Weekly Piece of Future #90
From Boston Dynamics' Atlas to Real-Time Computer Interactions and NVIDIA's HOVER Robotics
Hey there, fellow future-addicts!
Welcome to this week's edition of Rushing Robotics, where we explore the cutting edge of innovation and technology! In this issue, we highlight remarkable breakthroughs that are reshaping our understanding of science and medicine.
🤯 Mind-Blowing
From advanced laser techniques enabling the growth of human tissues to miniature robots capable of delivering drugs within the human body, our spotlight shines on groundbreaking research and applications that promise to redefine the future of healthcare and technology.
🔊 Industry Insights & Updates
In our Industry Insights section, we delve into the latest developments from the tech world. Learn how xAI has rapidly constructed the world’s largest AI training cluster and discover the ambitious plans of companies like Space Transportation as they test prototypes of supersonic commercial aircraft. We’ll also examine the innovative energy solutions being developed to meet the growing demands of data centers.
🧬 BioTech
Our BioTech segment brings you incredible advancements in the life sciences. From a revolutionary cancer treatment that combines phototherapy with chemotherapy to the insertion of chloroplasts into animal cells, the possibilities for enhancing human health are expanding. Join us as we uncover these fascinating innovations that could change the landscape of medicine and tissue engineering.
💡 Products/Tools of the Week
Explore our curated selection of products and tools making waves in the tech space. This week, we feature powerful AI integrations designed to enhance productivity and streamline operations, including the new CapGo.AI tool for automating business tasks and the PrimeCX AI Chatbot Builder for seamless customer interactions. Discover how these tools can help you leverage the power of AI in your own workflows.
🎥 Video Section
Finally, don’t miss our engaging video section, showcasing the latest feats from Boston Dynamics and other pioneering robotics companies. From Atlas's impressive capabilities to the introduction of new humanoid robots, these videos offer a thrilling glimpse into the future of robotics.
With these innovations, the boundary between science fiction and reality becomes increasingly blurred, paving the way for a new era of exploration and discovery. Stay hungry, stay futurish!
🤯 Mind-Blowing
Liu utilizes advanced laser technology to develop intricate, microscopic structures that closely replicate the natural architecture of human tissues. This innovative laser technology enables the growth of actual human tissues, potentially replacing the need for lab rats in scientific research. Liu’s team uses a specialized gelatin material to construct scaffolds for cell growth. By precisely controlling the laser, they create highly aligned microfilaments—protein structures that replicate the detailed architecture found in tissues such as muscles, tendons, and nerves. To further this research, the team has developed a compact bioprinter designed to create biological tissues with complex microfilament structures. Liu is currently working on commercializing this technology with the aim of producing human tissue models for high-throughput drug screening and other biomedical applications.
The NVIDIA GEAR lab is making significant advancements in robotics. Their innovative model, HOVER, challenges the conventional belief that mastering complex motor skills necessitates large neural networks, as it operates with just 1.5 million parameters. Utilizing NVIDIA's simulation suite, which accelerates physics calculations by a staggering 10,000 times, humanoid robots are capable of learning an entire year’s worth of motion in less than one hour. Jim Fan elaborated on Twitter, stating, “We trained HOVER in NVIDIA Isaac, a GPU-powered simulation suite that accelerates physics by 10,000x faster than real time. To put the number in perspective, the robots undergo 1 year of intense training in a virtual “dojo”, but take only ~50 minutes of wall clock time on one GPU card. The neural net then transfers zero-shot to the real world without finetuning.”
A research team at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore has engineered miniature robots, comparable in size to grains of sand, that can carry and deliver multiple drugs directly to specific areas within the human body, using magnetic fields for complete control. These innovative soft robots, developed by NTU’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, represent a groundbreaking advancement in medical technology, as they are the first of their kind capable of transporting and releasing up to four different drugs in carefully programmed sequences. This remarkable achievement draws inspiration from the classic 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage, in which a miniaturized crew travels inside the human body. Lead researcher Assistant Professor Lum Guo Zhan emphasized the significance of this development, stating, "What was a scenario in a sci-fi movie is now becoming closer to reality with our lab's innovation. Traditional methods of drug delivery like oral administration and injections will seem comparatively inefficient when stacked up against sending a tiny robot through the body to deliver the drug exactly where it is needed."
