Topps Blog

Wednesday, 26 October 2022

Harvard Scientists Invent Gripping Robot With Soft, Inflatable Tentacles

Robots have gotten shockingly advanced in the past few years — just take a peek at any recent video from Boston Dynamics if you doubt that. However, robots are still pretty bad at one vital task: picking up irregularly sized objects. The solution could be so-called “soft robotics,” which focus on the use of flexible, compliant materials rather than rigid metal and plastic. A new project in that realm from Harvard scientists consists of a tangle of tentacles. Thanks to its monstrous appearance, the tentacle gripper can hoist almost any small object without damaging it.

The robot was developed by researchers at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The problem with robotic grippers is two-fold. Most of the effective ones are rigid, which makes it difficult to pick up irregular or fragile objects. They also require complex, embedded sensors and feedback control mechanisms and machine learning algorithms. There’s just a lot that can go wrong, and all to do something that even a toddler can do without much trouble. The tentacle gripper is designed to mimic the way jellyfish ensnare stunned prey. While one or two of the tentacles is insufficient to pick up even the smallest objects, having them all work together gives the robot plenty of redundancy and lifting power.

Unlike most graspers, the tentacles don’t need any sensing, planning, or feedback control. They’re pneumatically actuated — in the off state, they hang freely, allowing an operator to drape them over the target. When activated, the spindly rubber tubes contract. As you can see in the video, the tentacles wrap around the target securely as they move.

“Entanglement enables each highly compliant filament to conform locally with a target object leading to a secure but gentle topological grasp that is relatively independent of the details of the nature of the contact,” said L. Mahadevan, a professor of applied mathematics at SEAS. That’s a fancy way of saying the tentacles can pick up almost anything. The team tested the grasper on various objects, like the house plant seen above. It can also pick up soft fruits and vegetables without crushing them.

The SEAS team sees many potential applications for the tentacle robot, like agriculture, marine biology, and warehouse management. The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Epic’s Tim Sweeney Calls Apple’s New iPhone NFT Policy ‘Insanity’

It would be fair to say NFTs have limited usefulness right now — even crypto fans would have to concede that point. However, Apple may have found a use: to make more money for Apple. The iPhone maker has updated its developer terms to severely limit how apps in its store can use NFTs. The bottom line is developers can’t use them unless Apple gets a cut of the sales. If you’ve kept up with the silly pricing of some NFTs, you know that skimming 30 percent off the top could be a lucrative business.

There have only been a handful of blockchain-based games (sometimes called Web3 games) that utilize NFTs. Usually, the NFTs are virtual items that can be used or worn in the game, similar to the way Ubisoft crammed “unique” guns and helmets into Ghost Recon: Breakpoint earlier this year. Apple’s App Store policies are always adapting to ensure the company continues to make a boatload of money on mobile transactions, and it takes aim at NFTs in the latest update for iOS 16.

According to Apple’s new developer payment guidelines (section 3.1), NFTs are allowed in iOS apps with a few big caveats. The only way apps can provide NFTs for sale inside iOS apps is by going through the in-app purchase system. Doing that entitles Apple to a 30 percent cut, and some NFTs are worth the equivalent of thousands of dollars. And if you think you can just buy the NFTs for your Web3 game elsewhere, think again. Apple also says that while apps can let users browse their pre-existing NFTs, apps cannot use ownership of those items to “unlock features or functionality within the app.”

A great summary of Apple's latest policy insanity from @FOSSpatents: https://t.co/0QgqbDL7gK. It's quite shocking that, in the presence of antitrust lawsuits and greatly increased legislative and regulatory scrutiny, Apple's doubling down on brazen monopoly rent seeking.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) October 25, 2022

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny came out swinging on the news, which he called “insanity.” That’s no surprise as Epic continues to tussle with Apple over App Store fees. According to Sweeny, Apple’s new policies amount to “brazen monopoly rent-seeking.” Fortnite doesn’t have NFTs right now, but Epic Games has started listing its first web3 games. Perhaps this is where Epic plans to go, and thus, it would be even harder for Fortnite to return to the App Store.

