Expressive robotics for driverless vehicles + Wooden satellites will orbit in 2023

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Japan developing wooden satellites to send into orbit by 2023 down on space junk
https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-de...ty-2020-12

SUMMARY POINTS: Kyoto University is teaming up with Japanese forestry company Sumitomo Forestry to develop a wooden satellite to send into orbit. The idea is that a device made of wood could safely burn upon re-entry and would create less space junk. Space junk is becoming a growing concern amongst experts, who say it poses an environmental hazard... (MORE - details)

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Expressive robotics is breathing "life" into machines (including driverless vehicles)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/expressive...RSSbaffb68

INTRO: As a pedestrian, you're used to interacting with traffic, but you often rely on human interaction – like hand gestures, eye contact and body language – to navigate it safely. But as driverless vehicles edge closer to reality on public roads, humans are faced with something that's still foreign to the general population: reading the intentions of robots and communicating their own intentions to machines.

To better understand the communication between humans and automated robots, and ultimately build trust between pedestrians and driverless vehicles, Motional (a driverless vehicle company created by Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv) is adopting principles from a budding field known as Expressive Robotics -- the study of how robots can respond to a scenario in the same way that we expect a person might. 

Paul Schmitt, Motional's Chief Engineer, and his team are researching the biological aspects of how humans interact with vehicles to make riders more comfortable with self-driving cars. By using VR, as well as taking cues from Disney's Principles of Animation, the team's goal is to make this human-robot interaction simple, familiar, and intuitive.

I reached out to Schmitt to help explain this emerging field and how our very human tendencies can help autonomous vehicles operate safer and with less awkwardness for the pedestrians that interact with them... (MORE - the interview)

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Coverage of “wooden satellites” misses the point
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/...-problems/

EXCERPTS: We here at Ars were somewhat surprised to stumble across a BBC headline [...about...] wooden satellites. ... While wood may seem like a horrific fit for the harsh environment of space, the idea may seem less insane if you think of wood in terms of its structural composition: a mix of two robust polymers, cellulose and lignin. The strength and durability of wood depends heavily on the ratio of these polymers and what's also present in the mix with them. But it's also possible to physically and chemically treat wood to alter its properties further. One version of wood was as strong as aluminum by some measures, and had some interesting additional properties...

[...] The question is whether wood has any material properties that make it a better fit for satellites than any alternative material. Nikkei Asia indicates that one potential advantage is that wood is transparent to many wavelengths that satellites use to communicate, potentially eliminating the need for external antennae. If said antennae would otherwise need to unfurl after a satellite reaches orbit, this could eliminate one potential source of hardware failure.

But the coverage by the BBC and others focuses on space junk. [...] making satellite housings out of wood won't help with this, for many, many reasons. ... Most of the coverage seems to present wooden satellites as helping with the space junk problem because of the fact that wood would burn up when it de-orbits. But this stuff is space junk precisely because it doesn't de-orbit...

[...] Given all this, it's completely unclear what problem wooden satellites are meant to solve... (MORE - details)