An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: MIT's CSAIL department this week showcased "LaserFactory," a new project that attempts to develop robotics, drones and other machines than can be fabricated as part of a "one-stop shop." The system is comprised of a software kit and hardware platform designed to create structures and assemble circuitry and sensors for the machine.

A more fully realized version of the project will be showcased at an event in May, but the team is pulling back the curtain a bit to show what the concept looks like in practice. Here's a breakdown from CSAIL's page: "Let's say a user has aspirations to create their own drone. They'd first design their device by placing components on it from a parts library, and then draw on circuit traces, which are the copper or aluminum lines on a printed circuit board that allow electricity to flow between electronic components. They'd then finalize the drone's geometry in the 2D editor. In this case, they'd use propellers and batteries on the canvas, wire them up to make electrical connections, and draw the perimeter to define the quadcopter's shape." For more information, CSAIL has released an accompanying video showing the machine in action. A technical paper is available here.

sciencehabit writes: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has, for more than 20 years, pioneered collecting spectra from millions of astronomical objects, from nearby stars to supermassive black holes. But this year, the survey is making a change: Instead of employing a small team of technicians for the daily chore of plugging optical fibers into preprepared plates so that -- when placed in the telescope -- they collect light from exactly the right position in the sky, the SDSS is going robotic. For the project's upcoming fifth set of surveys, plug plates are being replaced by 500 tiny robot arms, each holding fiber tips, that patrol a small area of the telescope's focal plane. They can be reconfigured for a new sky map in 2 minutes. Although such robot spectrographs have been built before, the SDSS is part of a rush to retrofit robots to older telescopes so astronomers can grab spectra from the wealth of interesting objects that will soon be streaming from new imaging surveys.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After a year of working with businesses and getting feedback, Boston Dynamics is launching a new Spot revision, a long-awaited arm attachment, and some new features. Now, with the new "Spot Arm" -- a six-degrees-of-freedom gripper that can be mounted to the front of the robot -- Spot can actually do stuff and manipulate the environment around it. Boston Dynamics' latest video shows an arm-equipped Spot opening doors, picking up laundry, dragging around a cinderblock, and flipping switches and valves. Since this is a Boston Dynamics video, there's also a ton of fun footage like three Spots playing jump rope, planting a tree, and drawing the Boston Dynamics logo with a piece of chalk. The arm is not just a siloed device on top of Spot; any arm movement is coordinated with the whole body of the robot, just as a human's arm works. Boston Dynamics pointed to a 2013 video of the (much bigger) BigDog robot heaving a cinderblock across the room. This advanced "lift with your legs, put your back into it" whole-body movement is the core of Boston Dynamics' arm locomotion.

In the palm of the gripper is a 4K color camera, a ToF (Time of Flight) sensor for depth imaging, and LEDs for light. The camera is great to not only see what you're trying to pick up but also as a movable inspection camera that offers a lot more flexibility compared to the stationary face- and back-mounted cameras. The arm weighs 17.6 lbs (8kg) and with a half-meter extension can lift 11 lbs (5kg). The gripper's peak clamp force is 130N. That's far below the average human adult grip strength of 300N and puts Spot in the range of a frail senior citizen, but it's good enough to turn a doorknob. It's especially impressive that in this video, Spot demoed opening a smooth, round doorknob, not an easier-to-open ADA-compliant door handle, which is what most robot/door interactions focus on. It can even make sure the door doesn't hit it in the butt on the way out.

Just like for regular movement, controlling the arm via the tablet uses a user-friendly "supervised autonomy" system. You tell the robot what to grab, and it will figure out how to grab it using all the joints of the arm and legs. There's even a special "door opening" mode, where the user points at the doorknob, enters which side of the door the hinge is on, and Spot will do the rest. There's also an API for the arm control, allowing developers to make their own control interface. There's also a new version of Spot called "Spot Enterprise," which features the ability to self-charge via an included charging dock, where Spot can park itself on the charging dock when it is low on power. It takes about two hours to fully charge.

Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover floated back outside the International Space Station Monday and completed solar array battery replacement work that began four years ago. They also installed three new video cameras and made preparations for upcoming work to install new roll-out solar blankets to upgrade the lab's power system. From a report: The work took less time than expected and the astronauts were able to carry out a variety of lower-priority "get-ahead" tasks before returning to Quest airlock and calling it a day, closing out a five-hour 20-minute spacewalk. Taking one last look around before entering the airlock, Hopkins said simply, "Beautiful view." The excursion began at 7:56 a.m. EST when the two men switched their spacesuits to battery power, officially kicking off the 234th spacewalk, or EVA, devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began 23 years ago in 1998.

"OK, it's a beautiful day. Let's go for a walk outside," astronaut Bob Hines radioed from mission control in Houston. The first priority was electrically connecting a replacement battery in the station's solar power system. The batteries are critical to station operation. They are recharged by the arrays when the lab is in sunlight and then provide that stored power during periods of orbital darkness. Starting in 2017, spacewalking astronauts began work to replace all 48 of the station's original nickel-hydrogen batteries with 24 smaller, more powerful lithium ion units. During battery replacement work in March 2019, one of the new lithium ion power packs used by the station's left-side inboard set of arrays failed and was replaced with one of the older nickel hydrogen batteries that had been removed. All of the other older batteries were replaced as planned during multiple spacewalks. Over the weekend, flight controllers operating the station's robot arm by remote control disconnected the one remaining nickel hydrogen battery and robotically installed a fresh lithium ion unit. Hopkins and Glover electrically connected the battery, finally completing the power system upgrade four years after the work began.

"More than at any point since the QAnon conspiracy began, there is a tremendous opportunity to pull disaffected followers out of the conspiracy," writes FiveThirtyEight. And while it's just one of three possible scenarios, online posts suggest at least some members are abandoning the group, "but they will need support to really sever their connection."

ABC News reports that some QAnon adherents "are turning to therapy and online support groups to talk about the damage done when beliefs collide with reality," including Ceally Smith, a working single mom in Kansas City: "We as a society need to start teaching our kids to ask: Where is this information coming from? Can I trust it?" she said. "Anyone can cut and paste anything." After a year, Smith wanted out, suffocated by dark prophesies that were taking up more and more of her time, leaving her terrified....

Another ex-believer, Jitarth Jadeja, now moderates a Reddit forum called QAnon Casualties to help others like him, as well as the relatives of people still consumed by the theory. Membership has doubled in recent weeks to more than 119,000 members. Three new moderators had to be added just to keep up. "They are our friends and family," said Jadeja, of Sydney, Australia. "It's not about who is right or who is wrong. I'm here to preach empathy, for the normal people, the good people who got brainwashed by this death cult." His advice to those fleeing QAnon? Get off social media, take deep breaths, and pour that energy and internet time into local volunteering.

Michael Frink is a Mississippi computer engineer who helps administer a QAnon recovery channel on the social media platform Telegram. He said that while mocking the group has never been more popular online, it will only further alienate people. Frink said he never believed in the QAnon theory but sympathizes with those who did. "I think after the inauguration a lot of them realized they've been taken for a ride," he said.
The New York Times tells the story of one Bernie Sanders supporter who entered — and then exited — the QAnon movement: Those who do leave are often filled with shame. Sometimes their addiction was so severe that they have become estranged from family and friends... "We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a special club." Meanwhile, her family was eating takeout all the time since she had stopped cooking and her stress levels had shot up, causing her blood pressure medication to stop working. Her doctor, worried, doubled her dose...

When she first left QAnon, she felt a lot of shame and guilt. It was also humbling: Ms. Perron, who has a master's degree, had looked down on Scientologists as people who believed crazy things. But there she was...

She agreed to speak for this article to help others who are still in the throes of QAnon.
And CNN reporter Anderson Cooper recently interviewed a recovering QAnon supporter, who tells him there were many theories about Cooper, including one that said he was actually a robot. The embarrassed former QAnon supporter admits that he had once believed that the people behind Q "were actually a group of 5th dimensional, intra-dimensional, extraterrestrial bi-pedal bird aliens called blue avians."