It’s clear that Apple has identified NFTs as a threat to the App Store model, and there is very little crypto enthusiasts can do about it. Epic has been trying to get courts to recognize the App Store as an illegal monopoly, but it has had limited success. An appeal in the case is still pending, but the only factor still in consideration is whether Apple has to allow developers to link other payment methods — all Epic’s other complaints were thrown out. Apple has no incentive to backtrack on NFTs.

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Tuesday, 25 October 2022

Scientists Develop Mouthguard Input Device That Responds to Bite Force

(Photo: NUS) Most mouthguards are used to protect the teeth during contact sports and sleep. Thanks to scientists at the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University, however, they’re gaining a new function: helping people with disabilities communicate.

Chemists and engineers from the two universities teamed up to create an optical fiber sensor-based mouthguard aimed at helping people control or operate devices via bite force. In a paper published earlier this month in the journal Nature Electronics, the scientists write that they combined optical sensors and mechanoluminescent materials to measure occlusive (bite) force in real time.

Central to the mouthguard’s function are several mechanoluminescence-powered distributed-optical-fiber (mp-DOF) sensors. Each sensor incorporates a series of elastomeric waveguides embedded with mechanoluminescent contact pads. The contact pads themselves contain phosphors that light up in different colors depending on where and to which degree mechanical pressure is applied. Using these color associations and their varying intensities, the scientists trained a machine learning algorithm to translate different bite patterns into specific data inputs.

(Photo: NUS)

The team quickly put their invention to the test. In initial evaluations alone, the interactive mouthguard was found to translate the scientists’ occlusive patterns with 98 percent accuracy. It maintained this level of function when paired with other hardware, too: The team successfully integrated the mouthguard with computers, smartphones, and wheelchairs.

The interactive mouthguard is intended to be an alternative to existing assistive technologies based on voice recognition technology (like speech-to-text software) or eye-tracking interfaces (like that used by the late Stephen Hawking). Voice recognition technology isn’t practical for noisy environments or spaces in which silence is expected, and eye-tracking interfaces are expensive to acquire and maintain.

In contrast, the mouthguard is suitable for environments of all noise levels and costs only $70 USD to make—a figure the scientists expect to decrease in mass production. Depending on their physical abilities, neurological condition, and level of dexterity, some people might find the mouthguard a more convenient alternative to these technologies as well as to conventional hardware like keyboards and touch screens.

The scientists are now looking to test the mouthguard in real-world settings, like care centers or nursing homes. Meanwhile, the team is working on patenting their technology and developing a second-generation mouthguard. The new iteration will feature improved control speeds and adaptability to “irregularly-arranged” teeth.

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Earth’s Magnetic Field Converted Into Spooky Sounds for Your Listening Terror

Earth’s magnetic field is essential to our continued existence, but it sounds awfully threatening for something so helpful. The magnetic field doesn’t really have a sound, but scientists from the Technical University of Denmark have used data from an ESA satellite to convert the field’s activities into an audio experience, and it’s just right for spooky season.

The magnetic field is a product of shifting iron in the Earth’s outer core. Some other planets in the solar system have a strong field (like Mercury and Jupiter), and others do not (Mars). This field protects the planet’s surface from high-energy radiation and charged particles that would otherwise be damaging to living cells. You can see a product of the magnetic field at high latitudes when charged particles from the sun interact with it, known as the aurora borealis. Hearing the magnetic field is new, though.

The Technical University of Denmark leaned on the ESA’s Swarm satellites as the starting point for the project. The ESA launched the three satellites in 2013, outfitted with magnetometers and electric field instruments. Its goal is to provide high-resolution surveys of Earth’s magnetic field, which can provide insights not only into the field itself but into the happenings deep below the surface.

“The team used data from ESA’s Swarm satellites, as well as other sources, and used these magnetic signals to manipulate and control a sonic representation of the core field. The project has certainly been a rewarding exercise in bringing art and science together,” says musician and project supporter Klaus Nielsen of the Technical University of Denmark. The result is a cacophony of rumbling, scraping, and chirps that oscillates over the five-minute recording.

