cybersecurity platform company, today announced integrations with IBM, Swimlane, and Intezer, increasing use case offerings available via SentinelOnes Singularity Marketplace. The new integrations cover security information and event management (SIEM), security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), and malware analysis.

SentinelOne is committed to helping customers defend themselves from threats in the manner that best fits their workflows, said Ruby Sharma, Head of Technology Partnerships, SentinelOne. We continuously partner with leading and innovative cybersecurity vendors to expand the offerings available via the Singularity platform. We are excited about our new integrations with IBM, Swimlane, and Intezer which give customers the optionality they seek in running their cybersecurity programs.

Streamlined Detection and Response Workflows with IBMWith a seamless API integration between SentinelOne Singularity XDR and IBM Security QRadar SIEM and SOAR, the integration consolidates visibility across SentinelOne managed endpoints, cloud workloads, identities, and additional SOC tools, incorporating SentinelOne context for automated detection and response. SentinelOne filters its context-rich detections through IBMs QRadar SIEM for correlation, triage, and investigation. If an alert is deemed actionable in QRadar SIEM, the incident is escalated to QRadar SOAR where security analysts can begin incident remediation and response. The joint solution allows IBM customers to maximize SOC operations through unified investigations, enhanced visibility, and intelligent automation across incident response workflows.

The Singularity XDR and QRadar integration doubles down on the commitment to an open ecosystem, simplifying SOC operations and delivering on a modern approach to threat management, said Robert Dibattista, Director of Product Management, IBM. Were excited to see the continued successes of this partnership, and more importantly, the value our clients can derive.

Multiply SecOps Workforce with Swimlanes Robust Low-Code AutomationThe SentinelOne integration with Swimlane increases visibility and triage accuracy, reduces alert fatigue, and accelerates mean-time-to-respond. It leverages SentinelOne Singularity XDR APIs in order for Swimlane to trigger low-code automation playbooks, case management processes, and populate modular dashboards or reports. Swimlane combines SentinelOnes telemetry sources with human data into a single system of record. This joint solution provides centralized case management, automated incident enrichment, and alert remediation.

To keep pace with the constantly expanding attack surface, overburdened security teams need solutions that extend their visibility and response capabilities, said Mike Kay, Sr. Vice President of Business Development, Swimlane. Swimlane and SentinelOnes partnership delivers a solution to these challenges by combining SentinelOnes dynamic endpoint visibility and deep correlation with Swimlanes low-code automation playbooks, case management, dashboards, and reporting. Together, we are able to help customers reduce silos and gain a system of record that demonstrates the business value of security programs.

Accelerate Alert Triage and Automate Malware Analysis with IntezerSentinelOne and Intezer combine to automatically triage incidents and provide advanced malware analysis verdicts, lessening the load on busy security teams. When SentinelOne detects a malicious activity, customers now have the option to automatically share alert data with Intezer for deep analysis. Intezers analysis is returned to SentinelOne for consolidated visibility and mitigation.

Too many teams face challenges hiring and retaining skilled security professionals, said Itai Tevet, CEO and Co-founder, Intezer. However, they can feel empowered by introducing more automation into their workflows for alert triage, response, and threat hunting with Intezers integration that combines seamlessly with SentinelOnes Singularity platform.

All integrations are available via SentinelOnes Singularity Marketplace. For more information visit http://www.sentinelone.com.

About SentinelOneSentinelOnes cybersecurity solution encompasses AI-powered prevention, detection, response and hunting across endpoints, containers, cloud workloads, and IoT devices in a single autonomous XDR platform.

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SentinelOne Expands Singularity Marketplace with New Integrations for SIEM, SOAR, and Malware Analysis - Business Wire

Combining our powerful IDP capabilities with the KYP.ai platform gives a level of visibility and control over automation previously unable to obtain

The power of SingularityAI with KYP.ai enables organizations to overcome these failures, revealing true end-to-end processes, full end user impact, and total digital transformation potential. The combined solution delivers automation analysis and suggestions that are centered on people, with a focus on who automation could assist, including where, when, and how it can be best deployed.

