A Technique for more Effective Multipurpose Robots

Four photos show, on top level, a simulation of a robot hand using a spatula, knife, hammer and wrench. The second row shows a real robot hand performing the tasks, and the bottom row shows a human hand performing the tasks.
Caption: Three different data domains — simulation (top), robot tele-operation (middle) and human demos (bottom) — allow a robot to learn to use different tools.
Credits:Image: Courtesy of the researchers

With generative AI models, researchers combined robotics data from different sources to help robots learn better. MIT researchers developed a technique to combine robotics training data across domains, modalities, and tasks using generative AI models. They create a combined strategy from several different datasets that enables a robot to learn to perform new tasks in unseen environments.

Let’s say you want to train a robot so it understands how to use tools and can then quickly learn to make repairs around your house with a hammer, wrench, and screwdriver...

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TOI-1685 b is a Hot and Rocky Super-Earth Exoplanet, Observations find

TOI-1685 b is a hot and rocky super-Earth exoplanet, observations find
Best fit SED for TOI-1685 from VOSA. Colored points are photometric magnitudes from the Gaia, 2Mass, and WISE surveys, and magnitudes synthesized from spectrophotometrically calibrated Gaia DR3 Bp/Rp spectra into the photometric system of the OAJ JPAS and JPLUS surveys. Gray line depicts the model flux measurements. Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2405.14895

An international team of astronomers has performed follow-up observations of a nearby alien world known as TOI-1685 b. Results of the observations, published May 21 on the pre-print server arXiv, indicate that TOI-1685 b is a hot and rocky alien world with an Earth-like density.

The so-called “super-Earths” are planets more massive than Earth but not exceeding the mass of Neptune...

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Immunotherapy Significantly Increases the Number of Patients Free from Bowel Cancer: Clinical trial

chemotherapy
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

An immunotherapy drug given before surgery instead of chemotherapy meant that over ten times more patients with a certain genetic profile were cancer-free after surgery, according to clinical trial results presented by researchers at UCL and UCLH.

The findings, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting 2024, are interim results from the NEOPRISM-CRC phase II clinical trial assessing whether the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab can improve outcomes for patients with stage two or stage three MMR deficient/MSI-High bowel cancer. The trial was a collaboration among UCL, UCLH, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, St...

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Controlling Ion Transport for a Blue Energy future: Research highlights the potential of Nanopore Membranes

Controlling ion transport for a blue energy future
Schematic illustration depicting gate voltage control of ion selectivity in a nanopore. Credit: Makusu Tsutsui

Blue energy has the potential to provide a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. In simple terms, it involves harnessing the energy produced when the ions in a salt solution move from high to low concentrations.

A team including researchers from Osaka University has probed the effect of voltage on the passage of ions through a nanopore membrane to demonstrate greater control of the process.

In a study recently published in ACS Nano the researchers looked at tailoring the flow of ions through the array of nanopores that make up their membrane, and how this control could make applying the technology on a large scale a reality.

If the membranes are made from a charged...

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