Meet DARPA's 6'2" disaster-response robot

Because hey, we've got to start somewhere. And you've got to love the glowing Iron Man chest piece.

From CNN:

The ATLAS humanoid robot, which looks vaguely like something from the "Terminator" movies, was created by Boston Dynamics for DARPA, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. It will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), a competition that invites engineers to create a remotely controlled robot that can respond to natural or man-made disasters.

The winning robot could be used in situations deemed too dangerous for humans, like the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The DRC is broken up into three challenges. The first was the Virtual Robotics Challenge, in which 26 teams controlled simulated, 3-D robots. Only seven of those teams - including participants from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory – were chosen to go on to the next stage. They will each get their very own ATLAS for the Robotics Challenge Trials, a real-life obstacle course competition between robots that will take place this December in Florida.

As part of the challenge, the teams will program their humanoid robot to accomplish a range of tasks. ATLAS will need to drive a car, navigate complicated terrain on foot and move rubble in order to enter a building. It will also have to climb stairs and use various tools to do things like turn off valves or break through concrete walls.

 

Construction of New Antimatter Factory at CERN

Homo-Sapiens (being the insane and awesome apes that we are) are now working to ramp up our production of antimatter. More antimatter, more experiments. More experiments, more knowledge.

What could possibly go wrong?


from Science World Report:

In the antimatter hall, four collaborations – ATRAP, ALPHA, ASACUSA and AEGIS – trap antiprotons using Penning traps, to make antihydrogen for experiments. But in most of today’s set-ups, more than 99% of the antiprotons from the AD are lost through the degrader foils that decelerate the particles from their ejection energy down to the energy suitable for trapping (around 5 keV).

(Photo : CERN)
The Antiproton Decelerator provides beams of low-energy antiprotons to experiments, mainly for studies of antimatter