Anthropic has introduced a new feature in its latest Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI model, currently in public beta, which enables the model to perform basic computer operations. Named “computer use,” this capability lets Claude interact with a screen by moving the cursor, clicking, and typing, similar to how a human would. Available through the API, this feature opens doors for developers to direct Claude in real-time tasks. Additionally, Sonnet 3.5 has seen significant improvements in coding performance, boosting its SWE-bench Verified score from 33.4% to 49.0%—outperforming other publicly available models, including reasoning and agentic coding systems like OpenAI’s o1-preview.
A new type of hydrogel has been developed by researchers that is soft, biocompatible, and exhibits impressive semiconducting properties. The research team at the University of Chicago suggests that this hydrogel-based semiconductor could have numerous applications in bioelectronics, including use in implantable medical devices such as pacemakers and biosensors, wearable health monitors, and advanced prosthetics. Furthermore, it has the potential to aid in the development of next-generation brain implants akin to those being designed by Neuralink. This resulting blue gel is soft and flexible, resembling the texture of a jellyfish, and acts as a powerful semiconductor, facilitating efficient communication between biological tissues and electronic devices. The material possesses exceptional mechanical properties, including a softness comparable to human tissue at 81 kPa and remarkable stretchability of 150%. Additionally, it showcases electrical conductivity with a charge-carrier mobility of 1.4 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹.
🔊 Industry Insights & Updates
xAI has completed the construction of its Colossus supercomputer in an impressive 122 days and initiated the training of its first AI models just 19 days following installation. US chipmaker Nvidia announced on Monday, October 28, that it played a significant role in helping Elon Musk’s xAI expand this supercomputer system. Typically, Nvidia noted, systems of this complexity require many months or even years to fully develop, underscoring the rapid advancement of xAI’s infrastructure. Colossus now holds the title of the world’s largest AI training cluster. With the aid of Nvidia’s advanced Spectrum-X ethernet networking technology, xAI can elevate its Grok AI—a competitor to ChatGPT—to unprecedented levels. Elon Musk stated, “Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200,000 (including 50,000 H200s) within a few months. Excellent work by the [xAI] team, NVIDIA, and our many partners and suppliers.
Deep Atomic, a startup based in Switzerland, has announced its innovative plans for a small modular reactor (SMR) aimed at addressing the escalating energy demands of data centers driven by resource-intensive artificial intelligence (AI). The MK60, the small nuclear reactor developed by the company, offers a compact and scalable solution by generating 60 megawatts of electricity alongside 60 megawatts of cooling specifically designed for data centers. According to a press release issued by Deep Atomic, this development is timely, as data centers are essential to digital innovation but face significant challenges due to their enormous energy consumption, which has become a critical bottleneck for growth. The SMR is engineered for on-site installation at data centers, providing reliable, zero-carbon electricity and energy-efficient cooling, which will help significantly lower carbon footprints and support data centers in achieving their increasingly rigorous sustainability objectives.
A Chinese company headquartered in Beijing has announced that it has successfully tested a prototype of a commercial transport plane capable of reaching speeds nearly double that of the Concorde, the world’s first supersonic passenger airplane. The company, Space Transportation—also referred to as Lingkong Tianxing Technology in China—reported that the test flight of its Yunxing prototype plane demonstrated speeds reaching Mach 4, or approximately 3,069 miles per hour. This speed far exceeds that of the Concorde, positioning the Yunxing prototype as a major advancement in supersonic commercial transport. The company also shared its plans to complete a full-sized supersonic jet, with the ambitious goal of conducting its inaugural flight in 2027.
A student-developed desalination technique offers a sustainable solution by converting over 90% of salt water into drinkable fresh water. The method improves upon reverse osmosis (RO), the industry’s go-to process, which caps water recovery at 85%, leaving 15% as concentrated brine. This research introduces salt-free electrodialysis metathesis (SF-EDM) as an additional step to enhance water recovery, achieving 90% efficiency. SF-EDM demonstrated high selectivity, lowering salinity by 93% without adding sodium chloride, and operates at 20% lower cost than traditional methods, promising a more economical approach.
