Kalakshar US

Chipotle isn’t done experimenting with robots that could make life easier for restaurant staff. The chain has teamed up with robotics company Vebu to test a prototype Autocado robot (yes, that’s the name) that cuts, cores and peels avocados to be used in guacamole. Kitchen workers only have to fill the bot with up to 25lbs of ripe avocados and choose a size. After the processing is done, they collect the fruit in a bowl, add remaining ingredients and start mashing.

As Autocado improves, Chipotle expects to cut guacamole prep time in half — no mean feat when it usually takes 50 minutes to make a batch. That could ensure a steady supply of guac while eliminating some of the drudgery for employees. The restaurant also believes the robot could reduce food waste (and thus costs) through more efficient processing.

Autocado is currently limited to a testing center in Irvine, California. This is the start of a “long term partnership” with Vebu, Chipotle adds. The two haven’t said what comes next, but the focus will be on collaborative robots that “drive efficiencies” and “ease pain points” for workers. Last year, Chipotle began testing Miso Robotics’ Chippy robot to aid in making tortilla chips.

Chipotle is far from alone. McDonald’s and other restaurants are trying AI, robots and other automated solutions to streamline their experiences. These moves theoretically help employees concentrate on serving customers and other tasks where humans are still preferable. Of course, there are also lingering concerns among critics that restaurants might use this to automate people out of jobs. They may choose to shrink headcounts and cut costs instead of easing the workload. That isn’t guaranteed to happen with Autocado when humans are still necessary, but the long-term future isn’t quite so clear.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chipotles-guacamole-robot-is-cursed-to-peel-and-core-avocados-for-eternity-174027901.html?src=rss 

The Perseverance Rover has found evidence of organic compounds in the Jezero Crater on Mars. Although this isn’t the smoking gun proving once and for all that Mars once hosted life — these compounds could have also developed in nonbiological ways — the results hint at surprisingly complex organic conditions for the “key building blocks for life” on Earth’s neighbor. The study was published in Nature.

The Perseverance Rover, the first to explore the Jezero Crater, has been investigating the area since February 2021. Researchers believe the basin once housed an ancient lake, including a delta from a river that once flowed into it. It’s one of the most likely regions to reveal leftover signs of life on Mars.

Organic molecules like those observed in the Jezero Crater contain carbon and often hydrogen atoms. They’re the core components of life as we know it on Earth, although they can also develop abiologically. “They are an exciting clue for astrobiologists since they are often thought of as building blocks of life,” paper co-author Joseph Razzell Hollis, a postdoctoral fellow at London’s Natural History Museum, said toNewsweek. “Importantly, they can be created by processes not related to life as we know it, and so organic molecules are not evidence of life on their own without sufficient extra evidence that cannot be explained by nonbiological — or abiotic — processes.”

The rover observed the compounds using an instrument — the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) — that maps organic molecules and minerals on rock surfaces. Significantly, it found organic materials in all ten targets it observed on the crater floor. “Our results support observations by previous robotic missions to Mars that the Red Planet was once rich in organic material, compounds made primarily of carbon and hydrogen, and that some of that organic material can still be detected billions of years later,” co-author Joseph Razzell Hollis, a London-based astrobiologist, toldGizmodo. “Each detection, each observation, gives us a little bit more information that brings us closer to understanding the history of Mars and whether it could have supported life in the past.”

Now that the researchers have observed the molecules, they’ll need a better look at them in Earthbound labs to draw further conclusions about their origins. “If these samples are returned to terrestrial laboratories, a more diverse suite of tools can be used to study the samples, including at higher spatial resolution and with much greater specificity and sensitivity,” the authors wrote. They’ll have to wait for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, which isn’t expected to launch from Earth until at least the late 2020s. Still, the trip should be worth the wait. “So far, the only Martian rocks we’ve ever been able to study on Earth have been meteorites. Getting our hands on intact Mars rocks, carefully stored and protected from contamination, will be invaluable to planetary science,” Razzell Hollis told Newsweek.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/researchers-find-evidence-of-organic-matter-on-mars-174950850.html?src=rss 

The immensely popular online game creation platform/thingamajig Roblox is coming to VR, thanks to the Meta Quest platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement, which was followed by an official Roblox blog post. A beta version of the app launches in just a few weeks, according to Zuckerberg, which will be accessible via the Quest platform’s dedicated App Lab.

The beta will be available for the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets, so OG Quest owners are out of luck. The recently-announced Quest 3 wasn’t mentioned, but that’s likely because it won’t be out in time for the beta release. A finished version of the game, however, would make for an extremely compelling launch title for the Quest 3, as Roblox boasts more than 66 million daily users across multiple platforms.

To that end, this is going to be a fully cross-platform title, so anything you interact with or make on your phone or console should be accessible in VR, though it depends on the developer. The Roblox team is actively encouraging developers to make experiences in VR with a forthcoming toolset accessible via the Creator Dashboard. You’ll soon see VR as a new device type on this dashboard, along with desktop, mobile, tablet and console.

Meta recently lowered the minimum age to operate a Quest headset from 13 to ten, but this change will not impact Roblox. You have to be at least 13 to use the app in VR. That’s probably for the best, given the addictive nature of the title and associated child safety concerns.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/roblox-is-coming-to-meta-quest-vr-headsets-181633766.html?src=rss 

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has announced this year’s Emmy nominations and there’s lots of good news for the team behind The Last of Us. HBO’s massively successful series scored 24 nominations, more than any other show this year except Succession (27). The White Lotus (23) and Apple TV+ comedy Ted Lasso (21) followed closely behind.