During that interview, he also tells Anderson Cooper, "I apologize for thinking that you ate babies."

Google Play's crazy automated app review process strikes again. From a report: This time, the puritan robot overlords that run the Play Store briefly decided that listing support for common subtitle files is enough to get your app banned. The developer for Just (Video) Player wrote in the app's bug tracker, "After a tiny unrelated description update, Just Player got suspended from the Google Play Store for "Sexual Content and Profanity policy". Google finds issues with following: Full description (en_US): "* Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, TTML, VTT."" Yes, just listing standard video player features like support for the "ASS" subtitle format was apparently enough to temporarily earn a suspension. The developer says they "immediately filed an appeal" and today, the app is back up with the ASS subtitle listing still in the description.

Microsoft has been granted a patent that would allow the company to make a chatbot using the personal information of deceased people. The Independent reports: The patent describes creating a bot based on the "images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages," and more personal information. "The specific person [who the chat bot represents] may correspond to a past or present entity (or a version thereof), such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure, a random entity etc," it goes on to say.

"The specific person may also correspond to oneself (e.g., the user creating/training the chat bot)," Microsoft also describes -- implying that living users could train a digital replacement in the event of their death. Microsoft has even included the notion of 2D or 3D models of specific people being generated via images and depth information, or video data.

The idea that you would be able, in the future, to speak to a simulation of someone who has passed on is not new. It is famously the plot of the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back," where a young woman uses a service to scrape data from her deceased partner to create a chatbot -- and eventually a robot.

MojoKid summarizes an article from Hot Hardware: Boston Dynamics made news recently when 80% of the company was acquired by Hyundai. The company's family of robots is always impressive and now it appears they're having some fun to celebrate the close of 2020. Boston Dynamics' robot dog, Spot and its humanoid-like Atlas bot friend, were joined by their oddball sibling Handle to shake their booties on the dance floor to "Do You Love Me" by The Contours.

The video starts off impressive enough with just a single Atlas showing its incredible dexterity while busting out some sweet moves that would leave even the late Patrick Swayze envious. However, as the routine progresses, the camera pulls back to show that another twin Atlas is dancing along with the first one as they show off their synchronized and fresh rug-cutting ways. As this robotic soul train continues to roll, Spot the dog saunters in to join in on the fun with the distinct flare that only rover can bring. The entire 3 minute clip is really a marvel to behold, and maybe even slightly unsettling for some that might not fully welcome our robot overlords.

schwit1 quotes Intelligent Living: Plenty is an ag-tech startup in San Francisco, co-founded by Nate Storey, that is reinventing farms and farming. Storey, who is also the company's chief science officer, says the future of farms is vertical and indoors because that way, the food can grow anywhere in the world, year-round; and the future of farms employ robots and AI to continually improve the quality of growth for fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Plenty does all these things and uses 95% less water and 99% less land because of it.

Plenty's climate-controlled indoor farm has rows of plants growing vertically, hung from the ceiling. There are sun-mimicking LED lights shining on them, robots that move them around, and artificial intelligence (AI) managing all the variables of water, temperature, and light, and continually learning and optimizing how to grow bigger, faster, better crops. These futuristic features ensure every plant grows perfectly year-round. The conditions are so good that the farm produces 400 times more food per acre than an outdoor flat farm.

Another perk of vertical farming is locally produced food. The fruits and vegetables aren't grown 1,000 miles away or more from a city; instead, at a warehouse nearby. Meaning, many transportation miles are eliminated, which is useful for reducing millions of tons of yearly CO2 emissions and prices for consumers. Imported fruits and vegetables are more expensive, so society's most impoverished are at an extreme nutritional disadvantage. Vertical farms could solve this problem.