#Halloween is only a week away. What's on your playlist? Maybe a bit of Thriller? Some Hocus Pocus? Or is it.. perhaps… the SCARY SOUND OF EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD? 🎃🐈‍⬛🪦🦇🧟‍♂️🧲🎶https://t.co/uogAmhpgLM

— ESA Swarm mission (@esa_swarm) October 24, 2022

If you happen to be in Copenhagen this week, you can visit Solbjerg Square to hear the sonic experience in a new way. The team has set up 30 speakers around the square, each one corresponding to a different location on Earth. The setup demonstrates how the planet’s magnetic field has shifted over the past 100,000 years. Projects like this can be a clever way to make the public feel connected to science, like when NASA uses seismic data to recreate the sound of blowing wind on Mars.

The Swarm satellites are still up there, collecting data on the magnetic field that would apparently be quite creepy if translated into audio. The mission was initially planned to last four years, but it’s coming up on nine years with all systems operating normally.

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A TikTok Account Is Testing Novel Thermal Paste Patterns on CPUs

(Photo: Getty Images) Deciding on which thermal paste pattern to use is one of the longest-running debates in the PC-building world. Some prefer a dot, an “x,” or even a straight line (aka sausage). It’s a bit of a mysterious process because we never know how the paste has spread once we strap the cooler down. The only way to find out is to look at our temperatures. Now TikTok account @mryeester is taking it further by testing a variety of bizarre paste patterns—including the logos of popular gaming companies. You can also see what the spread is like as he presses down on it with a piece of glass.

The video reveals some surprising results for unconventional patterns. It’s probably the first TikTok account we’ve enjoyed watching, as we’re proud members of the “get off my lawn” age group.

The corporate brands he tested as paste patterns include Discord, the Half-Life Lambda symbol, and even an Intel logo on an AMD CPU (the horror). He even tested a 3D pattern (see below), so clearly he is taking the piss with some of them, as they say. Despite the silliness, some of them actually delivered good paste coverage. For example, the Discord logo ended up covering the entirety of the heat spreader despite having two holes in the center of it. Valve’s Half-Life logo also fared surprisingly well, as did the Xbox logo. Unfortunately, since this is TikTok, the videos are short and just show the spread. They don’t include any before-and-after temperature tests. Still, it’s interesting to see the spread patterns.

@mryeester
Replying to @osmankamal8 been a minute since we made some thermal paste patterns! #pc #pctips #pcbuilding #thermalpaste #mryeester

♬ original sound – mryeester

Thermal paste experiments seem to be a recurring topic on this creator’s channel. He also has videos using tomatoes, maple syrup, and mayonnaise as thermal interface material (TIM). This makes us think he has a lot of dead CPUs and motherboards laying around. In addition to the silly takes, he also tests standard patterns like circle versus square and a perimeter pattern test. As expected, the latter method left the center of the heat spreader devoid of paste. The account was first highlighted by PCGamer.

This topic was somewhat settled for many years. However, that was back when Intel and AMD offered similarly-shaped CPUs. It has seemingly ignited once again now that the companies are offering CPUs with drastically different shapes. Intel’s LGA 1700 chips are elongated in a way that has caused people to rethink their paste strategy. Plus, there were scattered reports of sockets warping due to Intel’s design. The company has acknowledged the situation but says it’s nothing to worry about.

AMD’s new chips have cutouts along the edges as well as a very thick heat spreader. These chips also run very hot — up to 95C — by design. This has caused people to experiment with both delidding and grinding the IHS down to reduce temps.

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Interpol Launches ‘Police Metaverse’ to Train Officers on Virtual Crime Fighting

(Image: Interpol) You can already do a lot in the metaverse. Though the technology has only existed for a year or two, you can already get married, attend real-life celebrities’ concerts, and work at Chipotle by simply strapping on a virtual reality (VR) headset. As with any other online space, you can commit crimes, too—a realization that inspired the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to start the very first global police force for the metaverse.