The Last of Us is the first live-action video game adaptation for film or TV to make a serious dent at a major awards ceremony (League of Legends series Arcanewon the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program last year). It’s up for Outstanding Drama Series alongside Andor, Better Call Saul, House of the Dragon, Succession, The White Lotus and Yellowjackets.

Pedro Pascal (who has three nods in total this year) and Bella Ramsay picked up nominations for their lead roles in The Last of Us. So did guest stars Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Anna Torv, Murray Bartlett, Lamar Johnson, Nick Offerman and Keivonn Montreal Woodard. Craig Mazin, the show’s co-creator, and Peter Hoar are, respectively, nominated for writing and directing the show’s stellar third episode, “Long, Long Time.”

Elsewhere, reigning champ Ted Lasso will compete against Abbott Elementary, Barry, The Bear, Jury Duty, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Only Murders In The Building and Wednesday in the Outstanding Comedy Series category. On the Star Wars front, Andor scooped up eight nominations and The Mandalorian got nine. Obi-Wan Kenobi snagged five, including one for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.

Disney+ film Hocus Pocus 2 (three nominations in total) and Roku’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (eight nods overall) are up for Outstanding Television Movie. Amazon’s big-budget The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power landed six nominations, mostly in technical categories. 

Stranger Things, which isn’t eligible for top honors this year, also has six nods in down-the-line categories. Meanwhile, Peacock’s Poker Face snagged four nominatons, Star Trek: Picard has two in makeup categories and Netflix’s brilliant I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson snagged a pair of nods.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given how many nominations Succession, The Last of Us and The White Lotus racked up, HBO leads the pack this year with 127 nominations overall. According to Deadline‘s tally, Netflix has the most of any streaming-only network with 103, followed by Apple (52), Amazon (46 between Prime Video and Freevee), Hulu (42 or 64 if you include FX shows), Disney+ (40), Peacock (eight) and Paramount+ (seven). By contrast, broadcast networks earned 86 nods between them.

This year’s Emmy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on September 18th. However, amid the WGA writers’ strike and pending action by the actors’ union, reports suggest it may be delayed until November or even January.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hbos-the-last-of-us-adaptation-scoops-up-24-emmy-nominations-171117148.html?src=rss 

There’s something exciting about trying out new versions of an operating system, especially when it’s a test build. Suddenly a device you’ve gotten to know well becomes fresh again and useful (or at the very least entertaining) in all new ways. Now is that time for eager Apple users, with the company’s iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10 and macOS Sonoma public betas finally available to download.

The new iOS 17 will include a slew of updates from design to practical. You can customize what people see when you call them — whether it’s a cute cartoon or your favorite selfie, put the call to voicemail with a live transcription across your screen and send someone a video or audio message if they don’t pick up your FaceTime call. Plus, you can mute and unmute yourself right from your AirPods. “Ducking” should also be a thing of the past on iOS 17 with an improved autocorrect and you can utilize sentence predictions for quicker responses. Additional features include automatically checking in to let your friends know you’ve arrived home, locating real-time charging stations along your route on Maps and the ability to say how you’re feeling on the Health app (so and so is pleasant does feel very early Facebook days).

iPadOS 17 is, to a degree, a catch-up release that adds a customizable lock screen, the Health app and interactive widgets. WatchOS 10 is a substantial Apple Watch revamp that revives the emphasis on widgets while overhauling core apps and improving fitness features. MacOS Sonoma, meanwhile, brings widgets to the Mac desktop while upgrading Safari, video calls and gaming.

Apple first announced these upgrades at its Worldwide Developers Conference and subsequently released the iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma betas for developers. Unlike in previous years, though, the developer betas were available free for anyone to try — developer accounts typically cost about $100 per year. The iOS 17 public beta should be a bit more polished than the developer builds, given the extra time to work out bugs and compatibility problems. The official versions will launch this fall, but you can sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program if you want to try the previews now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-ios-17-ipad-os-17-and-watchos-10-public-betas-are-ready-to-download-172130524.html?src=rss 

Elon Musk has a new AI company. A website has appeared for xAI, which will embark on the self-described mission to “understand the true nature of the universe.” The announcement comes after filing documents revealed the existence of a company called “X.AI Corp” earlier this year. Musk also said in an April interview that he wanted to start a venture for “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe” that “hopefully does more good than harm.”

Not much else is known yet about Musk’s latest venture. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO and Twitter Chairman tweeted today, “Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality.” The company webpage notes that the team will host a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, July 14th.

Musk’s previous comments about an AI startup were aimed at creating “a third option” to challenge ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Google. He reportedly bought thousands of GPUs earlier this year for a Twitter-related AI project. It isn’t yet clear whether the two projects are related.

The website lists veterans of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto as working on the project. “Collectively we contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field, in particular the Adam optimizer, Batch Normalization, Layer Normalization, and the discovery of adversarial examples,” the xAI website reads. “We further introduced innovative techniques and analyses such as Transformer-XL, Autoformalization, the Memorizing Transformer, Batch Size Scaling, and μTransfer. We have worked on and led the development of some of the largest breakthroughs in the field including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4.”

In addition to Musk, the listed team members include Igor Babuschkin, Manuel Kroiss, Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, Christian Szegedy, Jimmy Ba, Toby Pohlen, Ross Nordeen, Kyle Kosic, Greg Yang, Guodong Zhang and Zihang Dai.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/elon-musks-new-ai-company-aims-to-understand-the-true-nature-of-the-universe-172255152.html?src=rss