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Soft Robotics, a Bedford, Mass., startup, is using NVIDIA Isaac Sim to help close the ‘sim to real gap’ for robotic gripping applications. One area is perfecting gripping for pick and placement of foods for packaging. Unlike other industries that have adopted robotics, the $8 trillion food market has been slow to develop robots to handle variable items in unstructured environments, says Soft Robotics.

The restructuring announced by Microsoft particularly affects the teams behind AltSpaceVR and the Mixed Reality Tool Kit. According to reports in American media, these have been completely fired. For the time being, the expected AI investment of ten billion dollar in ChatGPT seems to continue.

Researchers at CyberArk Labs had ChatGPT write malicious code, and have it automatically mutate in order to circumvent security tools. Last week it was announced that ChatGPT could be used to write code as part of malware, but CyberArk Labs goes a step further by having ChatGPT create the malware itself, which is also not noticed by security tools.

FANUC robotics integrator Aerobotix has received a special award at a Lockheed Martin supplier conference. Aerobotix was presented with a 2022 Supplier Recognition Award for Ease of Doing Business. The award describes Aerobotix as “a vital partner” of Lockheed Martin’s Space division. 

The physical skills of Atlas, one of the robots being developed by Boston Dynamics, have again increased significantly. To show what the robot is capable of, Boston Dynamics has posted a new video.

The World Economic Forum, in partnership with Accenture and Microsoft, unveiled at its Annual Meeting 2023 a working prototype of its Global Collaboration Village, a purpose-driven metaverse where organizations can convene to learn about, create solutions for, and take action on the world’s most pressing challenges.

The Indy Autonomous Challenge team PoliMOVE from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), and the University of Alabama (Alabama) won the second annual Autonomous Challenge at  CES reaching max speeds of 180 mph, a new autonomous speed world record for a racetrack.

Worldwide smartphone shipments fell 17% year on year in Q4 2022. Full-year 2022 shipments declined by 11% to fewer than 1.2 billion, reflecting an extremely challenging year for all vendors. Apple reclaimed the top spot in Q4 and achieved its highest quarterly market share ever at 25%, despite facing shrinking demand and manufacturing issues in Zhengzhou.

A new technological development by Tel Aviv University has made it possible for a robot to smell using a biological sensor. The sensor sends electrical signals as a response to the presence of a nearby odor, which the robot can detect and interpret.

Can a robot be a better waiter than a human being? To answer this question, Dr. Luis Figueredo, senior scientist in the team of Prof. Sami Haddadin, sets up a robotic arm from the specialized robot maker Franka Emika on a table and hooks up a computer.