Hyundai Motor Group agreed to buy a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics in a deal that values the mobile robot firm at $1.1 billion. From a report: Hyundai Motor, along with some associated companies and Chairman Euisun Chung, will acquire an 80% interest in the U.S. robotics company from SoftBank Group, leaving the Japanese firm with a 20% share, the companies said in a statement Friday. The deal was first reported by Bloomberg News in November. South Korean conglomerate Hyundai Motor Group has been beefing up its research in robotics as it expands further into electric and autonomous vehicles. Carmaker Hyundai Motor plans to spend over 60 trillion won ($55 billion) in the next five years in these areas to become one of the world's leading auto manufacturers. The broader empire is also exploring practical uses for industrial robots. "The combination of the highly complementary technologies of Hyundai Motor Group and Boston Dynamics, and the continued partnership of SoftBank, will propel development and commercialization of advanced robots," the companies said, helping to create a "robotics value chain ranging from robot component manufacturing to smart logistics solutions."

According to The Robot Report, citing The Korea Economic Daily, Hyndai will finalize its acquisition of Boston Dynamics on December 10th. A source familiar with the deal said the acquisition is for about $1 billion. From the report: Robotics has become a bigger focus for Hyundai since Chung Euisun was named chairman in October. The company has since said robotics will account for 20% of its future business. Hyundai Robotics was founded in 2017, but it officially launched earlier in 2020. The company's automotive group invested in autonomous vehicle startup 42dot and Realtime Robotics in 2019. Hyundai has also created a $4 billion autonomous vehicle joint venture with Aptiv. It is not yet clear how Boston Dynamics will fit into Hyundai, which becomes the third owner of Boston Dynamics in seven years. It was acquired by Google in 2013 and sold to Softbank Group in 2017. The RBR50 company has mainly operated as an R&D organization since it was founded. But a new emphasis on commercialization was evident after it was acquired by Softbank.

What if your digital assistant could battle rap? That may sound far-fetched, but Gil Weinberg, a music technologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has adapted a musical robot called Shimon to compose lyrics and perform in real time. From a report: That means it can engage in rap "conversations" with humans, and maybe even help them compose their own lyrics. Shimon, which was intentionally designed to sound machinelike (listen here), is meant to be a one-of-a-kind musical collaborator -- or an inhuman rap-battle opponent. Computer-generated music dates back to the 1950s, when early computers used algorithms to compose melodies. Modern robots can use machine learning to ad-lib on instruments including the flute and drums. One such machine was an earlier version of Shimon, which could play the marimba and sing. The recently updated robot looks the same; it still consists of a ball-shaped "head," with saucy movable eyebrows above visor-covered eyes, perched at the end of a mechanical arm. But now Weinberg claims Shimon is the first improvising robot to foray into rap, with its distinct stylistic features that pose unique programming challenges.

The crowning glory of rap lies in the lyrics. On top of semantic content, the words need to adhere to an aesthetically pleasing beat and rhythm, all while delivering multiple layers of poetic complexity. In a recent paper, published in the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Creativity 2020, Weinberg's research team outlines the technical advances that brought a rapping Shimon to life. When Shimon battle raps, software converts its human opponent's spoken lyrics into text. The robot's system identifies keywords from this, and generates new lyrics based on several custom data sets of words that Shimon has been trained on (using deep-learning models). These data sets can come from any text: the work of Lil Wayne, JAY-Z or other rappers; lyrics from other genres; or even nonmusical literary works. Imagine how Shakespeare or Jane Austen might sound if they rapped; Shimon could simulate that for you.

BeerFartMoron shares a report from CBS News: China launched its most ambitious moon mission yet Monday: a robotic spacecraft expected to land on the lunar surface by the end of the week. The spacecraft is expected to collect about four pounds of rock and soil samples, and return them to Earth next month for laboratory analysis. If successful, the Chang'e 5 mission will make China only the third nation, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to bring moon rocks back to Earth. It will also be the first to attempt the feat since Russia's Luna 24 in 1976.