"Through our partnership with KYP.ai, organizations will now be able to avoid the pervasive reasons why so many digital transformation efforts fail," says Tianhao WU, CTO and co-founder of Singularity Systems. "Combining our powerful IDP capabilities with the KYP.ai platform gives clients a level of visibility and control over their automation success they were previously unable to obtain, identifying the right use cases to apply IDP and showing how to achieve success managing even the most difficult unstructured data problems they face."

"KYP.ai augments Business Intelligence in a way that hasn't been available via existing data and process mining software," said Adam Bujak, CEO of KYP.ai. "Businesses know they need to digitally transform, but the question they ask is: where and how? Our alliance with Singularity Systems answers these two critical questions clearly, accurately, and quickly this has not been possible before now."

About KYP.ai

KYP.ai is a Transformation Mining Company fuelling digital change, helping customers to rapidly understand their abstract processes and how these balance with people and technology dimensions. The company's plug-and-play cloud SaaS solution serves as a data backbone, supporting insights into process automation potential and execution success, and delivering automatically generated, data-driven improvement recommendations. KYP.ai has offices in United States, Germany, and Poland.

About Singularity Systems

With its world-class team of scientists and developers, Singularity Systems has pioneered new AI techniques that have modernized and democratized Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). The company provides SingularityAI, an Artificial Intelligence platform enabling enterprises to transform their raw data into actionable insight. Enterprise leaders use SingularityAI to efficiently convert high-volume unstructured content into machine-readable data, enabling real-time decision-making and powering improvements in customer experience and operational agility. Serving a global customer network of top-tier organizations in banking, insurance, healthcare, energy, and other data-intensive industries, Singularity Systems is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey's Einstein's Alley.

SOURCE Singularity Systems Inc.

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Singularity Systems partners with KYP.ai to deliver the fastest possible ROI for Digital Transformation - PR Newswire

The millirobot looked like an adorable cartoon vehicle as it expertly navigated a complex maze. Its a strange creature: the bottom resembles a collapsed fence; the top, a colander-like basket. The size of a penny, it seems fragile and utterly unassuming.

But at its core is a potential paradigm shift for building autonomous robots that can sense and respond to its local environment. Unlike classic robots, which are assembled with multiple components, the millirobot is 3D printed with a milky-looking metamaterial that can flexibly change its properties with a few electrical zaps.

Metamaterials sound like something out of a comic book, but the concept is simple. Unlike wood, glass, or other static materials we readily rely on to hold their structure, the metamaterials used in the studypiezoelectric materialseasily change their structure when blasted with an electromagnetic field. This allows the material to twist, contort, shrink, or expand. Map out each movement, and its possible to build and steer a robot.

To build the bot, the team designed a 3D printing setup to print out robotic structures using piezoelectric materials. As an additional add-on, the team gave the bots an ultrasound glowup, embedding components into the material, which helped the bots turn vibrations into electricity to sense their environment.

The millibots learned to autonomously walk, jump, and escape from potential obstacles in real time. They could even take a mini-beach hike in the lab, easily navigating through a rough, sandy terrain partially covered with greenery.

The bots, though still rudimentary, could one day help deliver drugs in confined spaces in our bodies if shrunken down. They may also act as cheap, tiny, but powerful scouts to explore new or hazardous environments.

To Dr. Ahmad Rafsanjani at the Center for Soft Robotics, University of Southern Denmark, who was not involved in the study, the millibots bring metamaterials into the limelight as a new way to construct autonomous robots. The study highlights a broader view of robotic materials in which the boundary between materials and machines becomes indiscernible, he wrote in a related commentary. Additive manufacturing of piezoelectric metamaterials may lead to materializing fully integrated robots that might eventually walk straight out of a 3D printer.

Metamaterials are weird. But thanks to their exotic properties, scientists have readily explored potential uses for these strange ducks. A classic one is optics. Metamaterials are often made of components that flexibly interact with electromagnetic waves, including light. In a way, theyre similar to camera lenses or mirrors, but with the superpower to rapidly change how they direct every light wave. In theory, a carefully created structure from metamaterials could overhaul all types of glassesfrom microscope lenses to those on our faces.

