Weekly Piece of Future #69
From E-Skin to Brain Activity Visualization and Potential Asthma Cure
Hey there, fellow future-addicts!
Welcome to this week's edition of Rushing Robotics, where groundbreaking discoveries and revolutionary advancements are shaping the world of tomorrow. From mind-bending breakthroughs in neural interfaces to game-changing developments in healthcare and beyond, get ready to be amazed by the innovations shaping tomorrow, today.
🤯 Mind-Blowing
Discover how Stanford scientists are bridging the gap between human and machine with stretchable electronic skin that communicates directly with the brain, opening new possibilities for prosthetics and medical robotics. Explore Augmental's revolutionary mouth-based touchpad empowering individuals with paralysis to interact with technology like never before. Plus, delve into the realm of real-time brain activity visualization and cutting-edge vision chips for autonomous systems.
🔊 Industry Insights & Updates
Stay ahead of the curve with insights into NVIDIA's plans to unleash powerful AI technology, AMD's challenge to industry giants, and OpenAI's renewed focus on robotic research. Explore how companies like Dongfeng Motor and Ubtech Robotics are integrating humanoid robots into manufacturing operations, heralding a new era of automation.
🧬 BioTech
Uncover the potential one-shot cure for asthma and groundbreaking trials offering hope for lung cancer patients. Learn about gene therapy's transformative impact on restoring hearing and speech in children born deaf, and explore the frontier of dementia diagnosis with a pioneering test that forecasts the disease years before symptoms appear.
💡 Products/Tools of the Week
Get acquainted with cutting-edge tools like Nomic Atlas for structuring unstructured data, CodeParrot for lightning-fast frontend development, and AI Jukebox for text-to-music generation. Plus, discover IKI AI, your intelligent knowledge interface designed to revolutionize information access and utilization.
🎥 Video Section
And, don't miss our video section, where you'll find exciting content from NVIDIA, enzostvs, and Freethink.
Get ready to be inspired, informed, and empowered as we navigate the frontiers of technology together. Stay hungry, stay futurish!
🤯 Mind-Blowing
Stanford scientists have created a soft and stretchable electronic skin capable of communicating directly with the brain, mimicking the sensory feedback of real skin. This strategy, if refined, could benefit millions of people with prosthetic limbs. The electronic skin is a novel sensor that replicates human skin's sensory functions. To test their system, the Stanford team implanted it into a live rat. When the rat's e-skin was touched, a pulse was sent via a wire to the rat's brain. In the future, this technology could be applied to the fingertips of medical robots for early diagnosis and treatment.
Augmental's mouth-based touchpad allows people with paralysis to interact with computers and other devices. This innovative product lets users operate phones and other electronics using tongue, mouth, and head gestures. The MouthPad, which has a pressure-sensitive touchpad on the roof of the mouth, works with motion sensors to translate these gestures into real-time cursor control and clicks via Bluetooth.
In a recent clinical study, Precision, a competitor of Neualink, recorded human brain activity from over four thousand electrodes, enabling real-time cortical data streaming for brain activity visualization. This record of 4,096 electrodes was achieved in April 2024 at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, as part of an ongoing clinical study testing the company’s implant.
Chinese scientists have developed the world’s fastest vision chip designed for autonomous cars and defense applications. The team from Tsinghua University claims that their Tianmouc "perception chip" boasts record-breaking image processing speed. Inspired by the brain, this chip analyzes visual information along two pathways: one for cognition and one for rapid response.
A potential one-shot cure for asthma emerges, marking a significant development in managing a condition that currently necessitates lifelong care. With over 300 million individuals globally affected by asthma and over 250,000 deaths annually, this groundbreaking treatment utilizing CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy) offers a promising solution to revolutionize asthma treatment.
👨🏻💼 Job Board
Gather: Senior AI/Machine Learning Engineer
Join Gather's team building Genie, the personal AI assistant that enhances lives through data. Seeking entrepreneurial AI engineer with LLM expertise.
