Ingvar Santry

1/7 Iron Man, in real life. 🤖 Italian engineers took a humanoid robot, added four jet engines and got it off the ground. Meet iRonCub3. Video: IIT.

6/7 More seriously, the idea is to combine flying with working with its hands: reach somewhere difficult, then actually do something there.

1/7 Iron Man, in real life. 🤖 Italian engineers took a humanoid robot, added four jet engines and got it off the ground. Meet iRonCub3. Video: IIT.

4/7 The researchers used wind-tunnel tests and machine learning to build aerodynamic models for control. The approach could also be useful for other robots with unconventional shapes.

1/7 Iron Man, in real life. 🤖 Italian engineers took a humanoid robot, added four jet engines and got it off the ground. Meet iRonCub3. Video: IIT.

2/7 It is based on iCub3, a teleoperated humanoid. Two jet engines go on its arms and two on a jetpack on its back. That required a new titanium spine and heat-resistant protection. With the engines, the robot weighs about 70 kg.

1/8 An inflatable battery. This strange thing in Italy looks like an airship that has landed in the wrong place. It is actually part of a giant energy store. Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide to save electricity for later.

7/8 The Ottana plant is rated at 20 MW / 200 MWh: ten hours of output at its rated power. The CO₂ is the working fluid. The energy comes from the electricity used to charge the system, with losses along the way.

1/8 An inflatable battery. This strange thing in Italy looks like an airship that has landed in the wrong place. It is actually part of a giant energy store. Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide to save electricity for later.

5/8 CHARGE, when electricity is cheap: Take CO₂ gas from the dome at near-atmospheric pressure. Compress and cool it into a liquid for storage in pressure vessels. Save the heat released along the way in a kind of industrial thermos.

1/8 An inflatable battery. This strange thing in Italy looks like an airship that has landed in the wrong place. It is actually part of a giant energy store. Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide to save electricity for later.

3/8 A familiar answer is pumped hydro: pump water into an uphill reservoir when electricity is plentiful; let it run back through turbines when it is needed. Simple and dependable, but you need the right landscape.

1/8 An inflatable battery. This strange thing in Italy looks like an airship that has landed in the wrong place. It is actually part of a giant energy store. Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide to save electricity for later.

1/7 This tetrahedron has four faces. But it can rest stably on only one. Set it on any of the others on a level surface, and it tips back. Mathematicians love abstractions. Sometimes their equations acquire a rather strange physical form. #Geometry #Engineering

6/7 Quanta reports tolerances of 0.1 gram and 0.1 millimetre. The frame also has to stay rigid: if its edges bend, you're solving a different problem. https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-pyramid-like-shape-always-lands-the-same-side-up-20250625/

1/7 This tetrahedron has four faces. But it can rest stably on only one. Set it on any of the others on a level surface, and it tips back. Mathematicians love abstractions. Sometimes their equations acquire a rather strange physical form. #Geometry #Engineering

4/7 As it turned out, he wasn't done. In 2023, Domokos, Gergő Almádi, Robert Dawson and Krisztina Regős published a proof showing how a tetrahedron could be weighted to have just one stable face.

1/7 This tetrahedron has four faces. But it can rest stably on only one. Set it on any of the others on a level surface, and it tips back. Mathematicians love abstractions. Sometimes their equations acquire a rather strange physical form. #Geometry #Engineering

2/7 Take the Gömböc, developed by Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi in 2006. It rights itself like a roly-poly toy, despite being made of a uniform material, with no hidden ballast.

1/8 For me, the most interesting thing in TECHNORED's lab was its bin-picking system. A camera scans a pile of parts; an algorithm identifies each part and its position in space. The robot chooses one it can readily grasp, picks it up and moves it. #Robotics #MachineVision

7/8 They also spoke of a massage robot they were developing for gyms and hotels. That's almost Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You have to be very sure of your technology to sell something like that. I immediately wanted to get invited to the tests.

1/8 For me, the most interesting thing in TECHNORED's lab was its bin-picking system. A camera scans a pile of parts; an algorithm identifies each part and its position in space. The robot chooses one it can readily grasp, picks it up and moves it. #Robotics #MachineVision

5/8 During my visit, they spoke of plans to localize gearbox and drive production. Without global cooperation, though, the cost of a single robot cell goes into the stratosphere.

1/8 For me, the most interesting thing in TECHNORED's lab was its bin-picking system. A camera scans a pile of parts; an algorithm identifies each part and its position in space. The robot chooses one it can readily grasp, picks it up and moves it. #Robotics #MachineVision

3/8 The conversation during my visit actually began with an unexpected remark from a company representative: “There is no domestically produced robot in Russia today. You simply won't find one.” When a robot vendor admits that, it's a good start to a conversation.

1/8 For me, the most interesting thing in TECHNORED's lab was its bin-picking system. A camera scans a pile of parts; an algorithm identifies each part and its position in space. The robot chooses one it can readily grasp, picks it up and moves it. #Robotics #MachineVision

1/6 The Progress launch at Baikonur looked better on video, just as I'd expected. The cameras can get much closer than safety rules allow spectators to stand.

5/6 You imagine riding that lift to climb into the little sphere at the top of the rocket. All around you is endless steppe. Endless nothing.

1/6 The Progress launch at Baikonur looked better on video, just as I'd expected. The cameras can get much closer than safety rules allow spectators to stand.

3/6 The real shift in perception comes when you get close to the launchpad itself. I had that chance at Gagarin's Start.

1/6 The Progress launch at Baikonur looked better on video, just as I'd expected. The cameras can get much closer than safety rules allow spectators to stand.

1/12 A whale I photographed through binoculars was identified from my phone picture. At the time, it was only its second documented sighting in the wild on Happywhale. Getting there involved printing nuts that refused to fit their threads.

11/12 On a rolling boat, the F002X worked best. I wasn't afraid to leave the phone hanging from my neck along with the binoculars. The whole arrangement was still rather unwieldy, but it could take decent photographs.

1/12 A whale I photographed through binoculars was identified from my phone picture. At the time, it was only its second documented sighting in the wild on Happywhale. Getting there involved printing nuts that refused to fit their threads.

9/12 In the end, this was one of those cases where cheap Chinese gadgets were more practical than the homemade option. I got hold of two Apexel adapters to test.

1/12 A whale I photographed through binoculars was identified from my phone picture. At the time, it was only its second documented sighting in the wild on Happywhale. Getting there involved printing nuts that refused to fit their threads.

7/12 A larger version, suitable for telescopes, had plenty of adjustment. I tried that one with binoculars, but the alignment kept slipping. In my setup, it was only useful when kept stationary.

1/12 A whale I photographed through binoculars was identified from my phone picture. At the time, it was only its second documented sighting in the wild on Happywhale. Getting there involved printing nuts that refused to fit their threads.

5/12 There's an entire world of manufacturers making phone adapters for optical instruments. When I was looking, a branded PhoneSkope or Gosky kit cost around $100. Let's not even get into the monstrous rigs for filmmakers.

1/12 A whale I photographed through binoculars was identified from my phone picture. At the time, it was only its second documented sighting in the wild on Happywhale. Getting there involved printing nuts that refused to fit their threads.

3/12 There aren't that many whales, and they live a long time, so naturalists are interested in the travels of individual animals. A good photograph can identify one. For a humpback, the markings on its tail are its calling card.

1/12 A whale I photographed through binoculars was identified from my phone picture. At the time, it was only its second documented sighting in the wild on Happywhale. Getting there involved printing nuts that refused to fit their threads.