More recently, scientists began exploring other uses. One major effort is incorporating piezoelectric materials into neuromorphic chips, which roughly simulate how the brain computes and stores information. By changing the properties of these materials with electrical fields, scientists can approximate how synapses work with ultra-low energy. Other studies tapped into metamaterials acrobatic ability to morph their shape, creating structures that convert linear motionsay, a crab walkinto rotations and mechanical gears. Its as if your legs suddenly turn into rotating wheels.

Yeah, metamaterials are weird. How do they work?

It helps to imagine them as old-school boxed TVs with antennae. To adjust the channelthat is, the materials behavioryou move the antennae around until their structure interacts strongly with radio waves, and voil, youve nailed the materials state. It can then be blended with conventional materials to build intricate, lattice-like structures while preserving their metamorphosis properties. This flexibility makes them an especially intriguing canvas for designing robots. Because theyre a near-single structure, in the long run, they could help build intelligent prosthetics less prone to failure, as they dont have mechanical moving parts. Rather than soldering, they can now be 3D printed. (This gives me all the Westworld vibesmechanical Dolores versus milky-liquid printed version, anyone?).

The new millibots look like a hybrid between Wall-E and TARS, a ridged, folding, chopsticks-esque robot in Interstellar. Fully 3D printed, they shattered the conventional dogma for building robots. Normally, a robot needs several independent components: sensors to navigate the environment, microprocessors for the brain, actuators for movement, and a power supply to drive the whole system. Each link is prone to failure.

Here, the team integrated each component into one design. The first key ingredient is piezoelectric materials, which convert electrical fields into mechanical tension and vice versa. Theyre the muscles that guide the robots movement. But they do triple duty. Depending on the state of the metamaterial, it can form a ceramic-like backbone to help the millibot maintain its shape. In its conductive phase, it acts like nerve cells, capturing electromagnetic signals to control the muscles. Further bumping up the bots prowess is an ultrasonic element, melded onto the bot, that helps it sense its surroundings.

Altogether, the simple millibot essentially has multiple systems mixed into one glaring white goo: a nervous system capable of sensing and actuation, a muscle component, and a skeletal structure. Dropping the goo into a 3D printer, the team built sophisticated lattices as the robots backbone, each carefully decorated with conductive metals and piezoelectric properties onto specific regions.

The result? A tiny robot that taps into electrical fields to sense and navigate its environment. Even more impressive is its ability to understand its own bodily movements and place in spacea trick called proprioception thats been dubbed the sixth sense of human perception and rarely implemented in robots.

With a few challenges, the authors next showcased the bots prowess. One robot expertly navigated around roadblocks in real time as a human sequentially dropped down barriers based on ultrasound feedback. In another test, the robot hopped long distances and expertly navigated sharp turns. With just milliseconds of delay, the robot frog hopped several rough surfaces without a sweata motor task thats previously bewildered other bots.

The millibots also made great pack mules. Even with 500 percent weight in payloadsuch as an onboard power source, a driver, and a microcontrollerthey were able to move easily with just a 20 percent decline in speed. In practice, the superpower makes these bots great scaffolds as drug delivery machines that may one day roam our bloodstream.

A single piece of piezoelectric material can be extremely flexible, with six degrees of freedomthe ability to extend linearly in three axes (like bending your arm forward, sideways, and back) and twist rotationally. Thanks to the studys additive manufacturing, its easy to design different robotic architectures guided by creative algorithms.

The team artfully interweaved actuation and perception in a lightweight miniature

composite 3D lattice that moves around and senses its surroundings, said Rafsanjani.

The robots may come off as an incongruous conundrum: a flexible creature thats made of hard ceramic-like backbone with one metamaterial. But so are we humanswere made of cells with vastly different shapes, sizes, and capabilities. Adapting ideas used to design piezoelectric robots gives soft robotics a new outlook, potentially leading to completely artificial materials that jive with our bodies.

The study brings robotic metamaterials closer to biological systems, one function at a time, said Rafsanjani.