The 8,335-pound Chang'e 5 spacecraft, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, is made up of four major components: a lunar orbiter, a sample return craft, a lander carrying science instruments and sample collection equipment, and a small ascent vehicle mounted atop the lander to carry the collected surface samples back up to orbit. The Chang'e 5 lander features multiple cameras, a spectrometer to assess the composition of the soil near the spacecraft and a ground-penetrating radar. A robot arm is equipped with a percussive drill and scoop to pick up excavated rock and soil. Working by remote control from Earth, engineers will use the arm to move collected samples up to the ascent vehicle, which then will blast off, rendezvous with the Chang'e 5 orbiter and transfer the sample to the return craft for the trip back to Earth. Landing in Inner Mongolia is expected around December 16. From there, the samples will be transferred to specially equipped laboratories for analysis.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A team of academics has detailed this week novel research that converted a smart vacuum cleaner into a microphone capable of recording nearby conversations. Named LidarPhone, the technique works by taking the vacuum's built-in LiDAR laser-based navigational component and converting it into a laser microphone. [...] They tested the LidarPhone attack with various objects, by varying the distance between the robot and the object, and the distance between the sound origin and the object. Tests focused on recovering numerical values, which the research team said they managed to recover with a 90% accuracy. But academics said the technique could also be used to identify speakers based on gender or even determine their political orientation from the music played during news shows, captured by the vacuum's LiDAR.

But while the LidarPhone attack sounds like a gross invasion of privacy, users need not panic for the time being. This type of attack revolves around many prerequisites that most attacks won't bother. There are far easier ways of spying on users than overwriting a vacuum's firmware to control its laser navigation system, such as tricking the user on installing malware on their phone. The LidarPhone attack is merely novel academic research that can be used to bolster the security and design of future smart vacuum robots. In fact, the research team's main recommended countermeasure for smart vacuum cleaning robot makers is to shut down the LiDAR component if it's not rotating. Additional details about the research are available in a research paper titled "Spying with Your Robot Vacuum Cleaner: Eavesdropping via Lidar Sensors."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to sell robot maker Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, people familiar with the matter said. Proposed terms of the deal would give the South Korean automaker control of the robotics company in a transaction valued at as much as $1 billion, said one of the people, all of whom asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The terms have yet to be finalized, and the deal could fall apart, said the people.

A sale of Boston Dynamics would mark another twist in the trajectory of a company that spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s and operated independently until Google bought it in 2013. It was sold again in 2017, that time to SoftBank. At times, Boston Dynamics has functioned more like a research organization than a business, churning out machines that are technologically advanced and whimsical but unprofitable. That includes Spot, a maneuverable dog-like robot. Videos of its creations regularly rack up millions of views on YouTube; however, the company has said it is not currently generating profits. By contrast, Hyundai makes highly practical industrial robots intended for factory use.

Remembrance Sunday is the day of commemoration for British and Commonwealth servicemen, and the head of the British Armed Forces marked the occasion with a special interview on Sky News.

And he shared a thoughtful answer when asked whether the army might try to recruit fewer soldiers. "[W]hat I'm hinting at is that we need to be thinking about how we measure effects in a different way. I mean I suspect we can have an army of 120,000 of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows. But the answer is we need to open our minds to perhaps numbers not determining what we should be doing but rather the effect that we can achieve, is really what we should be looking for."

The armed forces are playing a key role in the government's response to the pandemic, with some 2,000 personnel deployed to Liverpool to help with a mass coronavirus testing programme for the city. "I suspect if that works successfully we might find there are other areas where we need to help in a similar sort of fashion," General Carter said. He said using the military to take over the entire coronavirus testing programme was an option but added that he had confidence in the current set-up at the moment.
The Guardian focused on the robots: Thirty thousand "robot soldiers" could form an integral part of the British army in the 2030s, working alongside humans in and around the frontline, the head of the armed forces said in a television interview on Sunday...

All Britain's armed forces have been engaged in a string of research projects involving small drones or remotely powered land or underwater vehicles, some of which are armed and others for reconnaissance. The Ministry of Defence says its policy is that only humans will be able to fire weapons, although there is growing concern about the potential danger of unrestricted robot warfare, led by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Technology under development includes the i9 drone, which is powered by six rotors and carries two shotguns. Remotely operated, it is intended to be used to storm buildings, typically an urban warfare situation that generates some of the highest casualties.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Walmart has cut ties with Bossa Nova Robotics, opting for human workers instead. CNBC reports: A Walmart spokesperson told the Journal that about 500 robots were in Walmart's more than 4,700 stores when the contract ended. According to the Journal's report, Walmart has come up with simple and cost-effective ways to manage the products on its shelves with the help of its workers rather than using the robots. The report said Walmart U.S. Chief Executive John Furner also worried about shoppers' reactions to the robots. Walmart is pressing ahead with other tech-based experimentation, however. Last week, the retailer said it would turn four stores into e-commerce laboratories that test digital tools and different strategies that could speed up restocking shelves and fulfilling online orders.