Moonshot AI: Founding Software Engineer
Join our team in revolutionizing website optimization through autonomous systems. As a founding engineer, you'll shape the technical direction of the company and contribute to groundbreaking projects in eCommerce and beyond.
Speechify: Senior Software Engineer, AI Studio
Join Speechify's AI Studio team and be at the forefront of AI innovation in the audio space. We're revolutionizing how people consume information, experiencing rapid growth, and seeking a Senior Software Engineer to drive our continued success.
🔊 Industry Insights & Updates
Introducing Rubin, NVIDIA plans to unleash powerful AI technology in 2026. Emphasizing cost reduction and sustainability, CEO Jensen Huang detailed new semiconductors, software, and systems designed to power data centers, factories, consumer devices, robots, and more, heralding a new industrial revolution.
AMD unveiled its latest artificial intelligence processors and shared its strategy to develop AI chips over the next two years, aiming to challenge industry leader Nvidia. AMD announced that the forthcoming MI350 is expected to outperform the current MI300 series of AI chips by 35 times in inference.
OpenAI is restarting its robotic research team with a focus on developing dedicated AI for robots. After discontinuing its project to build a general-purpose robot in 2020, the AI juggernaut is now planning to offer models to companies aiming to create their own robotic solutions.
Dongfeng Motor has signed a partnership with Ubtech Robotics to incorporate humanoid robots into its car manufacturing operations. Ubtech’s industrial humanoid robot, Walker S, will be used on Dongfeng Motor’s production line to perform numerous tasks. Officials believe that through practical training, these robots will enhance the efficiency of component inspection and assembly.
🧬 BioTech
The trial results for a new lung cancer drug, lorlatinib, are being described by doctors as "off the charts." Over half of the patients with advanced lung cancer who received lorlatinib were alive and had no disease progression after five years. This drug has shown unprecedented success in halting the advancement of lung cancer. According to data presented at the world's largest cancer conference, 60% of advanced lung cancer patients on lorlatinib had no disease progression after five years, compared to only 8% with the standard treatment.
A new gene therapy trial has demonstrated restored hearing and speech in children born deaf, with treatments applied to both ears. Administering gene therapy to both ears of five children with DFNB9 resulted in additional benefits compared to previous trials, including improved sound source localization and better hearing in noisy environments.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have created a pioneering test that can forecast dementia up to nine years before diagnosis. This new method boasts over 80% accuracy, outperforming traditional memory tests and brain shrinkage measurements commonly used in diagnosing dementia. It represents a significant advance in early detection.
💡Products/tools of the week
Nomic Atlas serves as a versatile tool designed for structuring unstructured text, image, and audio data. It empowers users to extract insights, enhance datasets, and optimize AI applications. The tool offers AI-driven topic modeling, data labeling, and embeddings, supporting the organization and semantic interaction with vast data volumes. Users might employ Nomic Atlas to manage unstructured information efficiently, collaborate on data labeling and filtering, and integrate structured data into applications.
CodeParrot, a development tool for software engineers, is designed to quickly convert Figma file designs or screenshots into production-ready frontend components. Its integration with VS Code allows developers to maintain high code quality while speeding up the UI development process. Users can easily iterate and adjust their components to align with their preferences and standards.
AI Jukebox, an in-browser tool by enzostvs on Hugging Face Spaces, enables text-to-music generation. Users can create music by typing prompts specifying genre, mood, and elements such as "80s pop track with bassy drums and synth." With choices for duration, style, and mood, AI Jukebox serves as a creative platform for generating original music pieces, requiring no musical expertise or instruments.
IKI AI – Intelligent Knowledge Interface is an innovative tool created to facilitate the process of accessing and utilizing large volumes of information. Using AI technology, IKI AI can comprehend and interpret user queries, offering precise and relevant answers sourced from a broad range of data. This tool can be employed for research, data analysis, decision-making support, and educational purposes, among other applications.