Image Credit: Rayne Research Group

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These 3D Printed Millirobots Can Sense and React to Their Surroundings - Singularity Hub

Steam Theory Brewing Company poured its last beers from its facility in West Dallas on June 19, 2022. The restaurant and bar which former Bachelor and Bachelorette host Chris Harrison invested in has closed permanently. But it isnt the end for this 4-year-old Dallas company.

For about a year, Steam Theory has operated what co-owner Chuck Homola calls a virtual brewery with North Carolina company Bevana. From an East Coast facility, Bevana is brewing four Steam Theory beers and mailing them to customers in dozens of states, Texas included.

Through the pandemic, Steam Theorys restaurant and taproom remained open, but it struggled because of decreased traffic.

We were very dependent on people coming through the door, Homola says.

The company received two rounds of PPP money and some Restaurant Revitalization Fund money. It wasnt enough, so Homola says he started looking for other ways to save Steam Theory.

Im an extremely stubborn person, he says. I love this company and I didnt want to see it go.

Homola believes the virtual brewery could keep his business afloat and cut out rent costs. (Though hell miss the taproom, which was especially beloved for its French fries.) His ambition for Steam Theorys virtual brewery charts a new path for businesses in the craft brewing industry, which has endured a tough two years. Recent brewery closures in North Texas include BrainDead in Deep Ellum, Legal Draft in Arlington, Armadillo Ale Works in Denton, and Cedar Creek Brewhouse & Eatery in Farmers Branch.

Homola describes the dilemma as creatively challenging.

His company is one of the only Dallas-Fort Worth based companies pivoting to a virtual brewery model. Restaurants have taken similar steps, selling their food nationwide in ghost kitchens.

Steam Theory engages in taste tests to check the quality of their product being made some 1,000 miles away. From North Carolina, Bevana is currently brewing and selling: Vamonos Hermanos, a Mexican lager; Juice Caboose, a hazy IPA; Hops Against Humanity, a West Coast IPA; and Threat Level Midnight, a stout with coffee, chocolate and caramel notes.

Bevana has partnered with nine beverage companies, and Steam Theory is the only one from North Texas.

Homola says hes choosing to look forward, despite the loss of the taproom.

Well still be in beer festivals and beer competitions. Well be doing all the things we always did. Just not in a brick and mortar, he says.

We figured youd want to know.

One of TVs most famous reality dating show hosts, Harrison, was a silent partner in Steam Theory. Hes a friend of a friend, Homola says, and a Dallas native.

Harrison told The Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he thought it would be neat to invest in a Dallas-based brewery and set some roots back in Texas.

And is he really into craft beer? Well, he is now: We actually turned him into a beer drinker, Homola says.

Harrison seemed to most enjoy one of Steam Theorys popular beers, Singularity. Its so named because its a simple beer, a blonde ale, says the website. But surely Singularity is also named after Harrison, the former dating show host.

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Steam Theory Brewing in Dallas has closed. Well, kinda - The Dallas Morning News

Designing a new art and design building for the Royal College of Art is a balancing act. On the one hand, the RCA is an outward-facing institution, looking to showcase its facilities, students and their work in part to attract the very best students of the future and to give its many funders (including the government) something to boast about. On the other hand, it is all about experimentation and safe spaces: trying out ideas, testing them until they break.

Successful studio spaces give their occupants licence licence to screw things into the walls, paint the ceiling, take an angle grinder to the floor. Experimentation, and the inevitable failure that goes with taking risks, requires a degree of introversion, ownership and control, rather than picture windows to Battersea Bridge Road. Similarly destructive transformations of space are not obviously welcome activities in 135m flagship buildings.

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Herzog & de Meurons solution to this dilemma is essentially a shell and core: the practice has designed a strong, urban figure wrapped in a decorative facade and a simple, robust interior with an emphasis on flexibility. Studio spaces areraised above the ground floor, and windows are arranged to prioritise light and air rather thanviews in.

The elevation to Battersea Bridge Road has astrong, almost graphic quality that you can imagine being adopted as a logo for the campus in years to come. Five thick bands of brick, all in plane, slightly offset from each other.

