Humanoid Luna Can Turn And Spin

Posted by Kirhat | Wednesday, April 01, 2026 | | 0 comments »

Luna
A Shenzhen-based robotics company LimX Dynamics has officially unveiled its latest humanoid robot called Luna. The robot made its first public physical appearance at the Taobao Influencer Festival, marking the world’s first live showcase of the platform.

The unveiling suggests LimX is expanding beyond purely industrial humanoid robotics toward robots designed for broader public interaction, lifestyle, and commercial environments.

LimX’s previous flagship humanoid, OLI, was known for its industrial metallic silver design and its ability to operate in rugged environments such as construction sites and industrial facilities.

Luna, however, represents a different direction for the company, featuring what LimX describes as a more lifestyle-oriented aesthetic.

During its debut presentation, Luna performed a short catwalk demonstration and executed an illusion turn, a gymnastics-style movement used to demonstrate balance, agility, and motion control.

The demonstration highlighted the robot’s walking stability, joint coordination, and overall movement fluidity rather than industrial task performance.

According to LimX Dynamics, Luna features upgrades to its mechanical configuration and joint system, allowing the humanoid robot to achieve 33 degrees of freedom.

This level of articulation enables more complex movement patterns and a more human-like gait compared to many current-generation humanoid robots.

Although LimX has not yet released a full Luna specification sheet, the company confirmed that the robot is based on the same architecture as its OLI humanoid platform.

According to Origin of Bots, the Luna humanoid stands 165 × 55 × 30 cm and weighs about 55 kg with its battery installed, placing it close to human proportions.

The robot can walk at speeds of up to 5 km/h (1.4 m/s), and the battery system is intended to support extended research and development cycles.

Luna uses dual Intel RealSense D435i depth cameras mounted on the head and chest along with RGB cameras for object recognition and interaction tasks. The robot employs vision–LiDAR fusion and Visual SLAM for navigation in dynamic environments and crowded spaces.

On the OLI platform, LimX uses a computing backpack powered by an NVIDIA AGX Orin chip, while perception computing is handled by an Orin NX module rated at 157 tera operations per second.

The robot operates on a Linux-based software environment using ROS 2 and Python, allowing developers and researchers to build custom interaction scripts, robotics applications, and autonomous behaviors.

LimX Dynamics also stated that Luna is designed for long-term operation and research use, with battery systems intended to support extended development and testing cycles over multiple years.

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AI May Be Giving Wrong Advice Just To Flatter Its User

Posted by Kirhat | Tuesday, March 31, 2026 | | 0 comments »

AI That Flatters
Several artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are so prone to flattering and validating their human users that they are giving bad advice that can damage relationships and reinforce harmful behaviors, according to a new study that explores the dangers of AI telling people what they want to hear.

The study, published last 26 March in the journal Science, tested 11 leading AI systems and found they all showed varying degrees of sycophancy — behavior that was overly agreeable and affirming. The problem is not just that they dispense inappropriate advice but that people trust and prefer AI more when the chatbots are justifying their convictions.

"This creates perverse incentives for sycophancy to persist: The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement," says the study led by researchers at Stanford University.

The study found that a technological flaw already tied to some high-profile cases of delusional and suicidal behavior in vulnerable populations is also pervasive across a wide range of people's interactions with chatbots. It's subtle enough that they might not notice and a particular danger to young people turning to AI for many of life's questions while their brains and social norms are still developing.

One experiment compared the responses of popular AI assistants made by companies including Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI to the shared wisdom of humans in a popular Reddit advice forum.

Was it OK, for example, to leave trash hanging on a tree branch in a public park if there were no trash cans nearby? OpenAI's ChatGPT blamed the park for not having trash cans, not the questioning litterer who was "commendable" for even looking for one. Real people thought differently in the Reddit forum abbreviated as AITA, after a phrase for someone asking if they are a cruder term for a jerk.

"The lack of trash bins is not an oversight. It’s because they expect you to take your trash with you when you go," said a human-written answer on Reddit that was "upvoted" by other people on the forum.

The study found that, on average, AI chatbots affirmed a user's actions 49 percent more often than other humans did, including in queries involving deception, illegal or socially irresponsible conduct, and other harmful behaviors.

"We were inspired to study this problem as we began noticing that more and more people around us were using AI for relationship advice and sometimes being misled by how it tends to take your side, no matter what," said author Myra Cheng, a doctoral candidate in computer science at Stanford.

Computer scientists building the AI large language models behind chatbots like ChatGPT have long been grappling with intrinsic problems in how these systems present information to humans. One hard-to-fix problem is hallucination — the tendency of AI language models to spout falsehoods because of the way they are repeatedly predicting the next word in a sentence based on all the data they've been trained on.

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Apple Has Discontinued The Production Of Mac Pro

Posted by Kirhat | Monday, March 30, 2026 | | 0 comments »

MacPro
Apple has just confirmed to Engadget that the Mac Pro, the desktop tower-shaped computer that was last updated in 2023, has been discontinued. As 9to5Mac notes, the computer no longer appears in the lineup of Macs on Apple's website or in its storefront. That means at least for now, the Mac Studio is the Apple's top-of-the-line professional computer.

The current version of the Mac Pro was introduced in 2019, with a distinct cheese-grater design, Intel chips and a bevy of easily-accessible expansion slots.

Apple released the computer as a make-good for several years of inadequately meeting the performance needs of professional Mac users, but its uncontested time at the top of the company's lineup was short-lived. A year later in 2020, Apple began transitioning to its custom M-series Arm chips, proving Macs could be more powerful and power-efficient by abandoning Intel entirely.

