Chris is unmasked as The Corporate Body. Tam talks about anime and waifus. Kelley is excited about text size. Josh explains the meaning of "time to shipwreck." Subscribe to our latest offering, The Monthly Litterbox.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 744: “11.5-Bit Graphics” appeared first on RPGamer.

REVERB features 17 audiovisual installations including new works by Es Devlin and Theaster Gates, plus Devon Turnbull's Listening Room.

The post The Vinyl Factory celebrates art and sound with immersive exhibition at 180 Studios appeared first on Fact Magazine.

Reverb features new works by Es Devlin and Theaster Gates, plus Devon Turnbull's Listening Room.

The post The Vinyl Factory: Reverb exhibition extended until 22 December appeared first on Fact Magazine.

THE Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a possible computer hacking attack on J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Billionaire Bill Ackman spent days after the ABC presidential debate promoting false claims that a network “whistleblower” had allegedly uncovered collusion between ABC and Kamala Harris’ campaign. Now, a month and multiple denials later, he sees the claims differently.

“It seems pretty clear that the alleged @abc whistleblower debate story claiming that @KamalaHarris was given questions in advance and other advantages was a fake,” Ackman posted on X alongside a blog post by Megyn Kelly discussing the dubious claims.

What Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, did not acknowledge, however, is that he was one of falsehood’s early boosters. After an X account named “Black Insurrectionist” claimed it had been in touch with a whistleblower who alleged the Harris campaign had been given debate topics ahead of the showdown with Donald Trump and had demanded Trump—and Trump alone—be fact-checked.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Prior to his untimely death in Argentina on Wednesday, One Direction’s Liam Payne, 31, was in the middle of a legal spat with his ex-fiancée Maya Henry.

On Monday, The Sun reported that Henry, 23, had lawyered up in an attempt to stop Payne from constantly messaging her family and friends.

“Maya Henry issued a cease and desist last week to Liam Payne following the emergence of new and concerning information…She has retained attorneys Marco Crawford and Daniel Cerna to represent her. At this time, that is her only comment on the matter,” a spokesperson for Henry told the tabloid.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called out Fox News for not showing the full context of Donald Trump’s “enemy within” comments during Vice President Kamala Harris’ interview on the network earlier Wednesday.

The anchor of All In opened his broadcast by calling attention to something that Harris herself did in the sit-down with Fox’s Bret Baier. The clip that the right-wing network showed to Harris as part of Baier’s question was of Trump during his all-female town hall event in Georgia—the one where Trump bizarrely argued he was the “father of IVF.”

In the clip that Fox aired directly to Harris during her interview, Trump wasn’t heard talking about how former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Rep. Adam Schiff are the “enemy within.” Instead, Fox made it so Harris had to react to him talking more mildly about “phony investigations.” The network omitted Trump’s line about “the enemy within.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

BioWare currently has no plans for Dragon Age: The Veilguard expansions, according to reports. Instead the studio will support the fantasy RPG with smaller updates and otherwise turn their full attention towards Mass Effect 5.

Read more

Beloved roguelike traumatic-childhood-em-up The Binding Of Issac: Rebirth turned 10 yesterday, and it’s half off on Steam to celebrate. What’s more, maker Edmund McMillen has announced that the foretold online co-op update is due on the 18th of this month, alongside a “considerable” balance update. Consider me considering the considerability of said considerable update!

Read more

I have zero archaeology experience or knowledge, but I bet archaeologists really love their jobs (for the most part). They get to analyse and discover cool artefacts and educate us on the histories of forgotten civilisations. That's dreamy stuff, that is. But I do wonder what it's like for archaeologists to discover and study something they shouldn't have; something with a disturbing secret - a curse, maybe. Bite-sized horror game The Children Of Clay explores this idea and I'd like more of it, please.

Read more

Take-Two Interactive have sold their publishing label Private Division to an unnamed party, along with five of Private Division's "live and unreleased titles". The GTA 6 publisher have also finally confirmed that they have shut down OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome devs Roll7 together with Kerbal Space Program 2 creators Intercept Games, months after performing mass layoffs at both studios.

Read more

My brain is still thawing for the comment freeze, and thus there is sadly no cool industry person to talk to us about books this week. I'm currently reading Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection. Jia Tolentino wrote about it for the New Yorker. Jia Tolentino also writes very good books. But enough about books, tell me about books! One's you've read, preferably, but I will also accept books you've formed opinions on based on their covers, as is good and proper. Book for now!

