Lifeboat Foundation

Robots can walk, talk, run a hotel … and are entirely stumped by a doorknob. Or a mailbox. Or a dirty bathtub—zzzzt, dead. Sure, the SpotMini, a doglike domestic helper from Boston Dynamics, can climb stairs, but it struggles to reliably hand over a can of soda. That’s why some roboticists think the field needs to flip its perspective. “There are two approaches to building robots,” says Maya Cakmak, a researcher at the University of Washington. “Make the robot more humanlike to handle the environment, or design the environment to make it a better fit for the robot.” Cakmak pursues the latter, and to do that, she studies so-called universal design—the ways in which buildings and products are constructed for older people or those with disabilities. Robot can’t handle the twisting staircase? Put in a ramp. As for that pesky doorknob? Make entryways motion-activated. If you want droids at your beck and call someday, start thinking about robo-fitting your digs now.

1. Wide-Open Floor Plan Any serious sans-­human housekeeping needs a wheeled robotic butler with arms, Cakmak says. That means fewer steps, plus hallways wide enough for U-turns. Oh, and hardwood floors. Thick carpeting slows a bot’s roll.

2. Visual Waypoints Factory robots work so fast in part because their world is highly structured—conveyor belt here, truck over there. So for your robo-home, create landmarks that anchor the bots in space—a promi­nent light fixture, say, that tells them, “You’re in the dining room.” (RFID tags will help bots locate smaller objects, like cleaning supplies.)

Continue reading “How to Optimize Your Home for Robot Servants” »

Want to save money? Stop paying for gas.

SUPERSONIC FLIGHT’S ROCKY PAST

We are one step closer to an affordable reboot of supersonic flight. Japan Airlines (JAL) has invested $10 million in the Denver-based aerospace company, Boom Supersonic, that’s planning to resurrect the method of travel. In exchange for their funding, JAL will be able to pre-order 20 of the new aircraft. The airline’s president, Yoshiharu Ueki, said in a press release from December 5: “Through this partnership, we hope to contribute to the future of supersonic flight with the intent of providing more time to our valued passengers while emphasizing flight safety.”

It’s been 14 years since British Airways and Air France grounded their Concorde fleets, and commercial air travel hasn’t hit supersonic speeds since. Fourteen of these planes ferried first-class passengers from New York to London at speeds of 1,353 mph (2177.44 kph) — twice as fast as the speed of sound — making the jaunt across the pond in only 3.5 hours. That’s about half the time it takes a normal passenger plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Continue reading “Supersonic air travel just took another big step toward rebirth” »

It’s a new year and we have exciting updates to share on our progress at Vahana over the past few months. We all knew that designing and building this revolutionary vehicle would take time, ingenuity, and the perfect combination of patience and hustle from all parties involved. In addition to our brilliant team, we’re lucky to have incredibly reliable partners and the extended Airbus family, which has played a great role in getting Vahana to a crucial project milestone: flight tests.

In less than two years, Vahana has gone from a sketch on a napkin to a full size vehicle about to undertake its first round of flight testing. In the pursuit of vehicle and personal safety, we decided to slightly delay our original goal of having Vahana accomplish its first flight in 2017. By the last quarter of 2017, the team initiated ground testing, which included powering up all motors, and we’re excited to announce that all ground test points have been completed. We’re targeting this quarter (Q1 2018) for Vahana to take to the sky at the UAS flight range in Pendleton, OR.

We’re grateful to all our partners for their understanding that the success of our project is tethered to working within unrealistic timescales. Yet amongst all of our goals we are fiercely realistic when it comes to pursuing the developing air vehicles that will be safe, reliable, and certified for human flight. We’d rather experience a minor delay now than unduly compromise our long-term development plan.

Continue reading “January 2018 Vahana Project Update” »

““Every Uber driver, as far as I can see, gets a benefit,” said Edward Kleinbard, a USC professor and former chief of staff to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.”

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Now you can have items delivered to you wherever you are.

This new car model has no steering wheel or pedals.

India and Japan have vowed to strengthen their strategic ties by increasing cooperation in the defense, robotics and AI sectors in coming years in response to Chinese regional ambitions and North Korea’s nuclear plans.

“You should expect to see increased bilateral cooperation between us to develop unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) and robotics,”Japanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Kentaro Sonoura told the Times of India. The move follows the successful ratification of the Indo-Japanese civil nuclear agreement by Japan’s parliament in late 2017.

The two countries are launching a working group on cooperation between nuclear companies. “Japan’s intention is to start this quickly, possibly by the end of this month,” Sonoura said.

Acoustic tractor beams use the power of sound to hold particles in mid-air, and unlike magnetic levitation, they can grab most solids or liquids. For the first time University of Bristol engineers have shown it is possible to stably trap objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam. This discovery opens the door to the manipulation of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements within the body. Container-less transportation of delicate larger samples is now also a possibility and could lead to levitating humans.

Researchers previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were fundamentally limited to levitating small objects as all the previous attempts to trap particles larger than the wavelength had been unstable, with objects spinning uncontrollably. This is because rotating sound field transfers some of its spinning motion to the objects causing them to orbit faster and faster until they are ejected.

Continue reading “The world’s most powerful acoustic tractor beam could pave the way for levitating humans” »