🌞 Robotic Touch

Daily Upsider - Saturday, June 29th, 2024

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Saturday, June 29th, 2024

Good Morning! 🌞 

Did you know that Lamborghini, known for its high-performance luxury sports cars, originally started as a manufacturer of tractors?

In 1948, Ferruccio Lamborghini founded Lamborghini Trattori, a company that produced tractors from surplus military equipment. It wasn’t until 1963 that Ferruccio Lamborghini established Automobili Lamborghini, driven by his desire to create a refined grand touring car to compete with Ferrari.

Today’s Upside

Innovation

Robotic Touch

Tsinghua University in Beijing (via SWNS, cropped and rearranged)

A robotic sorting system that uses touch to identify different types of domestic waste achieved a 98.85% accuracy rate.

The inventors believe this advanced system could improve recycling efficiency and aid in treating hand disabilities.

Currently, sorting robots are used in over 40 of the 600 recycling centers in the United States, operating faster and more accurately than humans. Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing have shown that tactile sensing and logical reasoning enhance a robot's ability to recognize and classify objects, even with advanced visual sensors.

Today’s intelligent robots can identify many objects through vision and touch, but tactile information, combined with machine learning algorithms, also allows them to recognize objects they have previously handled. However, they often struggle with objects of similar size and shape or new items.

To address this, the Tsinghua team integrated "thermal feeling" into robotic tactile sensing. Professor Rong Zhu explained that humans use thermal sensations to differentiate materials like wood and metal based on cooling sensations. The team replicated this by designing a tactile sensing method incorporating thermal sensations for better object detection.

They developed a layered sensor with material detection at the surface, pressure sensitivity at the bottom, and a porous middle layer sensitive to thermal changes. This sensor, paired with a cascade classification algorithm, efficiently categorized objects from simple to complex, such as empty cartons to orange peels.

The system, installed in a robot, sorted common trash items like cartons, bread scraps, plastic bags, bottles, sponges, napkins, orange peels, and expired drugs into categories like recyclables, food scraps, hazardous waste, and other waste. It achieved a 98.85% accuracy rate in classifying previously unencountered waste items, as reported in Applied Physics Reviews.

Do You Know Why Smells Linger on Activewear Fabrics?

It’s because activewear uses tightly woven synthetic fabrics to wick away sweat while you workout.

Unfortunately, traditional detergents use fabric softeners that can coat over sweat, dead skin, & bacteria trapping them inside these fabrics.

So once your body starts heating up… the smell inevitably returns.

ACTIVE solves this by using a scientifically formulated, all natural enzyme blend to break down these trapped contaminants once and for all!

Finally a solution to your smelly Activewear!

Environment

Lost Donkey Seen After 5 Years

Five years ago, Terrie Drewry lost her donkey, Diesel, when it ran off during a hike after being scared by a mountain lion.

Although Diesel was later seen on a trail camera, the search eventually failed. Recently, while hunting in Auburn, California, Max Finnell spotted a donkey with a herd of elk, which appears to be Drewry's long-lost donkey.

World News

Heiress Picks 50 Citizens to Distribute €25 Million

Marlene Engelhorn – by Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0 license

Marlene Engelhorn, a Millennial heiress from one of Austria's wealthiest families, is giving away her inheritance. Her ancestors founded BSAF Pharmaceuticals and later acquired Boehringer Mannheim, another pharmaceutical company.

Engelhorn's €25 million share of her family's $4.2 billion fortune was distributed to 77 charitable and non-profit organizations by a group of 50 randomly selected citizens from Salzburg. This group, known as the Good Council for Redistribution, met over six weeks to decide on the allocation. The council members, chosen from a pool of 10,000, received lectures from philosophers and economics professors to guide their decisions, according to Euro News.

Engelhorn stepped back entirely once the committee was formed. The largest recipients included the Austrian Nature Conservation Association and Nuenerhaus, a homeless assistance organization, each receiving over $1.5 million. Other notable donations were €1 million each to the Momentum Institute and Attac Austria, €300,000 to the Autonomous Austrian Women’s Shelters, and €100,400 to the Común Foundation for nature restoration.

Exploring Puzzles: A Rewarding Hobby

Engaging with puzzles goes beyond simple entertainment; it's a practical way to exercise your mind and problem-solving abilities. Whether it's solving crosswords or piecing together jigsaw puzzles, these activities challenge your thinking and improve your patience.

Puzzles offer a relaxing way to focus your mind and reduce stress. Additionally, puzzles can be a social activity, bringing people together to work on problems as a team. They are a great choice for gatherings.

We, of course, send you our daily Mind Stretcher so you can test yourself on a fun riddle. But having some physical puzzles are a great addition to entertain yourself with.

Mind Stretchers

⁉️ 

What has no hands but might knock on your door, and if it does you better open up?

Answers to yesterday’s Mind Stretchers:

2!

7*6 = 4 2
9*9 = 8 1
5*3 = 1 5
6*2 = 1 2


This one was very tricky…

Be the first to send us the correct answer for today’s mind stretcher for a shout-out with the answer tomorrow. Just send us the answer and your name to [email protected] or reply to the email.

From the Community

If you have any uplifting stories and experience you might want to share, send those over to [email protected] for the chance to be featured.

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