H+ Weekly - H+ Weekly - Issue #372

.
H+ WEEKLY

.
Issue #372

This week - a digital celebrity from China; Sony's racing AI is fast and nice; the UK to build a drone superhighway; radio-controlled fruit flies; and more!

SPONSORED
Humble Tech Book Bundle: The A - Z of Machine Learning by Packt
Learn everything you need to know about machine learning and NLP from world-renowned experts in this book bundle from Packt. Including current Amazon Bestselling titles like The Kaggle Book and Machine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn, this bundle will keep you up-to-date with the latest innovations in data science. Whether you're looking to start a career in data science or a practicing machine learning engineer, this bundle will help you succeed on your journey. Plus, your purchase will support Direct Relief and Razom for Ukraine with their critical humanitarian war relief and recovery efforts for Ukraine!

Support the newsletter

MORE THAN A HUMAN

▶ Hands-On with Mojo Augmented Reality Contact Lens (13:38)
Tested got to check a prototype of Mojo Lens, an in-development contact lens with an embedded augmented reality display and the electronics needed to run it wirelessly.

Artificial Muscles Woven Into Smart Textiles Could Make Clothing Hyperfunctional
Engineers from Australia have developed a new class of fluid-driven smart textiles that can “shape-shift” into 3D structures. What makes their solution stand out from other smart textiles is the speed at which the artificial muscles react and its flexibility.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A digital human could be your next favorite celebrity—or financial advisor
Baidu has made a digital replica of one of China’s biggest celebrities and soon a similar technology might power digital humans working directly with customers as advisors or as NPCs in games or even being your digital copy in the metaverse.

Sony’s racing AI destroyed its human competitors by being nice (and fast)
Sony's racing AI outpaced human drivers in Gran Turismo on empty tracks but when they put it against real humans on a track with humans last year, it lost. Now they improved their AI by giving it an "etiquette" - an ability to take risks or to play nice depending on the situation. Researchers hope their results will help design AIs that are better at interacting with people, whether it be on the manufacturing floor, in home robots, or in driverless cars.

Meta open sources early-stage AI translation tool that works across 200 languages
Meta has created a single AI model capable of translating across 200 different languages, including many not supported by current commercial tools. The company is open-sourcing the project in the hopes that others will build on its work.

ROBOTICS

UK set to have world's biggest automated drone superhighway
The UK is set to become home to the world's largest automated drone superhighway within the next two years. The drones will be used on the 164-mile Skyway project connecting towns and cities, including Cambridge and Rugby. It is part of a £273m funding package for the aerospace sector. Other projects include drones delivering mail to the Isles of Scilly and medication across Scotland.

Autonomous vehicles startup Nuro winds down operations in Phoenix
Nuro is leaving Phoenix, Arizona, to focus on San Francisco Bay Area and Houston. Nuro started operating in Phoenix in 2018 offering autonomous grocery deliveries, first with modified Toyota Prius and then with custom autonomous robots.

Baidu reveals the next-gen robotaxi that will be deployed throughout China
Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant that has plowed money into AI and autonomous vehicle technology, unveiled Wednesday a new all-electric robotaxi that it plans to deploy at scale across China. Baidu said that recent advances in manufacturing have cut production costs, allowing it to eventually build and operate tens of thousands of robotaxis at scale across Chinese megacities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen by next year.

▶ Collaborative Navigation and Manipulation of a Cable-towed Load by Multiple Quadrupedal Robots (1:05)
Behind this long title is a video showing how a bunch of quadruped robots learned how to together tow a heavy box and spread the load between them. I see a potential use of this tech in five months if you equip robots with antlers.

BIOTECHNOLOGY

Scientists Hijack Fruit Fly Brains to Remote Control Their Wings
A team of experts have combined genetic engineering and nanotechnology to modify fruit fly to remote control their wings. Right now the team can only instruct the fly to just spread the wing (it is not a fully radio-controlled flying fly yet). Researchers hope their work will help advance the study of human brain function. It could lead to new treatments for a number of neurological diseases, they say, and even new brain-machine communication devices.

My Dream for Safer CRISPR Tools
Genetic engineer Samira Kiani shares and explains what she wants from gene editing tools - safety and controllability to make the minimum amount of changes to the cell without causing unexpected edits.

This issue was brought to you by our awesome patrons Eric, Andrew, dux and Tom! You too can support the newsletter on Patreon.

Thank you for subscribing,
Conrad Gray (@conradthegray)

If you have any questions or suggestions, just reply to this email or tweet at @hplusweekly. I'd like to hear what do you think about H+ Weekly.

Follow H+ Weekly!

You are receiving this email because you signed in to H+ Weekly newsletter

Our mailing address is:

H+ Weekly

London

London, London EC4 2AA

United Kingdom

Add us to your address book

Unsubscribe Update subscription preferences

This email was sent to you
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
H+ Weekly · London · London, London EC4 2AA · United Kingdom

H+ Weekly - H+ Weekly - Issue #372

MORE THAN A HUMAN

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ROBOTICS

BIOTECHNOLOGY

Older messages

H+ Weekly - Issue #371

H+ Weekly - Issue #370

H+ Weekly - Issue #369

H+ Weekly - Issue #368

H+ Weekly - Issue #367

You Might Also Like

Palo Alto Releases Patch for PAN-OS DoS Flaw — Update Immediately

SWLW #631: You can’t measure productivity, Ask uncommonly clear questions, and more.

Help Shape the Future of Laravel News - Quick Survey

Data Science Weekly - Issue 579

💎 Issue 449 - JRuby with JBang

💻 Issue 449 - JavaScript Benchmarking Is a Mess

📱 Issue 443 - EU asks for views on plan to force Apple to open up iOS

💻 Issue 442 - SOLID: The Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) in C#

Daily Coding Problem: Problem #1649 [Easy]

JSK Daily for Dec 26, 2024