Read more

Sin enjoyed the roguelike stylings of Dungeons of Blood and Dream when she played it in early access back in July, calling it a “baffling, bizarre thing that lives on the border of janky, retro, and punk”. As of yesterday, it’s now out for realsies, promising psychedelic dungeon crawling, the stabbing of assorted gribblies, and lots of little details that make you go “ooo, that’s nice. I’m glad they put that in there.”

Read more

"Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed". As reported by Polygon, that's an argument put forth by a new lawsuit against Ubisoft, filed by two Californian players of The Crew. They're suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over shutting down the racing game's servers, rendering it unplayable.

Read more

My strongest and most enduring memory of Grand Theft Auto will always be creasing into complete hysterics watching my mate pile into a crumpled police officer with a wooden baseball bat in GTA 3 after school one time. Young’uns these days just don’t appreciate how revolutionary it was to be able to hit a cop with a thing after he’d already fallen over. Suffice it to say I’ve got good memories of the open world series’ nascent forays into 3D, though never enough to tempt me into revisiting them, especially given the poor reception to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. I can sympathise. I’m annoyed just having to type a semicolon and a dash in the same game name.

If you’re in a similarly non-fussed position (I will never not be annoyed that ‘nonplussed’ doesn’t mean what it sounds like it should mean) I can’t imagine a lighting update that’s been available on the mobile versions for a while is enough to tempt you back. But what is a reporter's job if not pathetically treading water between chunklets of Grand Theft Auto news, upon the publishing of which Graham presses the button to release the nutritious pellets on which we all wholly subsist? I hope he doesn’t read that last sentence. I don’t get my pellet if the syntax becomes too convoluted. Moving swiftly on.

Read more

Secretary of State was questioned on Good Morning Britain over the pledge - with host asking 'how much will it have gone up by then?'

The energy bill support has been described as a "crucial lifeline" for certain individuals who are often "overlooked".

A Labour minister confirmed that the application process for Personal Independence Payment is being 'kept under review'

If we want to terraform the Red Planet to make it better able to host microbial life, tiny rods of iron and aluminium may be the answer

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

The Milky Way may be home to strange black holes from the first moments of the universe, and the best candidates are the three closest black holes to Earth

Exoplanets in binary star systems usually orbit both stars, but astronomers have now spotted three planets orbiting one or the other star in a pair

A distant planet should have been consumed when its star expanded to become a red giant, perhaps offering insights into planetary migration

Astronomers have detected an exoplanet around Barnard’s star, one of the sun’s closest neighbours, but it is too hot for liquid water or life

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

A 6000-kilogram spacecraft will embark on a six-year journey to Jupiter to explore whether its icy moon Europa has the conditions to support life

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

Samantha Harvey has won the UK's top fiction prize for a novel that takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station

Devices that let people with paralysis walk and talk are rapidly improving. Some see a future in which we alter memories and download skills – but major challenges remain

AI companies hope that feeding ever more data to their models will continue to boost performance, eventually leading to human-level intelligence. Behind this hope is the "transformer", a key breakthrough in AI, but what happens if it fails to deliver?

AI tools could help eliminate human bias in forensic investigations, say UCL scientists, who are using eye-tracking technology to study decision-making in skeletal analysis and crime scene examinations

An AI-powered model found that approaching intersections more slowly could lower yearly US carbon emissions by up to around 123 million tonnes

Experiments show that viewers can usually identify video deepfakes of famous politicians – but fake audio and text are harder to detect

Using more training data and computational power is meant to make AIs more reliable, but tests suggest large language models actually get less reliable as they grow

In What's Next? Bill Gates digs into AI, climate, inequality, malaria and more. But the man looms too large for alternative solutions to emerge, says Bethan Ackerley

What happens if AI is trained to write choral music by feeding it a specially created vocal dataset? Moving new exhibition The Call tackles some thorny questions about AI and creativity – and stirs the soul with music

Seven major datasets used to train audio-generating AI models are three times more likely to use the words "man" or "men" than "woman" or "women", raising fears of bias

Only one Australian restaurant made the cut this year in the contentious World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

It’s the second-shortest book to be awarded the prize.

Former FIA race director Niels Wittich has rejected the motorsport governing body's version regarding his departure.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UAE

ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November 2024, NANCY, FRANCE

Enjoy today’s videos!

