Archive 03.05.2026

A new kind of memory device may finally solve the problem of overheating and battery drain in electronics. By shrinking components to an extreme scale and redesigning their structure, researchers found a way to reduce energy loss instead of increasing it. The result is a tiny memory unit that improves as it gets smaller—something once thought impossible. This could pave the way for ultra-efficient smartphones, wearables, and AI systems.

Astronomers have unleashed a powerful new AI tool called RAVEN to comb through data from NASA’s TESS mission—and it’s paying off in a big way. By analyzing millions of stars, the system has confirmed over 100 exoplanets, including 31 brand-new worlds, and identified thousands more promising candidates. What makes this especially exciting is the discovery of rare and extreme planets, like those that whip around their stars in less than a day and others lurking in the mysterious “Neptunian desert,” where planets are thought to be scarce.

At the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon, a humanoid machine named Lightning—crafted by the Chinese firm Honor—shattered expectations by finishing the 21-kilometer course in just 50 minutes and 26 seconds. This remarkable feat eclipsed the current human world record of 57:20, established by Jacob Kiplimo. While the event saw robots and humans competing on dedicated, independent […]

A humanoid robot recently made headlines around the world for running a half-marathon and beating the human world record. Around the same time, an AI-powered robot defeated an elite human player in table tennis. What the robot lacked in experience, it made up for by reacting faster and more consistently than any person could.

Production of drones and autonomous robots is expected to explode by the late 2030s—by up to 10× for commercial drones and 100× for humanoid and quadruped robots. Publishing in Chem Circularity, researchers estimate how this boost in production could impact US and global supply chains of 18 raw materials used in robots and drones. They predict that incremental demand for rare earth metals and carbon fiber could pose supply problems and recommend that technology developers piggyback off existing capacity from other industries such as electric vehicles to prevent shortages.

From driving cars to flying drones, as autonomous robots take on more responsibility, they also face more human-like dilemmas—including what to do when rules collide.

Claire chatted to Andrew Philippides from the University of Sussex about what we can learn from ants and bees to improve robot navigation.

Andrew Philippides is a Professor of Biorobotics at the University of Sussex, where he co-directs the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics and the be.AI Leverhulme Doctoral centre for Biomimetic Embodied AI. His research combines biological experiments with robotics, modelling, and machine learning to understand how intelligent behaviour emerges from the interaction of body and brain acting in an environment. Focussing on visual navigation, he aims to understand the navigation and learning abilities of ants and bees to develop novel AI and biorobotic algorithms.

Robotics today is like the cloud ecosystem of the early 2010s – scaling rapidly, but riddled with security risks and vulnerabilities.