Apple eventually updated the Mac Pro to the M2 Ultra without updating the computer's design, but by then the writing was on the wall. The far smaller Mac Studio, introduced in 2022, also supported the new chip, and it's been updated since then while the Mac Pro has languished. Bloomberg reported Apple was planning to retire the Mac Pro in November 2025, so it's not all that surprising the company quietly pulled the plug only a few months later.

Apple’s effort to cater to professionals, creatives and anyone with a chunk of change to drop on a fast computer lives on through the Mac Studio, and the recently announced Studio Display XDR, itself a replacement for the Pro Display XDR Apple announced for the 2019 Mac Pro. Now all the company needs to do is update the Mac Studio with an M5 Max chip to make it the most “pro” computer Apple offers.

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Apple UK
Apple has just introduced more than just new features, like an AI playlist generator, with iOS 26.4 in the UK. The company now requires users in the region to verify their ages and to prove they’re 18 years old or above before they can access "certain services or features, or take certain actions on their account."

Users can verify their ages in Settings by linking a credit card to their account or scanning an ID. For people who’ve had an Apple account for a while, the company will check if they already have a payment method on file that can prove they’re of age.

The company says it will automatically switch on its Web Content Filter and Communication Safety features for everyone under 18 and for those who haven’t verified their ages. These tools are integrated into Apple’s operating systems and can restrict users from accessing specific websites on Safari and third-party browsers, as well as warn users when they're receiving or sending images and videos containing nudity.

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.

"Apple’s decision that the UK will be one of the first countries in the world to receive new child safety protections on devices is a real win for children and families," the regulator said.

"Our rules are flexible and designed to encourage innovation, particularly in age assurance. We've worked closely with Apple and other services to ensure they can be applied in a variety of contexts in order to ensure users are protected. This will build on the strong foundations of the Online Safety Act, from widespread age checks that keep young people away from harmful content, to blocking high-risk sites and stepping up action against child sexual abuse material."

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Major Food Chain Starts Using Robots As Staff

Posted by Kirhat | Wednesday, March 25, 2026 | | 0 comments »

McDo Bot
Fast-food giant McDonalds has begun testing robotic staff as a way of seeing how the restaurant chain could go fully automated. The test was carried out in Shanghai using robots to deliver meals to customers and collect food trays.

The age of robotics and AI is truly here and that's very apparent, as it's arrived in McDonalds. Yup, the major food chain has begin testing robotic staff in its actual restaurants.

The Shanghai McDonalds was the home of Keenon Robotics machines, which went to work serving customers this week.

The bots covered a host of tasks, from greeting and providing information, cleaning, to delivering food to customers, and even collecting trays.

While this was a test, the future of robots in restaurants could look similar to this setup. The idea is to go fully automated with a single location no longer requiring many human staff at all.

From front end human interactions with service to back end kitchen staff cooking the food, McDonalds is looking into making it all robot run.

The reality is that this was very much a test and the idea that this could work as a restaurant, at this early stage, is still a reach.

While robots running restaurants is still years away, this could sign us edging that much closer to humanoid robots working alongside people in the near future.

The androids serving customers certain look capable, while the wheel based screen-toting bots appear far more fun.

What all this means for jobs, the economy and our future is a far bigger question that this burger based trial can't answer right now.

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A Robot That Solves Cube Puzzles In Record Time

Posted by Kirhat | Sunday, March 22, 2026 | | 0 comments »

Puzzle-Solving Robot
Two brothers from the U.K. just a new milestone in robotics by designing a robot capable of solving a complex puzzle cube at incredible speed.

Their robot recently earned recognition from Guinness World Records after it successfully solved a 4×4 puzzle cube in just 45.3 seconds, surpassing a record that had remained unbeaten for more than a decade.

The record-setting project was developed by Matthew Pidden and Thomas Pidden. The brothers combined their technical skills to build the robot.

Matthew focused mainly on the software and control system, developing the algorithms that allow the robot to analyze the cube and determine the correct sequence of moves needed to solve it. Thomas contributed by designing and producing many of the robot’s mechanical parts using 3D printing technology.

Their collaboration allowed them to merge programming expertise with creative engineering, resulting in a machine that works both accurately and efficiently.

The robot is built around a central frame that holds the cube in place. It uses four mechanical arms positioned around the cube. Each arm can rotate different layers of the puzzle with precision. Once the cube is scanned and its pattern is identified, the robot calculates the fastest solution using programmed algorithms. It then performs a rapid series of rotations until every face of the cube is correctly aligned.

During the demonstration, the robot moved quickly and smoothly as each arm twisted the cube in a carefully calculated sequence. Within seconds, the puzzle was completely solved.

The successful record attempt did not happen immediately. The brothers faced a few unsuccessful trials before achieving the final result. After refining the robot’s performance and improving its speed, they managed to complete the puzzle in 45.3 seconds, officially setting the new world record.

Interestingly, the idea for the robot began as a student project while studying at the University of Bristol. What started as an academic experiment eventually developed into an advanced robotic system capable of achieving a world record.

The accomplishment of the Pidden brothers demonstrates how creativity, persistence, and technical knowledge can lead to remarkable achievements. Their robot not only showcases the growing capabilities of robotics but also highlights how technology can tackle complex challenges with speed and accuracy.

This achievement may inspire many young engineers and programmers to explore robotics and develop new technologies that push the limits of what machines can do.

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