🐕️ Robot Dogs Are Using Yoga Balls to Walk

Hello, fellow nerds 🧙

Happy belated May the 4th! And may the force be with you. In celebration, here’s one of our favorite Star Wars scenes from Rogue One. We definitely don’t quote this every day. Nope. Definitely not.

Here’s the daily quests in AI to complete today:

• 🐕️ Robot Dogs Are Using Yoga Balls to Walk

• 🛩️ C’ya Maverick - Unmanned Aircrafts Are The Future

• 🤣 Meme Monday

• : The Helldivers Have Spoken

Robot Dogs Are Using Yoga Balls to Walk

Now realistically, this doesn’t sound like something you’d find practical. Which, you’d probably be right in thinking that. But seeing this robot dog using a yoga ball to walk itself has to be a technical marvel in the robot space. And hilarious at the same time.

And according to Nvidia, this is truly a technical marvel.

See, they’ve actually just developed an LLM agent named “DrEureka” that writes code to train robot skills in a video game like simulation, and then writes more code to bridge the difficult simulation to reality gap. It fully automates everything from new skill learning to real-world deployment.

The application of the robo dog-yoga ball test was used because it’s actually not possible to accurately simulate the bouncy ball surface. Yet DrEureka has no trouble searching over a vast space of sim-to-real configurations, and enables the dog to steer the ball on various terrains, even walking sideways.

Now, I’m no expert but there’s one thing that would’ve made this test so much better, so much more practical in my life… if they were walking a cat on a yogo ball instead of a dog. Just saying.

C’ya Maverick - Unmanned Aircrafts Are The Future

US Air Force Secretary, Frank Kendall, got the need for speed firsthand when he flew in the cockpit of an F-16, AI piloted aircraft for an hour with speeds up to 550mph.

Shortly after, the AI aircraft kicked Kendall out of the passenger seat, and flew up to 1,200 mph during a dogfight with a human pilot… yikes.

Woah 🤯
He was so impressed with its abilities, the USAF is planning 1,000+ AI controlled jets by 2028.

Although the first AI vs human dogfight was in 2023, it’s learning so rapidly that it’s already outperforming humans in some combat scenarios.

Modernizing aircrafts is an expensive endeavor. However, AI aircrafts are both smaller and cheaper to manufacture. Sounds like a win-win when the US has a $34.56 trillion dollar deficit.

Doom and Gloom
Some fear what will happen if AI is given control of lethal weapons but Kendall assured human oversight will continue to be imperative in decision-making regarding weapons.

Eliminate Casualties?
If the AI aircrafts have the potential to replace the need for risking the lives of human pilots and can be deployed in moments notice, why would we risk casualties of war?

🤣 Meme Monday

It’s Monday, we all need a little laugh…

🤗 Daily Delight

Just something fun and interesting around the web.

This is for all the Helldivers fighting for democracy out there. With the recent drama unfolding between Sony and PC gamers —The 200,000+ influx of negative Steam reviews bombing Helldivers 2 because Sony made it mandatory to create a PSN account which ultimately blocked our fellow Helldivers from spreading democracy in 177 different countries because PSN isn’t in their country— is finally over. We won. Now let’s go back to spreading freedom.

What’s happening inside the Realm

A list of side quests to explore and more.

• 😐️ Columbia Engineering is developing a face model for robots so they can have some self expression when they talk, and it’s still just a wee bit creepy.

• 🔎 Google just introduced a new feature to search that allows you to type "@gemini” in the search bar letting you prompt their Gemini model whenever you want.

• 📸 Tesla’s Optimus robot got on camera again, and this time it was sorting batteries like a champ and going for long walks around the Tesla offices.

• 💊 The future of prescriptions are looking wild thanks to generative AI having the ability to design drugs all on its own.

That’s all the quests we have for today. Check back tomorrow for more!

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