The Googleplex of the future has privacy robots, meeting tents and your very own balloon wall |
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google's first office was a cluttered Silicon Valley garage crammed with desks resting on sawhorses.
In 2003, five years after its founding, the company moved into a sprawling campus called the Googleplex. The airy, open offices and whimsical common spaces set a standard for what an innovative workplace was supposed to look like. Over the years, the amenities piled up. The food was free, and so were buses to and from work: Getting to the office, and staying there all day, was easy.
New Law of Physics Helps Humans and Robots Grasp the Friction of Touch | NC State News
Although robotic devices are used in everything from assembly lines to medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for the friction that occurs when those robots grip objects – particularly in wet environments. Researchers have now discovered a new law of physics that accounts for this type of friction, which should advance a wide range of robotic technologies.
"Our work here opens the door to creating more reliable and functional haptic and robotic devices in applications such as telesurgery and manufacturing," says Lilian Hsiao, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the work.
The Robot Surgeon Will See You Now - The New York Times
Sitting on a stool several feet from a long-armed robot, Dr. Danyal Fer wrapped his fingers around two metal handles near his chest.
As he moved the handles — up and down, left and right — the robot mimicked each small motion with its own two arms. Then, when he pinched his thumb and forefinger together, one of the robot's tiny claws did much the same. This is how surgeons like Dr. Fer have long used robots when operating on patients . They can remove a prostate from a patient while sitting at a computer console across the room.
Scientist Make A Discovery That Will Make Robots That Can Perform Surgeries
29 April 2021, Bavaria, Munich: A robot for automated corona swabs is seen at a press event at the ... [+] automation company Franka Emika. The robot, which can perform corona throat swabs, works almost completely automatically. The test person encloses a mouthpiece with his mouth, which is exchanged by the robot after each test, while the robot takes the swab in the throat with a stick. Photo: Matthias Balk/dpa (Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Ford's Ever-Smarter Robots Are Speeding Up the Assembly Line | WIRED
At a Ford plant in Livonia, Michigan, robots assemble torque converters by wiggling components into place, with some help from machine learning.
The technology allows this part of the assembly line to run 15 percent faster, a significant improvement in automotive manufacturing where thin profit margins depend heavily on manufacturing efficiencies.
"I personally think it is going to be something of the future," says Lon Van Geloven, production manager at the Livonia plant. He says Ford plans to explore whether to use the technology in other factories. Van Geloven says the technology can be used anywhere it's possible for a computer to learn from feeling how things fit together. "There are plenty of those applications," he says.
Sewage Sampling Robots Speed SARS-CoV-2 Detection | The Scientist Magazine®
A s well as shedding SARS-CoV-2 virus through nose and throat secretions, infected people can, even when asymptomatic, excrete the virus in their stool. Because of this, wastewater sampling has been under investigation since the beginning of the pandemic as a way to monitor levels of the novel coronavirus in whole populations.
Accumulating evidence suggests that such analyses can detect spikes in case numbers earlier than diagnostic testing can, and may therefore lead to swifter implementation of public health measures. However, methods for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater are slow and laborious, says microbiologist Smruthi Karthikeyan, a postdoc in the laboratory of computational microbiologist and engineer Rob Knight at the University of California, San Diego.
New law of physics: How robots grip wet objects - Futurity
Elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) friction is the friction that occurs when two solid surfaces come into contact with a thin layer of fluid between them. (Credit: Getty Images )
Researchers have discovered a new law of physics that accounts for the friction that occurs when robots grip wet objects.
Although robotic devices are part of processes like assembly lines and medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for this kind of friction.
Hollywood Florida restaurant uses robots to serve tables as it struggles to bounce back from
Eyewitness News got an exclusive look at a new tool the NYPD has at its disposal for responding to emergency situations.