The first two are a generous storey height, with the ground floor interrupted by two large picture windows. The next two are deep balconies, while the fifth, also in plane, describes the roof.

To the south the roof is flat, and the same thickness as the balconies, whereas to the north it rises to form a pair of great saw-toothed northlights, perhaps a nod to Haworth Tompkins adjacent Dyson and Woo buildings.

Our working environments have apowerful influence onthe way we create and collaborate, and I am so excited for this new chapter in the life of thecollege and the inspirational work its graduates will bring into the world

Sir Jony Ive, chancellor, Royal College of Art

Ribbon windows are set back well behind these brick elements, providing light and views, but also giving occupants a degree of privacy. The brick is a pinkish grey-brown stock brick in a Flemish bond and, continuing Herzog & de Meurons experimentation at the Tate Modern extension, the horizontal positioning of the bricksshifts.

Above the ground floor the headers protrude by approximately 10mm. This serves to emphasise the bond and give a three-dimensionality to the facade, especially as it is repeated in the brick soffits to the first floor; but it also draws attention to the scale of the brick itself a monumental skin built out of simple repeating elements.

The slight shadow from each header has the cumulative effect of making the upper storeys look as if they are formed from a slightly darker brick. And that, barring a hit-and-miss brickwork detail to both the ground and first floors, forms the entire elevation to the main road.

The north and south elevations to the Studio Building are even simpler simple extrusions ofthis form for the entire length of Howie Street approximately 100m in all. At ground-floor levelthis length is traversed by three cross-cuttingpassageways, while two of these are semiinternalised.

The central one leads to what will be a cafe courtyard at the rear of the site, drawing in students from across the campus, and perhaps even members of the public.

Windows have been located to reinforce the idea that the RCA is a place of making a place where art and technology intersect. So the plate glass to Battersea Park Road showcases the timber and metal workshops, while the route to the cafe is animated by views of a robotic arm.

This wonderful new building embodies all that is best and most vital about the RCA open, collaborative, interdisciplinary and bold

Dr Paul Thompson, vice-chancellor, Royal College of Art

The studios above are thus literally and metaphorically built on a foundation of workshops, emphasising a culture of making thatis central to both the RCA and Herzog & de Meuron.

Another of these cross routes (previously Radstock Street) has been largely internalised and forms the new entrance and gallery space for the building, the Hangar. This is a double-height, brick-lined volume with sliding folding glazed doors to each end, enabling it to be returned to astreet-like status. This is a robust space. You could drive right onto the black terrazzo floor, and indeed the dropped kerb of the old road hasbeen retained.

This is the closest the building gets to a front door the security lines that demarcate most university campuses are pleasingly absent. Aswell as an entrance of sorts, this is a place of assembly or exhibition, a place that could host very large work or product launches.

Vice-chancellor Paul Thompson noted that Herzog & de Meuron won the competition not just on the strength of its architects vision for thebuilding, but also on the depth of their understanding of theDarwin building in Kensington and the neighbouring Dyson building, where routes through the buildings encourage the intermingling of disciplines. Herethe singular building form and the simple structure (thick concrete slabs supported on concrete-filled steel columns) allow for big spans, with each floor of the Studio Building effectively comprising two giant rooms. Each of these rooms has its own core and toilet block as a central element, with the studio space wrapped around.

The studios are effectively open plan internal partitions, designed in conjunction with LTS Architects, provide different levels of separation on different floors.

On the first floor, the sculpture studios are defined by Douglas fir plywood on timber studwork. The studwork spans from concrete floor to concrete ceiling but the boards are standard 8ft and 10ft boards stopping short at the base to give a negative skirting, and finishing in line with the clerestory windows, some way short of the 4.5m high ceilings.

This is a careful balance how to maintain a sense that this is one room, and allow the free exchange of light, students and ideas, while at the same time creating sufficient separation to allow different activities to take place in different areas of the room. Herzog & de Meuron talk about recreating the atmosphere of a street yes, there is noise, dust and smells; but equally there is sufficient privacy to get stuff done.

