🥁 Robot drummer that plays faster than humans, wolves enjoy 'lollipops', hot water on Mars

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Researchers from the University of Oslo have developed a new robot that can create new rhythms and play drums faster than a human. Called the ZRob, the new robot could open doors for new musical applications and offer new insights for future developments in robotics in general.

Developed by Mojtaba Karbasi, the drumming robot as part of his doctoral thesis at the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time, and Motion, University of Oslo. “Playing together, the robots will find a pattern unlike everything else,” Mojtaba Karbasi says.

ZRob’s development was inspired by humans’ seemingly relative ease in performing complex actions. For example, as Karbasi explains, we can estimate the weight of a glass of water and lift it without spilling it. Dive deeper into this Must-Read.

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🥁 Robot drummer that’s faster than humans could help musicians hone their craft

“Humans talk, move, and touch things. We have several senses and can act on what we sense with adapted movements. Machines cannot do this,” Alexander Refsum Jensenius, professor at RITMO (and Karbasi’s supervisor), explained.

ZRob is not the first robotic drummer we’ve seen recently (take CyberOne, for example), but it is certainly a step up in terms of dexterity and potential.

Jensenius goes on to explain that he believes that robots must become multimodal in the future. This means, in practice, they will need to have more senses if they are to become fully operational with human beings. With this in mind, Karbasi developed his drumming bio-inspired robot and accompanying AI model.

🐺 First sweet tooth behavior in large carnivores: Ethiopian wolves enjoy nectar

In a rare discovery, researchers have documented Ethiopian wolves feeding on the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker flowers. According to the experts, this is a novelty, and these wolves are the first carnivore species to feed on nectar.

The new findings highlight this newly documented behavior of Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis). It also states that the carnivores feeding on the nectar might themselves act as pollinators.

According to experts, this incident classifies as the first-ever plant-pollinator interaction involving a large carnivore such as a wolf.

💧 4.45 billion-year-old mineral reveals hot water activity on Mars

A 4.45 billion-year-old zircon grain, extracted from a Martian meteorite found in the Sahara in 2011, suggests Mars once had boiling hydrothermal systems similar to Earth’s volcanoes, according to a study published in Science Advances.

The discovery, led by researchers at the Perth-based Curtin University, also indicates that the planet may have been habitable at some point in its past and had the necessary conditions to support microbial life.

The team studied meteorites from a space rock called NWA7034, or ‘Black Beauty’. Unlike most Martian meteorites, which are mainly igneous or mantle rocks, these provide unique insights into Mars’ geologic history.

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