News of the week selected by Impactscool – November 18th

Watch a pack of Mini Cheetah robots play at the park

MIT has released a video showing the capabilities of its Mini Cheetahs, small four-legged robots. The nine robots move independently, playing with each other, thus demonstrating the steps forward in this research project. The Mini Cheetahs, which are aesthetically very reminiscent of the Boston Dynamics quadruped robots, weigh just 9 kg and can run at a speed of almost 10 km / h. Although the videos look like overgrown toys, in reality they will have very useful applications, such as helping us with heavy jobs or being used in search of missing people.

Creating proteins … from the air

Creating proteins starting from the air: this is the challenge of Air Protein, an American startup that has decided to investigate a NASA project of the 1960s: the idea was to obtain nutrients for astronauts from the CO2 they expelled, converted into nutrients by microorganisms called hydrogenotrophs. By growing these microorganisms and providing them with CO2 and a range of other nutrients, Air Protein has been shown to produce an ingredient composed of 80% protein. The result has the appearance of a light brown powder and is said to have a “neutral taste”. With vegetable meat, did you think you had seen it all? You were wrong!

In Berlin, the fourth Tesla gigafactory

Will be the fourth gigafactory in the world, the first in Europe, the one that Elon Musk announced with a tweet where he said that the new factory would build batteries, crankshafts and the Tesla model Y. According to some rumors the new gigafactory will also include an engineering and design center that could help in the construction of the Cybertruck, the new truck that will be shown to the public in the coming days.

Kanye West reveals the Yeezy sneakers made of algae

During a presentation of the Fast Company Innovation Festival the rapper Kanye West presented a new prototype of his Yeezy shoe line, produced by Adidas: in addition to the design over the top, the strong point of this shoe is the material that composes it. It is in fact a foam created from particular algae. The rapper said that the production of these algae will be hydroponically grown in the Yeezy headquarters in Wyoming.