Not even ladders can keep you safe from quadruped robots anymore.

[ ETH Zürich Robot Systems Lab ]

Introducing Azi (right), the new desktop robot from Engineered Arts Ltd. Azi and Ameca are having a little chat, demonstrating their wide range of expressive capabilities. Engineered Arts desktop robots feature 32 actuators, 27 for facial control alone, and 5 for the neck. They include AI conversational ability including GPT-4o support which makes them great robotic companions.

[ Engineered Arts ]

Quadruped robots that individual researchers can build by themselves are crucial for expanding the scope of research due to their high scalability and customizability. In this study, we develop a metal quadruped robot MEVIUS, that can be constructed and assembled using only materials ordered through e-commerce. We have considered the minimum set of components required for a quadruped robot, employing metal machining, sheet metal welding, and off-the-shelf components only.

[ MEVIUS from JSK Robotics Laboratory ]

Thanks Kento!

Avian perching maneuvers are one of the most frequent and agile flight scenarios, where highly optimized flight trajectories, produced by rapid wing and tail morphing that generate high angular rates and accelerations, reduce kinetic energy at impact. Here, we use optimal control methods on an avian-inspired drone with morphing wing and tail to test a recent hypothesis derived from perching maneuver experiments of Harris’ hawks that birds minimize the distance flown at high angles of attack to dissipate kinetic energy before impact.

[ EPFL Laboratory of Intelligent Systems ]

The earliest signs of bearing failures are inaudible to you, but not to Spot . Introducing acoustic vibration sensing—Automate ultrasonic inspections of rotating equipment to keep your factory humming.

The only thing I want to know is whether Spot is programmed to actually do that cute little tilt when using its acoustic sensors.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Hear from Jonathan Hurst, our co-founder and Chief Robot Officer, why legs are ideally suited for Digit’s work.

[ Agility Robotics ]

I don’t think “IP67” really does this justice.

[ ANYbotics ]

This paper presents a teleportation system with floating robotic arms that traverse parallel cables to perform long-distance manipulation. The system benefits from the cable-based infrastructure, which is easy to set up and cost-effective with expandable workspace range.

[ EPFL ]

It seems to be just renderings for now, but here’s the next version of Fourier’s humanoid.

[ Fourier ]

Happy Oktoberfest from Dino Robotics!

[ Dino Robotics ]

This paper introduces a learning-based low-level controller for quadcopters, which adaptively controls quadcopters with significant variations in mass, size, and actuator capabilities. Our approach leverages a combination of imitation learning and reinforcement learning, creating a fast-adapting and general control framework for quadcopters that eliminates the need for precise model estimation or manual tuning.

[ HiPeR Lab ]

Parkour poses a significant challenge for legged robots, requiring navigation through complex environments with agility and precision based on limited sensory inputs. In this work, we introduce a novel method for training end-to-end visual policies, from depth pixels to robot control commands, to achieve agile and safe quadruped locomotion.

[ SoloParkour ]

Thirteen years since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, causing a loss of power, meltdowns and a major release of radioactive material, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) finally seems to be close to extracting the first bit of melted fuel from the complex—thanks to a special telescopic robotic device.

Despite Japan’s prowess in industrial robotics, TEPCO had no robots to deploy in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Since then, however, robots have been used to measure radiation levels, clear building debris, and survey the exterior and interior of the plant overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

It will take decades to decommission Fukushima Dai-ichi, and one of the most dangerous, complex tasks is the removal and storage of about 880 tons of highly radioactive molten fuel in three reactor buildings that were operating when the tsunami hit. TEPCO believes mixtures of uranium, zirconium and other metals accumulated around the bottom of the primary containment vessels (PCVs) of the reactors—but the exact composition of the material is unknown. The material is “fuel debris,” which TEPCO defines as overheated fuel that has melted with fuel rods and in-vessel structures, then cooled and re-solidified. The extraction was supposed to begin in 2021 but ran into development delays and obstacles in the extraction route; the coronavirus pandemic also slowed work.

While TEPCO wants a molten fuel sample to analyze for exact composition, getting just a teaspoon of the stuff has proven so tricky that the job is years behind schedule. That may change soon as crews have deployed the telescoping device to target the 237 tons of fuel debris in Unit 2, which suffered less damage than the other reactor buildings and no hydrogen explosion, making it an easier and safer test bed.

