Welcome to the January 23, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Ukraine's Wounded Soldiers to Get Bionic Arms
London Daily Express (U.K.)
Jacob Paul
January 18, 2023
U.K. technology company Open Bionics plans to fit two Ukrainian soldiers with three-dimensionally-printed bionic prostheses to replace hands lost to explosive injuries. In addition to providing custom-made Hero Arms to soldiers Andrii Gidzun and Vitalii Ivashchuk next month, the Open Bionics team has provided clinical training to three Ukrainian doctors. Open Bionics' Joel Gibbard explained the company designed the robotic hand, which can grasp objects with movable digits, using sensors triggered by muscles in the wearer's forearm "for activities of daily living. We're aiming for it to be able to hold objects of different sizes, to pick things up, hold a cup of coffee, tie shoelaces, brush teeth — these are the kind of things that we focused on in the design."
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Wi-Fi Routers Can Detect Human Locations, Poses Within a Room
Tom's Hardware
Mark Tyson
January 18, 2023
Carnegie Mellon University scientists have been testing a system that uses Wi-Fi signals to detect the positions and poses of people in a room. The researchers positioned TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 Wi-Fi routers at either end of the room, while algorithms generated wireframe models of people in the room by analyzing the signal interference the people caused. The researchers based the perception system on Wi-Fi signal channel-state-information, or the ratio between transmitted and received signal waves. A computer vision-capable neural network architecture processes this data to execute dense pose estimation; the researchers deconstructed the human form into 24 segments to accelerate wireframe representation. They claim the wireframes' position and pose estimates are as good as those generated by certain "image-based approaches."
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Hackers Can Make Computers Destroy Their Own Chips with Electricity
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
January 19, 2023
Zitai Chen and David Oswald at the U.K.'s University of Birmingham uncovered a bug in the control systems of server motherboards that could be exploited to compromise sensitive information or to destroy their central processing units (CPUs). The researchers found a feature in the Supermicro X11SSL-CF motherboard often used in servers that they could tap to upload their own control software. Chen and Oswald discovered a flash memory chip in the motherboard's baseboard management controller that they could remotely command to send excessive electrical current through the CPU, destroying it in seconds. After the researchers disclosed the flaw to Supermicro, the company said it has rated its severity as "high" and has patched the bug in its existing motherboards.
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Multimaterial 3D Printing, with a Twist
Harvard University John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Leah Burrows
January 18, 2023
Harvard University scientists three-dimensionally (3D)-printed multimaterial helical filaments via an additive manufacturing platform that "opens new avenues to generating multifunctional architected matter in bio-inspired motifs," according to the university’s Jennifer Lewis. The system incorporates a printhead comprised of four ink cartridges, each of which can house different materials. The inks are extruded through a nozzle that enables concurrent printing of multiple materials into a filament with helical features. Using this system, the researchers 3D-printed artificial muscles as helical dielectric elastomer actuator filaments that contract in response to voltage. They also produced lattices of variable rigidity by embedding stiff helical springs within a soft matrix.
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Google Cloud Introduces Shelf Inventory AI Tool for Retailers
The Wall Street Journal
Isabelle Bousquette
January 13, 2023
An artificial intelligence tool developed by researchers at Google Cloud aims to help big-box retailers improve shelf inventory tracking. The algorithm uses videos and images from the retailer's ceiling-mounted cameras, camera-equipped self-driving robots, or store associates to assess the availability of goods on shelves. The tool was trained on a database of more than a billion products and can recognize products regardless of the source or angle of the images. In tests at the innovation lab of supermarket chain Giant Eagle Inc., the tool achieved more than 90% accuracy, which Giant Eagle's Graham Watkins said is not sufficient to deploy it at scale. Giant Eagle will roll out a pilot program in an actual store, but a chain-wide deployment is not likely for several years (if at all).
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Faces from Ancient Egypt Coming Back to Life in Extraordinary Detail
Newsweek
Pandora Dewan
January 17, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and Egypt's Cairo University (CU) used software and a "reverse aging" process to replicate ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II's face. CU's Sahar Saleem used a computed tomography (CT) scanner to produce a three-dimensional model of Ramesses' head and skull, which formed the basis of the facial reconstruction. LJMU's Caroline Wilkinson said, "We have tested our methods using CT [scans] from living donors and we have evaluated the facial reconstruction using geometric comparison that shows approximately 70% [of the] surface of the facial reconstruction with less than 2 millimeters of error." Wilkinson said ancient Egyptian mummies also preserve features like ear shape, creases, or hair pattern, which "should increase the level of accuracy [of the reconstruction]."
