ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE!!

ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE!!

  Latest news from Mars, the first flight of Elon Musk's starship around the Earth,   artificial muscles, desktop bioprinter and why IBM teaches artificial intelligence to code?   All the most interesting technology news in one issue! And   now the latest news from Mars. The Perseverance rover began exploring Martian boulders with a   robotic arm. The rover first took pictures of the rocky formations with the WATSON camera,   and the SuperCam laser tool examined them for their chemical composition. It   also imaged the planet's surface with the Mastcam-Z instrument,   a multispectral stereoscopic camera with zoom capability. NASA scientists hope to understand   how the boulders were formed: as a result of volcanic activity or are sedimentary rocks. NASA's other rover, Curiosity, may be without one wheel. The movement on the rocky surface   of Mars has caused some of the rover's wheels to become damaged. In the future,   this may lead to the need for a special maneuver to drop one of the damaged wheels.   

Each of the rover's wheels consists of inner and outer parts and has 19 grousers.   The surface is made of aluminum sheet thickness of 0.75 mm. Experts note that now the wheels   of the rover are fully operational, but the wear is faster than expected. The Chinese vehicle "Tianwen-1" has successfully landed on the surface of Mars near the southern   Utopia Plain in the northern hemisphere of the planet. "Tianwen-1" consists of an orbital module,   a landing platform and the Mars rover Zhujun. The 240-kilogram solar-powered rover is to survey the   landing site and then go to study the planet's geology and atmosphere. The rover has a mast   with a high-resolution camera for photography and navigation, as well as GPR, to search for   underground water and ice. Exploration of the planet is expected to last about 90 Martian days.  Scientists at Stanford University have developed a system that   recognizes the capital letters presented to the brain with an accuracy of up to 94%   when typing online and with an accuracy of over 99% in auto-swapped mode. The character typing   rate was 90 per minute, whereas the previous record for such systems was only forty.  

 Two implanted sets of electrodes monitor the activity of about 200 neurons in the motor cortex,   which is responsible for hand movements. Although the paralyzed volunteer was unable to move his   arms due to spinal damage, this area of the brain still generated the same signals as before. SpaceX has scheduled a test orbital flight of the Starship from Texas to Hawaii. The flight   will test the combined operation of the Starship and the Super Heavy launch vehicle. The flight   will take just over 90 minutes to reach a maximum altitude of 116 km and will land about 100 km off   the northwest coast of Kauai. Thus, Starship will make almost a complete orbit around the Earth.  

 The test should take place by March 1, 2022. That same month, SpaceX is set to run at least   a couple of prototypes of the Starship: a repeat for SN15 and the first test for SN16. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who intends to fly around the moon in Elon Musk's starship,   will travel to the ISS as early as this December as a space tourist.   Maezawa and his business assistant, Yezo Hirano, will travel to the ISS on Russia's Soyuz MS-20   spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 8, 2021. The duration of the flight will be 12 days.  The Voyager 1 probe made itself known by transmitting to Earth the sound of   interstellar space. The strong activity of electrons in interstellar space   beyond the reach of the solar wind was a real discovery.   This information will help to better understand processes outside stellar systems.   Launched more than 40 years ago, leaving the heliosphere of the solar system, Voyager 1 was   the first man-made interstellar spacecraft. We told you more about it in the issue tip. NASA reported that the OSIRIS-REx probe left the vicinity of the asteroid Bennu and began   its return trip to Earth to deliver samples of the asteroid for comprehensive laboratory   study. 

So far, Earth has soil from two celestial bodies - the Moon and the asteroid Ryugu. China has launched the "Tianhe" base module for its own space station into space,   which should take 18 months to build and will require another 10-11 launches.   The station itself was named Tiangong, which translates to "Heavenly Palace."   The Tianhe module is the basis of the station, including life support and control systems.   In addition, it will become the living quarters for the three astronauts. Now Tianhe is in low-Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. For those who want   to watch, we will leave a link to the station's position tracking site in the video description. Roskosmos Corporation has reported on the successful completion of ground pneumovacuum   tests of the Nauka module, which is scheduled to be launched to the ISS in July of this year.   The tests were aimed at checking the tightness of the hull, hatches and docking units. In addition,   experts thoroughly inspected the functioning of the pneumohydraulic system and propulsion system,   as well as external hydraulic complexes. Now a European Robotic Arm will be installed on   the module to perform extravehicular activities and maintenance of the ISS. IBM is creating datasets to train artificial intelligence in programming. Somewhere now a   terminator laughed. But it's a joke, of course, don't worry. The set, called Project CodeNet,   contains 14 million samples totalling 500 million lines of code in more than   55 programming languages. But the main base is C++ and Python. IBM wants the project to become   a standard set of data for training AI-models that can recognize the structure of programs.   It is envisioned that CodeNet could be used to create intelligent development tools.   Practical applications include searching in applications, translating from one   programming language to another, choosing the right code implementations, and so on. 

