H+ Weekly - H+ Weekly - Issue #341

.
H+ WEEKLY

.
Issue #341

This week - how Google designs chips with AI; human-like brain helps robot out of a maze; US rejects calls for regulating killer robots; and more!

Support the newsletter

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

► Google’s Chip Designing AI (13:17)
In this video, Asianometry explains how Google uses machine learning to tackle the problem of floorplanning - the problem of putting logic blocks on a chip in the most efficient way.

ROBOTICS

Toronto considers banning sidewalk robots
The Toronto City Council is considering banning mobile robots from sidewalks and bike paths. The provision was originally put forward by the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee. The committee voiced concerns about sidewalk robots being hazards for people with low mobility or vision as well as elderly people and children.

Human-like brain helps robot out of a maze
Researchers from the Netherlands and Germany showed a Lego robot that uses an organic polymer for its artificial brain. They tested the robot by making it learn to successfully get out of the maze. "Because of their organic nature, these smart devices can in principle be integrated with actual nerve cells. Say you lost your arm during an injury. Then you could potentially use these devices to link your body to a bionic hand," says Imke Krauhausen, principal author of the paper.

US rejects calls for regulating or banning ‘killer robots’
Do you remember Slaughterbots? A campaign against killer robots mentioned in Issue #339? The US has rejected calls for a binding agreement regulating or banning the use of “killer robots”, instead proposing a “code of conduct” at the United Nations.

Swallow the Micro-Robot
Richard Feynman marvelled at the prospect of figuring out how to “swallow the surgeon”—that is, how to make a tiny robot that could travel through blood vessels to carry out medical procedures where needed. Now, researchers are designing microscopic robots that may lead to a pill full of tiny machines. This article paints this vision of medicine and focuses on one aspect of such machines - how to you move them inside the human body?

This issue was brought to you by our awesome patrons Eric, Steve, Andrew, Sean, 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 #341

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ROBOTICS

Older messages

H+ Weekly - Issue #340

H+ Weekly - Issue #339

H+ Weekly - Issue #338

H+ Weekly - Issue #336

H+ Weekly - Issue #335

You Might Also Like

How Swiss Tables make Go 1.24 faster

Mapped | European Fertility Rates by Country 👶

Trust in JS supply chain; sync vs. async code; JIT vulnerabilities; parseInt() and keycap emojis; V8

The importance of flow state for developers

This beefy phone is a projector too 📽️

⚙️ Self-driving Ubers

Post from Syncfusion Blogs on 03/05/2025

10 Best Practices for Cloud Visibility

The Sequence Engineering #503: Stanford Researchers Just Created a New Agentic Framework for Tool Usage and Comple…

URGENT: VMware Security Flaws Exploited in the Wild唯roadcom Releases Urgent Patches