Amaran the Tree-Climbing Robot Can Safely Harvest Coconuts

Coconuts may be delicious and useful for producing a wide range of products, but harvesting them is no easy task. Specially trained harvesters must risk their lives by climbing trees roughly 15 meters high to hack off just one bunch of coconuts. A group of researchers in India has designed a robot, named Amaran, that could reduce the need for human harvesters to take such a risk. But is the robot up to the task? The researchers describe the tree-climbing robot in a paper published in the latest issue of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics. Along with lab tests, they compared Amaran’s ability to harvest coconuts to that of a 50-year-old veteran harvester. Whereas the man bested the robot in terms of overall speed, the robot excelled in endurance. To climb, Amaran relies on a ring-shaped body that clasps around trees of varying diameter. The robot carries a control module, motor drivers, a power management unit, and a Continue reading Amaran the Tree-Climbing Robot Can Safely Harvest Coconuts

Autonomous Robots Could Mine the Deep Seafloor

A battle is brewing over the fate of the deep ocean. Huge swaths of seafloor are rich in metals—nickel, copper, cobalt, zinc—that are key to making electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, and smartphones. Mining companies have proposed scraping and vacuuming the dark expanse to provide supplies for metal-intensive technologies. Marine scientists and environmentalists oppose such plans, warning of huge and potentially permanent damage to fragile ecosystems. Pietro Filardo is among the technology developers who are working to find common ground. Image: Pliant Energy Systems His company, Pliant Energy Systems, has built what looks like a black mechanical stingray. Its soft, rippling fins use hyperbolic geometry to move in a traveling wave pattern, propelling the skateboard-sized device through water. From an airy waterfront lab in Brooklyn, New York, Filardo’s team is developing tools and algorithms to transform the robot into an autonomous device equipped with grippers. Their goal is to pluck polymetallic nodules—potato-sized Continue reading Autonomous Robots Could Mine the Deep Seafloor

Making health care more personal

The health care system today largely focuses on helping people after they have problems. When they do receive treatment, it’s based on what has worked best on average across a huge, diverse group of patients. Now the company Health at Scale is making health care more proactive and personalized — and, true to its name, it’s doing so for millions of people. Health at Scale uses a new approach for making care recommendations based on new classes of machine-learning models that work even when only small amounts of data on individual patients, providers, and treatments are available. The company is already working with health plans, insurers, and employers to match patients with doctors. It’s also helping to identify people at rising risk of visiting the emergency department or being hospitalized in the future, and to predict the progression of chronic diseases. Recently, Health at Scale showed its models can identify Continue reading Making health care more personal