This seemed plausible on a press day with no students in situ, but a list of the measures taken to ensure the space is sufficiently robust gives pause. The partition walls are sacrificial. The ceilings have pre-established load points and scaffolding bars for fixing work to the ceiling but just in case, no services run through them (power sockets are instead suspended above head height).

Likewise the floor has an additional 100mm of concrete a layer designed to mitigate damage should a student go all Gordon Matta-Clark as the vice-chancellor would have it. There is little by way of acoustic mitigation here all surfaces are hard, and while there are curtain racks, what curtains there are seem more designed to contain sparks than dampen noise.

The top floor (contemporary art practice and design) follows a similar pattern. The floor is marginally softer grey linoleum rather than concrete; the windows are more prominent, including a wraparound balcony that forms an alternative circulation route.

On the balcony, the heavy brick facade is revealed to be just half a brick thick, and the advancing headers emphasise the fragility of thestructure, which is stabilised by steel fins and astructural balustrade.

It is telling that, when asked about the buildings sustainability, vice-chancellor Paul Thompsons first response is to mention that the college anticipates using it for 120 years. This is illuminating in two ways.

Firstly, because it points to an aspect of sustainability that is often ignored: just how longwill this building be here and be used for this purpose? Or in other words, over what period will the sunk cost of all that concrete and steel be amortised? Secondly, it hints that environmental performance was not a key client driver.

Nonetheless, this is a building that achieves BREEAM Excellent. It does this through bold architectural gestures such as the deep balconies that reduce overheating paired with exposed concrete floors that act as a heat sink for low-angled sun, and the open-plan floorplates that allow passive cross-ventilation throughout.

Attention is also paid to detailed technical specification so the amount of GGBS in the concrete mix is varied by the season in which it was poured, in order to reduce cement use to anabsolute minimum. This, and reusing the formwork to the point of disintegration, should result in noticeable variations in the fair-faced concrete but nonetheless the exposed concrete is of uniformly high quality.

Could more have been done? Possibly. Not covering the rear sides of the saw-toothed rooflights with photovoltaics feels like a missed opportunity. These face south by south-east, and are pitched at roughly 25 or in other words, pretty much exactly what you would do if you were designing for maximum solar efficiency.

Instead, a smaller number of solar panels have been arranged on the adjacent portion of flat green/blue roof sufficient to meet planning andBREEAM requirements but providing a mere fraction of the electricity that the building will consume in use.

Again, all the services are overhead, which feels counterintuitive in a room where the ceiling is pitched to accommodate a giant high-pitched northlight. It turns out that the second northlight sits largely above the core, and so is simply blocked out for the majority of its length.

Despite this, and like the building as a whole, this space is impressive in its singularity: a striking volume defined by its relationship to daylight. The challenge will come when these spaces are occupied; and here the school worked with Vitra to design new partition and storage systems, designed to be demounted and reassembled in under 20 minutes.

The Studio Building is complemented by the Rausing Research and Innovation Building. Theskin here is aluminium aerofoils, designed toemphasise the verticality of the eight-storey block in contrast to the horizontal extrusion of the student facility.

Although this faculty block houses very different functions from the studios, interior details, finishes and fittings are repeated to theextent that sometimes only the floor finish changes. A pragmatic solution for a sculpture studio (moving the power to a ceiling-mounted rack) is clunkier in a seminar room or the offices of InnovationRCA, the RCAs business incubator but serves as a physical reminder that the college is first and foremost a place of making.

This feels like a significant building. Herzog &de Meuron founding partner Jacques Herzog described the design as not flashy, claiming that the flash should come from inside; and how the use of brick grounds the building in its context. He is being modest the brick is somehow both heavy and delicate at the same time, and its scale and singularity is deeply weird and intriguing in a London context.

He also talked about how the practices previous work in the capital the Tate Modern and the Laban cance centre helped to shift the global centre towards London in their respective fields. The RCA will very much be hoping for a repeat.

Client Royal College of ArtArchitect Herzog & de MeuronStructural and services engineer and cost consultant Mott MacDonaldFit-out design LTS ArchitectsContractor KierFit-out QS AecomFit-out contractor ISG

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The fine art of creating a new campus for the RCA - Building