At a surprise session of the 90th Interpol General Assembly in New Delhi, India last week, the international enforcement agency unveiled the Interpol Metaverse, a VR space in which police officers can interact and trade information with one another as well as take a number of immersive policing courses. The Interpol Metaverse includes a digital copy of its Lyon, France HQ campus, which delegates were invited to tour using their avatars during the launch. Supposedly for training’s sake, it even features a TSA-style airport security area and (horrifyingly) an “Immigration and Border Police” station.

According to Interpol, its new police metaverse was born from a need to prevent criminal exploits in the VR world. “As the number of Metaverse users grows and the technology further develops, the list of possible crimes will only expand to potentially include crimes against children, data theft, money laundering, financial fraud, counterfeiting, ransomware, phishing, and sexual assault and harassment,” the agency said in a statement.

Interpol cited a tech research firm’s recent study that concluded every US adult will spend at least an hour each day in the metaverse by 2026—a figure that currently feels incredibly unrealistic, given the metaverse’s high cost of entry and its own developers’ extreme disinterest in actually using the platform. Despite this, Interpol and the World Economic Forum insist that “social engineering scams, violent extremism, and misinformation” are already on the rise.

It’s unknown just how much comfort the Interpol Metaverse will offer to users who might actually experience this up-and-coming form of victimization. The police are notoriously bad at addressing sexual harassment and assault in the real world; because the metaverse is so new, it’s highly unlikely that law enforcement would treat these subjects any better in a virtual space. Many municipal and state agencies fail to investigate cybercrime at all, including identity theft and social engineering scams, because they believe that’s federal law enforcement’s job. (Meanwhile, federal agencies like the FBI lack the resources necessary to investigate these reports.) Who’s to say victims will experience better outcomes in the metaverse, where regulations are few and far between and many real-world laws don’t apply?

The Interpol Metaverse does appear to offer a novel arena in which to conduct certain logistical training, like those involving airport security, meaning even the above skepticism (if revealed to be well-founded) won’t render Interpol’s investment worthless. But as always, it might be a good idea to implement your own safety measures in the metaverse—if you even use it to begin with.

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Astronomers to Take 3.2 Gigapixel Photos of Space With World’s Largest Camera

Digital imaging technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last few decades. You can buy a smartphone that fits in your pocket with a whopping 200MP of camera resolution, but sometimes you just have to go big. Engineers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California are putting the finishing touches on the world’s largest digital camera, which will be at the heart of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Once installed, it will photograph the skies continuously at an unprecedented resolution of 3.2 gigapixels — that’s 3,200 megapixels.

The Rubin Observatory has been under construction for about 20 years, but the work is nearly complete. At SLAC, the team has finished assembling the camera’s sensitive mechanical components, including 189 custom-designed CCD sensors. Now, they have to conduct pre-installation tests to ensure everything is in working order before the three-ton camera is airlifted to the site of the Rubin Observatory in northern Chile.

The James Webb Space Telescope is getting a lot of attention as it zooms in to look at astronomical objects with unparalleled detail. Webb operates in infrared, but this camera was designed for the visual spectrum. Since the Rubin Observatory doesn’t have to ride a rocket into space, it can be as large as necessary to observe wide swaths of the sky. It won’t be able to see the Pillars of Creation in crystal clarity, but that’s not the goal. The Rubin Observatory will use the camera’s 5.5-foot lens along with its 25-foot mirror to collect 20 terabytes of data every single night. The observatory will see 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars in the Milky Way with a viewing angle of 18,000 square degrees.

Twilight photo of Rubin Observatory taken in April 2021. Credit: Rubin Obs./NSF/AURA

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, will be able to image each part of the sky every three days. This will create a living record of the cosmos, showing how objects move and change in brightness. The result will be a 10-year full-color movie of the sky, reports Wired. It could return detailed data on galactic-scale events like supernovae, as well as local phenomena like the movements of dangerous near-Earth asteroids. Members of the astronomical community will have access to the data on a daily basis, and the team will send out alerts about objects that move or vary in brightness.

Testing should wrap up in about two months, and the camera should head down to the observatory in May 2023. Scientists hope to conduct the first imaging tests in the second half of the year. The observatory’s first official observations, known as “first light,” are currently scheduled for March 2024.

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