🧬 BioTech
A new cancer treatment from MIT combines tumor-destroying phototherapy and chemotherapy into one implantable system, potentially providing a more effective approach to managing aggressive cancers. Advanced cancer patients often endure multiple rounds of treatments that may come with unpleasant side effects and are sometimes less effective than hoped. MIT researchers developed microscopic particles that can be placed directly within a tumor to deliver both thermal therapy, which eradicates cancer cells through localized heat, and chemotherapy. This implantable method could prevent the systemic side effects that come with traditional intravenous chemotherapy. The combined effect of phototherapy and chemotherapy delivered directly to the tumor site may also lead to longer survival than when these therapies are applied individually. In preclinical studies with mice, this combined approach effectively eliminated tumors in most animals and extended their lives significantly.
Japanese researchers have successfully inserted energy-producing chloroplasts from algae into hamster cells, enabling these animal cells to photosynthesize. This accomplishment challenges the previous belief that chloroplasts—light-capturing structures unique to plants and algae—could not survive or function in animal cells. Remarkably, the chloroplasts continued photosynthesis for over two days, which may lead to new tissue engineering techniques. This innovation could solve oxygen supply issues that impede lab-grown tissues, like artificial organs and skin, by providing a light-driven source of oxygen and energy essential for cellular growth.
A team at Oxford has successfully created a miniature, soft lithium-ion battery intended for use in biomedical applications such as heart tissue defibrillation and pacing. This innovative battery, made from biocompatible hydrogel droplets, is unique in that it is light-activated, rechargeable, and biodegradable. The researchers claim that this tiny battery can support a variety of biomedical functions, including powering drug release mechanisms, enabling heart defibrillation, and supplying energy for microrobots. As the field moves towards the creation of tiny smart devices that are often smaller than a few cubic millimeters, the need for correspondingly small power sources becomes evident. Furthermore, for biomedical devices that directly interact with biological tissues, it is essential that these power sources consist of soft materials to ensure safety and minimally invasive application.
💡Products/tools of the week
Agent.exe functions as a tool that allows Claude 3.5 Sonnet to control a local computer via newly developed computer-use APIs. This tool is specifically aimed at testing Claude’s operational capabilities, facilitating the execution of various actions directly on the computer, including the scheduling of tasks and the execution of simple commands. Users can monitor the app’s performance and have the option to intervene using a "stop" button if any issues occur. Initially, the development team considered implementing a semi-automatic mode requiring user confirmation for each action, but this was found to slow down execution, leading to the conclusion that Agent.exe is an effective solution for hands-off control testing.
The Inferable platform is aimed at developers, enabling them to create, deploy, and manage AI-driven workflows using their existing codebases. It includes essential features like AI guardrails, composability, distributed orchestration, and comprehensive end-to-end observability, which contribute to the reliability and scalability of AI automations. Developers might choose Inferable for its capacity to seamlessly embed AI capabilities into their applications while ensuring they have control over data management and workflows, ultimately improving reliability and reinforcing security and compliance measures.
CapGo.AI is an AI-powered tool that seamlessly integrates with spreadsheet applications to enhance various business functions, including lead generation, market research, email marketing, and data processing tasks. This tool is equipped with features such as web research capabilities, email automation, and data extraction from PDF documents, making it particularly beneficial for sales and marketing professionals. Users may choose CapGo.AI to save time and improve accuracy in their workflows, as well as to gain a competitive edge by automating repetitive tasks and quickly extracting actionable insights from extensive data sets.
PrimeCX AI Chatbot Builder is a cutting-edge no-code platform that facilitates businesses in creating and deploying AI-powered chatbots for diverse purposes, including customer support, lead generation, appointment booking, and internal knowledge dissemination. Tailored for companies looking to automate customer interactions and optimize internal processes without requiring any coding abilities, this platform provides an effective solution for streamlining operations. Users might select this tool to boost efficiency, minimize costs, ensure around-the-clock support, and scale their customer service functions as their business grows.