“We plan to retrieve a small amount of fuel debris from Unit 2, analyze it to evaluate its properties and the process of its formation, and then move on to large-scale retrieval,” says Tatsuya Matoba, a spokesperson for TEPCO. “We believe that extracting as much information as possible from the retrieved fuel debris will likely contribute greatly to future decommissioning work.”

How TEPCO Plans to Retrieve a Fuel Sample

Getting to the fuel is easier said than done. Shaped like an inverted light bulb, the damaged PCV is a 33-meter-tall steel structure that houses the reactor pressure vessel where nuclear fission took place. A 2-meter-long isolation valve designed to block the release of radioactive material sits at the bottom of the PCV, and that’s where the robot will go in. The fuel debris itself is partly underwater.

The robot arm is being preceded by a smaller telescopic device. The telescopic device, which is trying to retrieve 3 grams of the fuel debris without further contamination to the outside environment, is similar to the larger robot arm, which is better suited for the retrieval of larger bits of debris.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning and UK-based Veolia Nuclear Solutions developed the robot arm to enter small openings in the PCV, where it can survey the interior and grab the fuel. Mostly made of stainless steel and aluminum, the arm measures 22 meters long, weighs 4.6 tons and can move along 18 degrees of freedom. It’s a boom-style arm, not unlike the robotic arms on the International Space Station, that rests in a sealed enclosure box when not extended.

The arm consists of four main elements: a carriage that pushes the assembly through the openings, arm links that can fold up like a ream of dot matrix printer paper, an arm that has three telescopic stages, and a “wand” (an extendable pipe-shaped component) with cameras and a gripper on its tip. Both the arm and the wand can tilt downward toward the target area.

After the assembly is pushed through the PCV’s isolation valve, it angles downward over a 7.2-meter-long rail heading toward the base of the reactor. It continues through existing openings in the pedestal, a concrete structure supporting the reactor, and the platform, which is a flat surface under the reactor.

Then, the tip is lowered on a cable like the grabber in a claw machine toward the debris field at the bottom of the pedestal. The gripper tool at the end of the component has two delicate pincers (only 5 square millimeters), that can pinch a small pebble of debris. The debris is transferred to a container and, if all goes well, is brought back up through the openings and placed in a glovebox: A sealed, negative-pressure container in the reactor building where initial testing can be performed. It will then be moved to a Japan Atomic Energy Agency facility in nearby Ibaraki Prefecture for detailed analysis.

While the gripper on the telescopic device currently being used was able to reach the debris field and grasp a piece of rubble—it’s unknown if it was actually melted fuel—last month, two of the four cameras on the device stopped working a few days later, and the device was eventually reeled back into the enclosure box. Crews confirmed there were no problems with signal wiring from the control panel in the reactor building, and proceeded to perform oscilloscope testing. TEPCO speculates that radiation passing through camera semiconductor elements caused electrical charge to build up, and that the charge will drain if the cameras are left on in a relatively low-dose environment. It was the latest setback in a very long project.

“Retrieving fuel debris from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is an extremely difficult task, and a very important part of decommissioning,” says Matoba. “With the goal of completing the decommissioning in 30 to 40 years, we believe it is important to proceed strategically and systematically with each step of the work at hand.”

This story was updated on 15 October, 2024 to clarify that TEPCO is using two separate tools (a smaller telescopic device and a larger robot arm) in the process of retrieving fuel debris samples.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

ROSCon 2024: 21–23 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK

ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November 2024, NANCY, FRANCE

Enjoy today’s videos!

One of the most venerable (and recognizable) mobile robots ever made, the Husky, has just gotten a major upgrade.

Shipping early next year.

[ Clearpath Robotics ]

MAB Robotics is developing legged robots for the inspection and maintenance of industrial infrastructure. One of the initial areas for deploying this technology is underground infrastructure, such as water and sewer canals. In these environments, resistance to factors like high humidity and working underwater is essential. To address these challenges, the MAB team has built a walking robot capable of operating fully submerged, based on exceptional self-developed robotics actuators. This innovation overcomes the limitations of current technologies, offering MAB’s first clients a unique service for trenchless inspection and maintenance tasks.

[ MAB Robotics ]

Thanks, Jakub!

The G1 robot can perform a standing long jump of up to 1.4 meters, possibly the longest jump ever achieved by a humanoid robot of its size in the world, standing only 1.32 meters tall.