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Decoding Brainwaves to Identify What Music Is Being Listened To
University of Essex (U.K.)
January 19, 2023
A brainwave-monitoring technique created by researchers at the U.K.'s University of Essex can identify to which specific piece of music people are listening. The researchers combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with electroencephalogram monitoring to measure a person's brain activity while listening to music. They used a deep learning neural network model to translate this data in order to reconstruct and accurately identify the piece of music with 71.8% accuracy. Essex's Ian Daly said, "We have shown we can decode music, which suggests that we may, one day, be able to decode language from the brain."
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How Smart Are the Robots Getting?
The New York Times
Cade Metz
January 20, 2023
New-generation online chatbots display a semblance of intelligence that appears to pass the Turing test, in which humans can no longer be certain whether they are conversing with a human or a machine. Bots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4 systems appear intelligent without being sentient or conscious; consequently, OpenAI's Ilya Sutskever says, "People think they can do things they cannot." Modern neural networks have learned to produce text by analyzing vast volumes of digital text and extrapolating patterns in how people link words, letters, and symbols. However, the chatbots' language skills belie their lack of reason or common sense.
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Scientists Create Computer Simulation Based on Digital Microbes
University of Galway (Ireland)
January 20, 2023
Researchers at Ireland's University of Galway have compiled the AGORA2 database of 7,203 digital microbes to generate computer models of the underlying mechanisms of, and patients' responses to, specific drug treatments. The researchers based the digital microbes on experimental knowledge from scientific literature, with special concentration on drug metabolism. Computer simulations created with AGORA2 demonstrate microbiome-fueled variability of drug metabolism between individuals, identifying microbes and metabolic processes for individual medications correlated with clinical observations. Galway's Ines Thiele described AGORA2 as "a milestone towards personalized, predictive computer simulations enabling the analysis of person-microbiome-drug interactions for precision medicine applications."
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Rentokil Pilots Facial Recognition System to Exterminate Rats
The Guardian (U.K.)
Tom Ambrose
January 21, 2023
U.K. pest control services provider Rentokil is testing facial recognition software developed alongside U.K. telecommunications company Vodafone as a tool for rat extermination. The surveillance technology tracks rats' behavior in the home, using artificial intelligence (AI) to stream real-time analysis; a central command center can then help to decide where and how to kill the camera-imaged rodents. Rentokil observed rats' behaviors in a controlled environment with cameras, while AI-driven machine learning facilitated recognition. Rentokil's Andy Ransom said the company gained access to "significant technology" with its acquisition of Israeli pest control firm Eitan Amichai. Customers including food producers and offices are testing the facial recognition tool, while Rentokil is targeting "cities of the future" in countries whose pest populations could spike soon.
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Simple Neural Nets Outperform State of the Art for Controlling Robotic Prosthetics
Michigan Engineering
Jim Lynch
January 17, 2023
A team of University of Michigan (U-M) doctors and engineers has developed artificial neural networks that offer more precise prosthetic hand and finger control than state-of-the-art systems. U-M's Cindy Chestek said, "This feed-forward network represents an older, simpler architecture — with information moving only in one direction, from input to output." The researchers found the network improved peak robotic finger velocity by 45% compared to traditional algorithms that do not employ neural networks. "We feel that the feed-forward system's simplicity enables the user to have more direct and intuitive control that may be closer to how the human body operates naturally," said Chestek.
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Antennas, Microchips Help Electronics Blur Line Between Science, Sci-Fi
Princeton University
John Sullivan
January 19, 2023
Princeton University researchers developed a shape-shifting antenna array based on origami. With a design akin to that of a folded paper box, the antenna’s radar imaging surface is reconfigurable and adaptable. The array is comprised of a new class of broadband metasurface antennas installed on standard, flat panels connected in an offset checkerboard pattern. The array can shift and expand into shapes including curves, saddles, and spheres, allowing it to capture more complex three-dimensional scenes with a wider resolution. It also can change its shape to manipulate electromagnetic waves, processing information from a wide range of electromagnetic fields when combined with advanced algorithms. Said Princeton's Kaushik Sengupta, "Using origami, we are able to combine the simplicity of planar arrays with the expanded ability of reconfigurable systems. It's like a transformer robot in action."
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