Gadgetory

welcome to what the future on today's show an insectoid robot inspired by desert ants demonstrates a new kind of robotic navigation researchers at Purdue University have developed a new way to turn plastics into fuel and finally we talked about how deep mines new Alpha star became the first artificial intelligence entity to master Starcraft 2 let's get into it and bots might sound like the title of a sci-fi Channel original movie but they're real and they're changing how robots get around researchers drew inspiration from desert ants these resilient insects can't rely on pheromones to find their way home like other ant species can due to the extreme temperatures in their environment instead they rely on step counting and observing polarized light from the sky to orient themselves these evolutionary miracles have led researchers to robotic innovations in the form of ant by ant bot uses a new kind of optical compass made up of two pixels covered with polarized filters to orient itself the compass turns mechanically to be able to observe more light with less pixels drastically reducing production costs with this optical compass the ant BOTS can measure its heading to within point four degrees of precision even in cloudy weather these new navigation technologies have clear applications in the automobile and aviation industries though ant BOTS developers say the next step is to get it operating at night and over longer distances plastic or permanent garbage as I like to call it is everywhere all the time and the vast majority of it is never recycled the World Economic Forum has predicted that if we don't change how we use and dispose of plastic there will be more plastic waste than fish in the world's oceans by the year 2050 thankfully a team of researchers at Purdue University has a new solution for making use of our permanent garbage the process works for number two and number four type plastics these numbers can be found inside the little recycling triangle on the bottom of plastic goods the plastics are converted into pellets which are then dissolved into a solution via exposure to heat and pressure in this state the plastic materials could be converted into fuel or other useful products researchers say that the clean fuels generated by this process could someday satisfy up to four percent of the demand for gasoline or diesel fuels when we last checked in with deepmind technologies the artificial intelligence company owned by google's alphabet conglomerate it's AI had mastered classic board games and now it's mastered Starcraft 2 Starcraft 2 emerged as a natural next step for deep minds AI development since the game is played in real time with imperfect information these new challenges required a new method of learning to master chess alpha zero played itself to master Starcraft alpha star played versions of itself a process deepmind calls the alpha star League deep mine brought in top tier Starcraft 2 players to challenge alpha star and alpha star beat both of them 5 times in a row though alpha star was eventually beaten during an exhibition game at Blizzard it was very stubborn wasn't it like you did it really didn't want to leave like the game was over for a long time as deep Minds AI learns to master more complex games it gets better at long-term planning risk management distribution of resources and other problem-solving skills deep mines eventual goal is to someday craft an AI capable of solving the biggest problems facing our world today and mastering Starcraft 2 is another stepping stone in the right direction what made you say WTF this week let us know down in the comments and if you enjoyed the show please like share and subscribe thanks for watching I'm your host Jesse Orel and I'll see you next time on what the future