Futurism reports: Fans of the soccer team Caledonian Thistle FC from Inverness, Scotland, experienced something hilarious this week when the robot camera operator — automatically trained to keep the lens trained on the soccer ball using AI — kept mistaking the linesman's bald head for the ball, as IFL Science reports.

The result: angry (or amused) soccer fans kept losing track of the game because the camera kept swiveling to zoom in on the referee's hairless head, as seen in a video uploaded to YouTube (bonus points for the excellent soundtrack).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: An enormous coral reef has been found at the northern tip of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the first such discovery in 120 years, scientists say. At 500m (1,640ft) high, the reef is taller than New York's Empire State Building and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Scientists on a 12-month mission found the structure, detached from the Great Barrier Reef off Cape York, last week. They were conducting 3D mapping of the sea floor in the area. A team aboard a research vessel owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), a non-profit group based in California, used an underwater robot to explore the reef.

The reef is the first of its kind to be found in the region since the late 1800s, scientists said. There are known to be seven other tall reefs in the region, including the one at Raine Island -- the world's most important green sea turtle nesting area. While the reef is bedded to the ocean floor off North Queensland, it is detached, meaning it is not part of the main body of the Great Barrier Reef. Described as "blade-like," the reef is 1.5km wide (one mile), then rises 500m to its shallowest depth of only 40m below the sea surface. Researchers are expected to continue surveying the northern Great Barrier Reef until 17 November.

"TCP/IP doesn't work at interplanetary distances," 77-year-old Vinton Cerf tells Quanta magazine. "So we designed a set of protocols that do." Specifically, bundle protocols: a disruption/delay-tolerant networking (DTN) protocol with nodes that can also store information: A data packet traveling from Earth to Jupiter might, for example, go through a relay on Mars, Cerf explained. However, when the packet arrives at the relay, some 40 million miles into the 400-million-mile journey, Mars may not be oriented properly to send the packet on to Jupiter. "Why throw the information away, instead of hanging on to it until Jupiter shows up?" Cerf said. This store-and-forward feature allows bundles to navigate toward their destinations one hop at a time, despite large disruptions and delays...

So, a couple decades after conceiving of bundle protocols, is the interplanetary internet up and running?

We don't have to build the whole thing and then hope somebody uses it. We sought to get standards in place, as we have for the internet; offer those standards freely; and then achieve interoperability so that the various spacefaring nations could help each other. We're taking the next obvious step for multi-mission infrastructure: designing the capability for an interplanetary backbone network. You build what's needed for the next mission. As spacecraft get built and deployed, they carry the standard protocols that become part of the interplanetary backbone. Then, when they finish their primary scientific mission, they get repurposed as nodes in the backbone network. We accrete an interplanetary backbone over time.

In 2004, the Mars rovers were supposed to transmit data back to Earth directly through the deep space network — three big 70-meter antennas in Australia, Spain and California. However, the channel's available data rate was 28 kilobits per second, which isn't much. When they turned the radios on, they overheated. They had to back off, which meant less data would come back. That made the scientists grumpy. One of the JPL engineers used prototype software — this is so cool! — to reprogram the rovers and orbiters from hundreds of millions of miles away. We built a small store-and-forward interplanetary internet with essentially three nodes: the rovers on the surface of Mars, the orbiters and the deep space network on Earth. That's been running ever since.

We've been refining the design of those protocols, implementing and testing them. The latest protocols are running back-and-forth relays between Earth and the International Space Station... We did another test at the ISS where the astronauts were controlling a little robot vehicle in Germany.