The great explorers Lewis and Clark knew the importance of team expeditions. Now, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are developing a small scout robot called the Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER) to accompany the next generation of Martian rovers in their outer space explorations.
Inspired by origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, PUFFER is designed to change shape in order to squeeze into small crevasses that are too tight for rovers to reach. So far the two-wheeled scout has been successfully tested in hostile and diverse terrains including the Mojave Desert and Antartica.
Though rovers themselves are built to last, they’re expensive and NASA engineers take care not to send them on overtly dangerous missions. A handful of PUFFERs are comparatively cheap and can be deployed in high-risk regions.
“They can do parallel science with a rover, so you can increase the amount you’re doing in a day,” Jaakko Karras, PUFFER’s project manager at JPL, said in a press release. “We can see these being used in hard-to-reach locations — squeezing under ledges, for example.”
Karras developed the PUFFER design by combining various origami techniques and biomimetic movements. The scout originated with four wheels but was eventually reduced to two with the addition of large treads that allow it to better grip and climb inclines. If PUFFER needs to recharge, it can simply flip over and collect sunlight through solar panels on its underside.
Now that PUFFER can roam, it needs to be fitted with Bluetooth so it can be controlled remotely and packed with scientific instruments that will enable it to take and evaluate water samples and study the chemical makeup of its environment. NASA also plans to scale it up slightly to the size of a breadbox in order to make it a bit more durable.
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.