James Cameron may have an affinity for deep sea exploration, but the ocean can be a dark and forbidding place where few people care to venture. Much of the world’s internet and international phone communications are enabled by submarine cables. Offshore oil rigs need constant monitoring. And with scientists looking to the ocean as a source of sustainable energy, there’s an increasing need to maintain deep sea equipment. Enter Eelume, a snakelike robot built to do just that.
Eelume may look like a predator from an undersea horror film, but the robot wasn’t conceived to be a nightmare. A partnership between engineers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Konsberg Maritime, and Statoil, Eelume’s thin and flexible form enables it to reach areas that are too confined for conventional remote operated vehicles (ROVs). Most ROVs tend to be big and bulky, making them costly and impractical to use in quick fixes. Even in more comprehensive jobs, ROVs’ size can keep them from accessing certain areas. Eelume is designed as a cost-effective alternative for tackling small maintenance and light intervention operations such as visual inspections, cleaning, and adjusting valves on underwater equipment.
“Eelume is a good example of how new technology and innovation contributes to cost reduction,” Statoil’s CTO, Elisabeth Kirkland Kvalheim, says on her company’s website. “Instead of using large and expensive vessels for small jobs, we now introduce a flexible robot acting as a self going janitor on the seabed.”
The robot mechanic can move through the water by either slithering like a snake or using a set of propellers attached to its tail. The machines are currently tethered by a power chord but Eelume’s creators hope to free future versions as the technology advances. Someday they’ll be permanently installed on the ocean floor, where they’ll perform planned and on-demand operations.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.