Elon Musk promises to open access to the FSD autopilot by subscription in June.   The entrepreneur emphasizes that the ninth beta version of FSD will start   distributing in the U.S. next week, and the final release after the elimination   of the remaining flaws will take place a couple of weeks later. According to him,   the difference compared to the previous version of FSD will be huge. Honda and AutoX have reported the first 100 days of fully autonomous robot taxis AutoX.   The cars drive without an insurance driver directly on public roads in China,   although the company did not specify a specific location in the video.  There are robotaxis in Beijing, too. Baidu has launched its own drones,   although for now with drivers for backup, in Shugang Park. The cabs work on a commercial basis,   so this is already a service, not a test.Scientists at MIT's Computer Science and   Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a robot for untangling hair.   The RoboWig robot is equipped with a camera and a sensor brush that allows you to assess the   strength of the impact on the hair. The developers presented the tangled hair as a set of intertwined   double spirals, similar to DNA strands. This level of detail allowed the robot to gain a key   understanding of mathematical models and control systems for manipulating bundles of soft fibers. SoftBank has sold Boston Dynamics, but it continues to fund robot startups.   For example, the company invested $15 million in Youibot, a Chinese manufacturer of industrial   robots. 

The company develops solutions for the automation of production and logistics management,   as well as inspection and maintenance for various industries. Developers from Boston University have created a robotic gripper capable of lifting even a single   grain of sand. Inspired by the ancient Japanese art of kirigami, the gripper is capable of   handling the smallest, most fragile, slippery, and irregular objects through cushioning. The   flexible thin elastic shell grip is shaped like a four-petal flower and decorated with neatly   arranged linear cuts. The result is a scalable cell that can be bent in 3D to pick up objects.   The grip can work alone or it can be made into a chain to grip many objects at once. The U.S. Air Force unveiled the F-16 Viper aircraft washing robot. The robot can do   it in as little as an hour, whereas a team of four usually needs about six hours and chemical   protective suits to do it. After all, the fighter often serves as a direct air support platform,   flying low-altitude missions in support of friendly troops. Which means, purely   theoretically, it could be contaminated with hazardous chemicals from a potential adversary. E Ink, an e-book company, was able to adapt its e-ink technology to inkjet microprint   biological objects - complex proteins and even genes. Nuclera, a bioengineering company,   helped to do this. Now it is preparing to develop and produce desktop bioprinters with   broad capabilities. E Ink has learned how to control the size of droplets and their   direction using electric fields. 

Printing biomaterials using E Ink technology is   expected to revolutionize many areas related to human health, agriculture and other fields. Australian engineers have developed artificial muscle fibers from twisted pairs of polyester   filaments. Thanks to hydrogel, which swells when the pH of the environment changes,   the filaments are able to increase in volume and twist into loops when the ends are fixed,   mimicking the contraction of real muscles.The new   artificial muscle fibers are capable of contracting by an unprecedented 90% and   could be useful in the future for creating micro-robots and surgical micro-instruments.   For example, micro scissors or tweezers, the body of which could be made using 3D printing. U.K. Marines have tested ship boarding with Gravity Industries' jetpacks. For example, one of   the Marines launched from a boat, caught up with the ship, landed on the deck and dropped a ladder   over the side for the rest of the crew. The test was deemed a success, although it is worth noting   that the roar of the engines would not allow a Marine to land on an enemy ship undetected. A way out could be the shoulder turret that Gravity Industries tried to create with James   Bruton in 2019, but that concept apparently didn't get a follow-up.  Subscribe to the blog for more!!