Category: Tech

A new real-life transformer developed at Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST) can reconfigure its body to achieve eight distinct types of motion and assess the environment to pick the most effective combination of motions to manoeuvre.

The new robot called M4 – short for Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot – can roll on four wheels, turn its wheels into rotors and fly, stand on two wheels like a meerkat to peer over obstacles, walk by using its wheels like feet, use two rotors to help it roll up steep slopes on two wheels, tumble, and do much more.

With such a wide range of capabilities, this robot can find applications in diverse areas, such as transporting injured people to a hospital to explore unknown planets, believe its developers at CAST.

M4 has been tested outdoors and navigated the terrain of Caltech’s campus in Pasadena, California. One of its key features is its ability to repurpose its appendages to wheels, legs, or thrusters.

The design of M4 was heavily influenced by nature. Its developers were inspired by how chukar birds use the flapping of their wings to get force while running up steep inclines, and how sea lions use their flippers for different types of locomotion on sea and land.

A paper announcing the new robot was published in Nature Communications on June 27. The bioinspired research was funded by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.

The indigenously-developed Tactical Aerial Platform for Advanced Surveillance (TAPAS) 201 Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is now ready for user evaluation trials, said the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO).

Hailed as the Indian version of the US’ Predator drones, TAPAS 201 can carry different combinations of payloads such as Medium Range Electro Optic, Long Range Electro Optic, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Electronic Intelligence, Communication Intelligence and Situational Awareness Payloads to perform missions during day and night.

The UAV has been designed and developed by the Bengaluru-based Aeronautical Development Establishment. The multi-mission vehicle can carry out the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles for the three armed forces with an endurance of 24 to 30 hours.

On June 27, the TAPAS UAV was demonstrated before the Tri-Services team for the first time at Aeronautical Test Range in Chitradurga in Karnataka, where it achieved a milestone of 200 flights. On June 16, the DRDO and the Indian Navy successfully demonstrated transferring of command and control capabilities of TAPAS UAV from a distant ground station to onboard INS Subhadra, 148 km from Karwar Naval Base in the southern state.

The MALE UAV was earlier referred to as Rustom. Besides the Indian Army, the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy, internal security agencies such as State police forces, Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force, and Coast Guards are its prospective users.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Bharat Electronics Limited will be the production partners for the MALE UAV.

A flying car developed by Alef Aeronautics has got a legal approval from the US government. The company has received a Special Airworthiness Certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

In a statement, the company said that the FAA is working on its policies for electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, as well as governing interactions between eVTOLs and ground infrastructure.

Alef’s Special Airworthiness Certificate, thus, limits the locations and purpose for which Alef is permitted to fly.

The flying car is 100% electric, can be driven on roads, has vertical take-off and landing capabilities and can carry one or two occupants. It is priced at about $300,000 (approximately Rs. 2.46 crore). The car can fly over traffic and accidents on roadways.

Alef Aeronautics hopes to deliver the flying cars to customers by the end of 2025. The company said that 440 of its vehicles have been pre-ordered from both people and companies.

The flying car is being developed to drive on urban and rural roads and can be parked in regular-sized parking garages. It will not go faster than 25 miles per hour (approximately 40.23 km).

Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane, VSS Unity, successfully took three customers and three crew members to the edge of space on June 29.

The vessel took off along a support plane, Eve, and separated in mid-air, firing its rocket to climb almost vertically towards the edge of space. At the peak of the flight, with the rocket shut down, the crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness before the Unity shifted into re-entry mode and began its gliding descent back to Earth. The entire flight lasted about 75 minutes. Unity touched down safely at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The plane peaked at an altitude of 2,79,000 feet (about 85 kilometers or 53 miles), which is a distance slightly short from the US authorities’ standard of the beginning of space for aircraft (50 miles).

Two Italian air force officers and an aerospace engineer joined as the customers on the flight, along with three Virgin Galactic crew members, two of them piloting the vehicle.

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, has a waiting list of about 800 customers who have paid between $250,000 (approximately €235,000) and $450,000 for such a trip. Branson himself made a flight in July 2021.

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur has successfully conducted a test flight for cloud seeding, the premier institution said in a statement issued on June 22.

Cloud seeding involves using many chemical agents such as silver iodide, dry ice, common salt, and other elements with the aim of enhancing the probability of rains. The Computer Science and Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur initiated the cloud seeding project a few years ago.

The test flight on June 21 went up to an approximate height of 5,000 feet. It landed on the IIT Kanpur lab airstrip after successfully completing the ride. The experiment was conducted with due approval from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

For the test flight, a Cessna aircraft was flown from the flight laboratory of IIT Kanpur with cloud seeding attachments procured from a US-based manufacturer. The modifications in the aircraft were approved by the manufacturers of the aircraft and the DGCA. Now, with the approval from the DGCA and successful completion of the first trial, the institution is close to completing the set-up, said the Computer Science and Engineering Department team.

Mahindra Defence Systems (MDS) has started the deliveries of Armado – a modular type vehicle that can be upgraded or configured to suit a wide variety of operational roles – to the Indian armed forces.

Armado, an Armoured Light Specialist Vehicle (ALSV) designed and developed by Mahindra & Mahindra, can be used in counter-terrorist operations such as patrolling high-intensity areas, special forces operations and quick reaction teams. Its other uses include being a weapon carrier, a reconnaissance vehicle, a border security vehicle and being used in raids in open or desert terrains.