[ Unitree Robotics ]

Apparently, you can print out a functional four-fingered hand on an inkjet.

[ UC Berkeley ]

We present SDS (``See it. Do it. Sorted’), a novel pipeline for intuitive quadrupedal skill learning from a single demonstration video leveraging the visual capabilities of GPT-4o. We validate our method on the Unitree Go1 robot, demonstrating its ability to execute variable skills such as trotting, bounding, pacing, and hopping, achieving high imitation fidelity and locomotion stability.

[ Robot Perception Lab, University College London ]

You had me at “3D desk octopus.”

[ UIST 2024 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology ]

Top-notch swag from Dusty Robotics

[ Dusty Robotics ]

I’m not sure how serious this shoes-versus-no-shoes test is, but it’s an interesting result nonetheless.

[ Robot Era ]

Thanks, Ni Tao!

Introducing TRON 1, the first multimodal biped robot! With its innovative “Three-in-One” modular design, TRON 1 can easily switch among Point-Foot, Sole, and Wheeled foot ends.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

Recent works in the robot-learning community have successfully introduced generalist models capable of controlling various robot embodiments across a wide range of tasks, such as navigation and locomotion. However, achieving agile control, which pushes the limits of robotic performance, still relies on specialist models that require extensive parameter tuning. To leverage generalist-model adaptability and flexibility while achieving specialist-level agility, we propose AnyCar, a transformer-based generalist dynamics model designed for agile control of various wheeled robots.

[ AnyCar ]

Discover the future of aerial manipulation with our untethered soft robotic platform with onboard perception stack! Presented at the 2024 Conference on Robot Learning, in Munich, this platform introduces autonomous aerial manipulation that works in both indoor and outdoor environments—without relying on costly off-board tracking systems.

[ Paper ] via [ ETH Zurich Soft Robotics Laboratory ]

Deploying perception modules for human-robot handovers is challenging because they require a high degree of reactivity, generalizability, and robustness to work reliably for diverse cases. Here, we show hardware handover experiments using our efficient and object-agnostic real-time tracking framework, specifically designed for human-to-robot handover tasks with legged manipulators.

[ Paper ] via [ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ]

Azi and Ameca are killing time, but Azi struggles being the new kid around. Engineered Arts desktop robots feature 32 actuators, 27 for facial control alone, and 5 for the neck. They include AI conversational ability including GPT-4o support, which makes them great robotic companions, even to each other. The robots are following a script for this video, using one of their many voices.

[ Engineered Arts ]

Plato automates carrying and transporting, giving your staff more time to focus on what really matters, improving their quality of life. With a straightforward setup that requires no markers or additional hardware, Plato is incredibly intuitive to use—no programming skills needed.

[ Aldebaran ]

This UPenn GRASP Lab seminar is from Antonio Loquercio, on “Simulation: What made us intelligent will make our robots intelligent.”

Simulation-to-reality transfer is an emerging approach that enables robots to develop skills in simulated environments before applying them in the real world. This method has catalyzed numerous advancements in robotic learning, from locomotion to agile flight. In this talk, I will explore simulation-to-reality transfer through the lens of evolutionary biology, drawing intriguing parallels with the function of the mammalian neocortex. By reframing this technique in the context of biological evolution, we can uncover novel research questions and explore how simulation-to-reality transfer can evolve from an empirically driven process to a scientific discipline.

[ University of Pennsylvania ]

Donald Trump will embrace the truth Joe Biden has refused to countenance: Israel's enemies are America's enemies. And when Israel defeats its enemies, America wins.

The end to this bloody stalemate must come with negotiation, and Putin should not wait until Trump is in the White House, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

Just got a PS5 or want to know what to prioritise in your backlog? We've got you covered with the best PlayStation 5 games for your console that you can play right now.

Black Ops 6 is here, and it's Black Ops 2's anniversary, so what better time than to rank the Call of Duty Black Ops titles? Here's our ranking of every mainline version.

In this week's issue of our environment newsletter, we look at the carbon capture potential of the world's oceans and what effect beavers are having in the Arctic (spoiler: it's not good).

Scientists are using machine learning to decode and eventually translate how sperm whales communicate with Morse code-like clicks and pauses.

After a dismal start, the UN is hosting a "halftime summit" about its 15-year plan to meet a series of human-development targets by 2030. Delegates will try to focus on problems like extreme poverty and gender equality while watching for sparks between the representatives of Ukraine and Russia.