Apple, Huawei Both Claim First 7-nm Smartphone Chips

TSMC is the big winner, having made them both At an event today, Apple executives said that the new iPhone Xs and Xs Max will contain the first smartphone processor to be made using 7 nm manufacturing technology, the most advanced process node. Huawei made the same claim, to less fanfare, late last month and it’s unclear who really deserves the accolades.

Yale’s Robot Hand Copies How Your Fingers Work to Improve Object Manipulation

These robotic fingers can turn friction on and off to make it easier to manipulate objects with one hand In-hand manipulation is one of the things near the top of a very, very, very long list of things that humans do without thinking that are extraordinarily difficult for robots. It’s the act of repositioning an object with one hand, usually with your fingers—you do it whenever you pick up a pen, for example, to switch from a “picking up” grasp to a “writing something” grasp. Next time you do this, pay attention to the intricate, coordinated motion that happens, and ask yourself just how in the world you could honestly expect a robot to do something similar. And yet, robots are learning to do such things. For example, OpenAI recently taught a five-fingered hand to manipulate a cube, which is great, if you have a lot of patience and/or computing resources, Continue reading Yale’s Robot Hand Copies How Your Fingers Work to Improve Object Manipulation

Calling All Robots

IEEE Spectrum is building the world’s largest, coolest robotics catalog Photo: IEEE Spectrum; Devices: iStockphoto Do you like robots? Of course you do! You’re reading IEEE Spectrum, so you almost certainly love robots. Robots capture our imagination. Robots are the future. Now let us ask you this: What’s your favorite robot? We bet some of you said R2-D2. Or maybe Rosie. Or Robby. Or Johnny 5. Or Data. These are all cool robots. We like them too! But here’s the problem: Those are not real robots. We see this happen often, especially with kids. When you ask them which robots they find inspiring, the answers typically come from science fiction. And why is that a problem? Because we’ve reached the point where it’s clear that robots are going to affect every aspect of our lives. It won’t happen overnight, but most of us will likely see the day when robotics will be Continue reading Calling All Robots