Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) and Zaptec sign a Memorandum of Understanding to explore how technologies developed by Zaptec for the oil and gas industry can be utilised in lunar mining. SEC is focusing on building a supply chain for extraction of water ice and minerals from the surface of the Moon, to convert the resources …
Future proofing against mass unemployment from robotics
A DARPA and Harvard lightweight Soft Exosuit overcomes the drawbacks of traditional, heavier exoskeleton systems, such as power-hungry battery packs and rigid components that can interfere with natural joint movement. It is made of soft, functional textiles woven into a piece of smart clothing that is pulled on like a pair of pants, and is …
Raptor is a fast-running biped robot developed by MSC Lab, KAIST. It has two under-actuated legs and a tail inspired by velociraptors. The Raptor robot runs at a speed of 46 km/h on a treadmill with off-board power. Tail-assisted pitch control provides stability over high obstacles. For more information about Raptor robot, email [email protected] or …
A highly popular article on Slashdot and Reddit Futurology makes note that the Google driverless car has not gotten a traffic ticket after driving 700,000 miles. Local government revenue in the USA was $1.73 trillion in 2014. So the traffic tickets make up 0.38% of the local government revenue. Self driving cars could save $500 …
The NY Times had a detailed writeup of what Isaac Asimov wrote for the 1964 World’s Fair of what he expected for 2014. There is a shorter edited version which has been making the rounds on the internet which mostly skips what Asimov got wrong. Asimov got robotics and 3D movies right among many other …
Nextbigfuture covered the Metzger et al plan for Affordable, Rapid Bootstrapping of the Space Industry and Solar System Civilization back in April 2012. NASA has been talking about the plan. A fully functioning, remote system of robotic excavators and simple machinery still is years away from reality, and much research on asteroids needs to be …
NASA has developed a water and ice mining robot for the moon and it is called RASSOR RASSOR, for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot and pronounced “razor,” the autonomous machine is far from space-ready, but the earliest design has shown engineers the broad strokes of what their lunar soil excavator needs in order to …
Here I lay out the research which I believe shows that Sky City Skyscrapers (200-300 stories) and robotic cars (4 times the density of road traffic) will make certain megacities (future New York, Shanghai, Tokyo etc…) one third to one half of the overall world population and they would have 75% more GDP per capita …
Contour Crafting Simulation plan for planetary infrastructure buildup (29 pages, 121 megabytes) Contour Crafting is a system for printing with cement like a very large ink jet printer. It has made 1 story structures here on earth. Basic infrastructure elements: – Landing pad – Blast protection wall – Roads – Shade walls – Hangars Other …
Journal of Aerospace engineering – Affordable, Rapid Bootstrapping of Space Industry and Solar System Civilization Advances in robotics and additive manufacturing have become game‐changing for the prospects of space industry. It has become feasible to bootstrap a self‐sustaining, self‐expanding industry at reasonably low cost. Simple modeling was developed to identify the main parameters of successful …