Scientists have designed a new robot nicknamed “morphobot” that can travel on different terrains, including land and air by shapeshifting its parts into wheels, propellers, or legs as required. Researchers, including Alireza Ramezani from Northeastern University in the US, say the morphobot can transform its shape to navigate the environment by flying, rolling, crawling, crouching, balancing, and tumbling. Several animals have adapted the use of their limbs to allow them to tackle different terrains. Sea lions, for instance, walk on land using their flippers that they also use to swim, and meerkats use their hindlimbs to scout their surroundings. Chukar birds have also shown adaptations to use their wings to walk on all fours up steep inclines. Similarly, the morphobot, described this week in the journal Nature Communications, performs different modes of movement inspired by animals like birds, meerkats, and seals by mimicking the animals’ limb repurposing abilities. The robot, which weighs 6kg (13lb), has four legs each comprising two joints, along with ducted fans fixed at the leg ends. It spans 70cm in length and has a width and height of 35cm. The new study shows that the morphobot’s fans can shapeshift to function either as legs, propellor thrusters, or wheels as required. The robot has demonstrated the ability to alter its movements to walk on rough terrain, traverse steep slopes, tumble over large obstacles, fly to higher levels, and crawl under low-ceiling pathways. Based on the study, researchers say future mobile robots can be designed with multi-functional limbs to navigate complex terrains by adapting their movement strategies. The new innovation could help further improve the design of robots to traverse harsh environments, such as those used in search and rescue responses after natural disasters, space exploration, and automated package delivery. The findings, according to scientists, demonstrate the advantages of designing robots with multipurpose appendages that can be used to travel over varied and challenging terrains. Read More ‘Real-life’ Spider-Man captured swinging in the air at Disney park in California Scientists invent electronic skin that gives amputees sense of touch ‘Robot taxi’ with smiling face and ‘ghost driver’ interacts with pedestrians in new experiment Scientists create tiny robot that works like an animal and swims around your body Celebrity impersonators banned from Facebook protest outside Meta offices Elon Musk picks UFC legend to train him for Mark Zuckerberg fight

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Omegle, a popular website used to video chat with strangers, is shutting down after almost 15 years. The closure comes amid increasing criticism that the site endangered its users, with reports of child sexual abuse and other crime on the platform. Omegle allowed users to sign up and then be launched into a video chat with another stranger using the site. The two could chat for as long as they wished – until they ended that conversation and embarked on a new one. The app was launched in 2009, and became popular almost straight away. Its founder said that its popularity was a result of “meeting new people being a basic human need”. Quickly, however, it became known for explicit and other criminal content. Leif K-Brooks, the company’s founder, admitted that Omegle had been misused, “including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes”. The site attempted to introduce new features to stop that misuse, such as “monitored chats” that would allow moderators to try and stop criminals using the site. But they did not work, and the site continued to receive criticism for its lack of safety. Now Mr K-Brooks has said that the criticism has become too much, and Omegle will shut down. The intensity of the fight over use of the site had forced him to decide to shut it down, he said, and it will stop working straight away. “As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s,” wrote Leif K-Brooks, who has run the website since founding it. Omegle saw a huge surge in popularity during the pandemic, as people not only flocked to the site but recorded their interactions and shared them on social media. But that popularity also brought more awareness of the problems on the site, and increased criticism of it. Mr K-Brooks acknowledged that criticism. But he also suggested that at least some of it was in bad faith, and that it was intended to force the site to shut down. “In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users,” he wrote. He said that the site had been shut down on the basis of “fear”. “If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next?”, he wrote, comparing the end of Omegle to “shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil”. The decision to shut down Omegle comes amid increasing concern about regulation of the internet and how best to protect its users. It comes just days after the introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act, for instance, which aims to hold platforms to account for crimes on their platform, including online grooming.

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