Sep 27, 2023
Read full article about: Microscale internal combustion engine powers insect robot
Researchers at Cornell University have developed a tiny quadruped robot powered by combustion actuators fueled by methane and oxygen. The insect-sized robot, published in Science, can jump 59 centimeters straight up and walk while carrying 22 times its own weight. The researchers aim to apply the power generated by the combustion actuators to large-scale, variable-recruitment musculature for stronger, more agile robots. "Putting thousands of these actuators in bundles over a rigid endoskeleton could allow for dexterous and fast land-based hybrid robots," said one researcher.
Read full article about: Even a chatbot has to take a breather from time to time
Google's PaLM 2 gets better at math when you let the language model take a breather.
In a paper, researchers have investigated whether language models such as GPT-4 or PaLM 2 are suitable as optimizers that automatically find solutions to predefined problems, such as recommending movies or solving grade school math problems.
The language models tried to find the best prompts for each task on their own. The prompt that PaLM 2-L used particularly well to solve math problems was curious: "Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step." Without taking a deep breath, accuracy dropped by almost ten points.
