Welcome to the April 21, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Robots Lose to Humans in Half-Marathon
• Quantum GPS Helps Planes Navigate when Regular GPS Is Jammed
• Making AI-Generated Code More Accurate in Any Language
• Bhutan Turns to 'Green' Cryptocurrency to Fuel Economy
• Sniffing Out New Possibilities for Animal-Computer Interaction
• Researchers Achieve 5.7 Tb/s Data Transfer Speeds Using Infrared Light
• Thailand Unveils Smart Robot Officer
• Using AI to Predict Tariff Impacts
• Classic Hacking Technique Works on Some Quantum Computers
• Space-Tolerant Computer Chips
• 7-Eleven Unveils Store Tech of the Future
• AI Trained at Lightspeed

Robots Lose to Humans in Half-Marathon

Beijing hosted a half-marathon pitting humanoid robots against humans on Saturday, part of a technical demonstration of robots and AI. The robots from Chinese manufacturers ranged in shapes and sizes, some shorter than 120 centimeters (3.9 feet), others as tall as 1.8 meters (6 feet). Twenty-one bipedal robots raced alongside 10,000 humans, with robot Tiangong Ultra finishing the half-marathon in 2 hours 40 minutes; the fastest human finished in 1 hour, 11 minutes.
[ » Read full article ]

Quantum GPS Helps Planes Navigate when Regular GPS Is Jammed

In testing on a small aircraft in February, researchers affiliated with Australian quantum company Q-CTRL demonstrated a quantum magnetic navigation system that outperformed standard backup systems used when GPS signals are jammed. The MagNav navigation device uses AI-powered software to compare readings against a magnetic field map and standard aircraft motion sensor readings. It simultaneously removes signal noise from magnetic interference caused by other electronics on board an aircraft while being “undetectable and unjammable," according to Q-CTRL's Michael Biercuk.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

Making AI-Generated Code More Accurate in Any Language

An international team of researchers developed a framework to improve AI-generated code. The researchers engineered knowledge that an expert would have into a large language model to guide it to the most promising outputs that adhere to the rules of the relevant programming language. The framework assigns a weight to each output based on its likelihood of being semantically accurate and structurally valid, eliminating lower-weighted outputs at each step in the computation.
[ » Read full article ]

Bhutan Turns to 'Green' Cryptocurrency to Fuel Economy

Bhutan hopes a focus on mining green cryptocurrencies via hydropower will bolster its economy and stop the exodus of young, educated residents by creating jobs in blockchain and AI, according to Ujjwal Deep Dahal of the nation's sovereign wealth fund Druk Holding and Investments Ltd. The fund controls the only power generation utility in the Himalayan nation, which runs solely on hydropower, and operates supercomputers using hydropower.
[ » Read full article ]

Sniffing Out New Possibilities for Animal-Computer Interaction

Computer scientists at the University of Glasgow and zookeepers at Blair Drummond Safari Park in Scotland tested an interactive system enabling red-ruffed lemurs and humans to share multisensory experiences. The SensorySafari system, equipped with infrared sensors, allowed the lemurs to trigger videos, sounds, smells, or a combination of two or more. The lemurs triggered the device more often when the interactive elements were active and preferred the smells over videos alone.
[ » Read full article ]

Researchers Achieve 5.7 Tb/s Data Transfer Speeds Using Infrared Light

Researchers at the Netherlands' Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) established a high-speed wireless connection between the north Eindhoven TU/e campus and the south Eindhoven High Tech Campus, achieving a data transmission speed of 5.7 Tb/s over 4.6 km (2.85 miles). The data was transmitted through focused infrared light beams using advanced optical antennas from local telecommunications equipment supplier Aircision, eliminating the need for radio signals or cables.
[ » Read full article ]

Thailand Unveils Smart Robot Officer

The Royal Thai Police rolled out Thailand's first AI police robot at the Songkran festival in Nakhon Pathom province last week. The "AI Police Cyborg 1.0" features 360-degree AI cameras linked to the province's Command and Control Center. It also features built-in AI technology that can analyze live footage from CCTV cameras and drones.
[ » Read full article ]

Using AI to Predict Tariff Impacts

Some companies are turning to supply-chain technology providers to help them deal with the ongoing uncertainty related to U.S. President Trump's tariff announcements. This has prompted a number of firms to unveil AI tools to help clients assess the impact of new tariffs. Tools like Altana's Tariff Scenario Planner and platforms from Aera Technology and Flexport, among others, leverage AI to help businesses consider various tariff scenarios.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

Classic Hacking Technique Works on Some Quantum Computers

Researchers at the University of Gdansk in Poland and Northwestern University separately used row-hammer attacks to hack IBM quantum computers. With quantum computers, such attacks involve changing the states of qubits. University of Gdansk researchers ran numerous short programs that manipulated the qubits, triggering crosstalk between the affected qubits and an adjacent qubit whose stored information was changed. The Northwestern researchers achieved a similar result by developing a method to alter the microwave pulses that control and direct qubits.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

Space-Tolerant Computer Chips

A compact radiation-hardened (rad-hard) chip developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Sandia National Laboratories achieved equivalent or better radiation tolerance in a smaller area than rad-hard chips with conventional flip-flop (FF) designs. As an alternative to the triple modular redundancy associated with traditional FF designs, the researchers reused some components of a single basic FF, which allowed for the same radiation tolerance level while eliminating the high overhead associated with using three copies of the FF.
[ » Read full article ]

7-Eleven Unveils Store Tech of the Future

At the World Exposition in Osaka, two Seven-Eleven Japan Co. convenience stores opened to highlight new technologies the company plans to implement by 2030. Remote-controlled avatar robots from startup Avatarin Inc., featuring the operator's face, help customers use self-checkout machines. Among other advances, certain sections of flooring feature sensors that turn on power when they detect vibrations from customers' footsteps.
[ » Read full article ]

AI Trained at Lightspeed

A programmable chip developed by engineers at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) can train nonlinear neural networks using light. The breakthrough relies on a special semiconductor material that can be manipulated by light input. “We’re not changing the chip’s structure,” explains UPenn's Liang Feng (pictured, right). “We’re using light itself to create patterns inside the material, which then reshapes how the light moves through it.” In testing, the platform achieved over 97% accuracy on a simple nonlinear decision boundary task and over 96% on the Iris flower dataset, a machine learning standard.
[ » Read full article ]