The vehicle has a 3.2-litre, turbocharged, direct-injection diesel engine that can also run on NATO-grade diesel. The engine produces 215 hp and 500 Nm of torque and power is delivered to all four wheels via a 4-speed automatic gearbox. The Armado has a claimed top speed of over 120 kph and a 0-60 kph time of 12 seconds, and has a payload capacity of 1,000 kg. It offers ballistic protection up to B7, Stanag Level II.

According to MDS, Armado features Bilstein independent suspension for all four corners and gets 318/80 R17 tyres, which can also run without air or a puncture for up to 50 km. It has a centralised tyre inflation system, a power steering system, and can be configured to be either left-hand drive or right-hand drive.

Along with a seating capacity of six passengers that can be configured to seat up to eight, the vehicle has a public address (PA) system, GPS, automatic grenade launcher, electric winch, HF/UHF/VHF radio and a self-cleaning-type exhaust scavenging and air filtration system for dusty climates.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped the Uttar Pradesh Police arrest 87 suspected cheats who appeared as dummy candidates in the Village Development Officer recruitment examination conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UPSSSC) on June 27.

With the use of advanced AI based face recognition software, the UP Police made the arrests across the state. Those arrested included people who appeared fraudulently in place of actual aspirants for solving the exam. The system reportedly did real-time Aadhaar-based cross-verification of candidates.

Maximum of the arrests were made in Lucknow (11), followed by Banda (10), Aligarh (8), Kanpur (8), Varanasi (8), Ghaziabad (7), Gorakhpur (6), Azamgarh (5), Gautam Buddh Nagar (5), Mirzapur (5), Agra (4), Jhansi (4), Basti (2), and one each in Bareilly, Meerut, Prayagraj and Moradabad, the UP Police said. The mission was accomplished with help of Special Task Force and district and local police administration. The arrested dummy candidates included a female.

The UP Police said suitable legal action is being taken in all these cases at district level, including filing of FIRs on charges of cheating, forgery, and using unfair means during state-held public examinations.

Scientists have created a tiny pangolin-inspired magnetic robot that can move around a human body and perform minimally invasive medical procedures.

The tiny robot works like an animal and swims around the human body. So far tested on practice tissue, it was found to be capable of heating up hard-to-reach places, such as the stomach and intestines, delivering cargo to tissues and stopping bleeding. The heat could be used for performing cancer treatment or mitigating bleeding.

Scientists have long aimed at creating magnetic soft robots made out of soft metals that could navigate around the body without surgery or other invasive procedures. However, the safety and functionality of the robots were the challenges. Researchers then turned to the pangolin, a mammal covered in scales. The scientists studied its scales and realised these served as an armour helping the animal move flexibly. Pangolin’s rigid scales fit together in an overlapping structure that lets them fit over the top of each other. The scientists picked this theory for their new robots.

The tiny robots – at 1 cm by 2 cm by 0.2 mm – use pangolin’s overlapping scale design and are able to heat, change shape and roll around. The details of the research are carried in the paper, ‘Pangolin-inspired untethered magnetic robot for on-demand biomedical heating applications’ published in Nature Communications.

Indian space agency, ISRO’s commercial arm NewSpace India will install mobile satellite service (MSS) terminals on at least 1 lakh fishing boats across nine states and four union territories, to help authorities send emergency weather alerts and alert fishermen about international water border violations. India’s indigenous navigation satellite system, Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) will run the network.

NewSpace India Ltd has started selecting private vendors to supply, install and commission MSS terminals for establishing vessel communication and support system in marine fishing vessels for monitoring, control and surveillance, say reports.

The network will consist of dedicated ground stations and satellite terminals for field deployment to provide better security to fishermen in Indian waters and improve national security. These Xponders will be installed in coastal states such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Maharashtra, Daman and Diu, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Lakshadweep and West Bengal.

Once in place, the network will help authorities to form a two-way communication system with fishermen, access locations from time to time, issue emergency weather alerts, alarms for international water border violations, and provide accurate navigation warnings. The Xponders will also have in-built wifi and bluetooth transceivers to communicate. A multilingual app is also being developed to allow communication between the app and transponders, say reports.

Japanese automaker Suzuki has agreed to jointly start producing flying cars with SkyDrive, a leading flying car start-up in Japan, around the spring of 2024.

Flying cars are aircraft that can take off vertically and land using multiple rotors. The vehicles are typically meant for carrying a small number of people. Some of its models are also equipped for use on land.

SkyDrive will set up a fully-owned production subsidiary that will assemble vehicles utilising the Suzuki group’s plant in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan.

The announcement comes a day after SkyDrive unveiled at the Paris Airshow a plan to change the design of its vehicle under development so it can carry three people instead of two. The new design has an overall length of about 13 meters and a height of 3 meters. It will help the vehicle extend the maximum flight range to about 15 kilometers from the current 10 kilometers.

SkyDrive and Suzuki announced a tie-up in the area of flying vehicles in March 2022. Set up by former Toyota engineers in 2018, SkyDrive aims to utilise its flying vehicles at the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka.

One of the fastest growing segments in mobility, flying cars enjoy the interest of companies such as Toyota and Japan Airlines. These big companies are entering the niche market through start-ups that have development capabilities.