Z's 3-in-3: $100M prize • Humanoid robots • Ambition

By Zvonimir Fras • Issue #12 • View online

Hi! How’s your week been?

Thing 1: $100M prize for... carbon

The theme for 2022 Earth Day is… Invest In Our Planet.

You might have heard of XPRIZE.

There’s a huge problem. If you solved it, it would have great benefits for humanity.

But there’s a catch. You’ll have an easier time jumping into orbit than finding people to pay you for solving it.

XPRIZE comes in, designs, and hosts a public competition.

If you are the first person to build or demonstrate the capability set out by the challenge - you win the prize.

Now… we’ve got carbon on the loose. And the heat is rising.

Elon Musk is funding this chase with $100M.

1100+ teams joined the race and you still have time to beat them.

We want teams to build real systems that can make a measurable impact at a gigaton level. Whatever it takes. Time is of the essence.

- Elon Musk

This week, the first part of the competition was completed and 15 companies got $1M each as the wind in their sails.

But if Elon thinks your intentions with climate aren’t sincere, he might tweet about you, like he did about Bill Gates who asked him to talk climate philanthropy while short-selling Tesla (yes, it’s real)🤦 smh

Thing 2: Robotic arm, synthetic muscles

You might find this video a bit disturbing if you don’t know what you’re looking at.

“Why is this pale arm fighting for a dumbbell? Why isn’t it attached to a body? Wait, what?”

That was my initial reaction, anyway. But you have the benefit of reading the title first 😆

Artificial Muscles Robotic Arm Full Range of Motion (1:50)

Łukasz Koźlik founded a company to create Golem - a full scale humanoid robot. Golem should be able to do chores, clean, the works.

The difference from any other robotic hand is in the water-powered muscles and mimicking human anatomy in the way it works.

With Tesla working on a humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics Atlas evolving and robots like Ameca entering the stage, we’ll start seeing a rising tide of robotics mimicking humans.

If you had the option to buy a Roomba or be the start of Humans‘ origin story, what would you pick?

Thing 3: Appreciative and ambitious

You can appreciate what you already have and still be ambitious about what you could have.

- Orange Book

Being appreciative doesn’t mean you need to stop building or give up on things. It means recognizing what’s available to you and being thankful for it.

Being ambitious means seeing what could be, and having the drive and energy to go for it.

Ok, time to go.

Cheers, Zvonimir

P.S. Which thing did you like the most?