factory

An entire factory will close after 57 years of activity

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After thousands of complaints, Stellantis assumed in January 2025 that something had gone wrong with its PureTech motors. Seeking maximum cost savings, the company had fallen into faulty production that could cause premature engine failure. Although the monetary cost has been high, the worst thing for the company has been the reputational cost. So much so that the company has stopped marketing this engine and the replacement forgets the word PureTech. With the productive tap closed and without a new award, the controversial engine has also taken another step forward. A factory that was part of the French automotive industry. The PureTech. For months, Stellantis customers have been demanding that the company take care of the breakdowns of their PureTech engines in 2024. The company had no choice but to accept the mistake and in January 2025 it confirmed that the warranty on these engines was extended and they would pay for the repairs of all engines that had failed between 2022 and 2024. The problem is that in the search for extreme cost savingsthe engine design could cause the oil-soaked belt to become contaminated with fuel residue to the point of premature wear that would cause it to break unexpectedly. If the timing belt breaks, engine damage can be fatal. A problem. The problem for Stellantis is that the damage caused by PureTech motors goes far beyond economic damage. The company has been setting aside tens of millions of euros to face compensation for customer breakages but the worst has been the reputational impact. To put up a dam, Stellantis has presented the Turbo 100the replacement for the failed propellants. It has done so after the revised versions of the previous engine were also called to go through the workshop for new problems last year. The solution has finally been to nip the issue in the bud. And goodbye to your factory. With the end of the production of these engines, other news has also come: Stellantis will close the Douvrin plant in France, explain our French colleagues from L’Automobile. The decision is a direct consequence of the poor results of the engines and the change in the company’s strategy. And the 1.2 Puretech engines were not being sold in Europe but they were being sold in other markets. The company, however, will completely cease production before the end of the year. Once they also stopped manufacturing the 1.5 BlueHDI diesel last year, the plant was already mortally wounded. Goodbye to decades of history. The closure of the Douvrin plant is sensitive because it is a factory with 57 years behind it. It had been in operation since 1969 and its construction was born from investments by Peugeot and Renault. However, in 2013 it was acquired in its entirety by PSA (of which Peugeot was a part) and from there it passed into the hands of Stellantis after the merger of FCA and PSA. The company, according to the French media, has relocated 340 employees to another plant to produce batteries and another very similar figure has joined different positions. The fate of 100 workers (half of them temporary) who have not been formally relocated remains to be known. Another European plant that closes. The closure of said French plant is just another example of how the European motor industry is suffering with the conversion to electric cars. Stellantis has stressed on different occasions that production costs in France are too high (and along the way we have benefited in Spain). Volkswagen assures that will have to lay off 100,000 employees of its German plants for the same reason. But it is also the certification that Europe continues to move towards the electric car. Although the French plant produced engines for countries outside our borders, we are not competitive against regions such as Morocco, Türkiye or South America…or Poland (where the PureTech that France abandons is still produced). In these countries, producing combustion engines is still the order of the day and at a more affordable price. Photo | Stellantis In Xataka | Italian workers have been angered by Stellantis’ investments. Those that Morocco has taken from them, specifically

Xiaomi has a full-time humanoid robot in its car factory. You’re ready to stop being an intern

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Xiaomi has made its car factory cause a sensation. With the SU7 and YU7 in the market, the company has managed to make people stand in line and pay a fortune to see how these cars are manufactured, something they have achieved thanks to a good marketing strategy and, above all, a futuristic factory with a hook that is difficult to ignore: humanoid robots riding the cars. It was this past March when we learned from Lei Jun, founder and CEO of the company, that they had put a series of humanoid robots to work. “do internships” inside the factories. The tasks of these robots were not at all exciting, as they were dedicated to one thing: putting self-tapping nuts on the floor parts of cars. However, the period of being robo-interns is coming to an end and it has been the CEO himself who has commented that robots have climbed several steps. Specifically, they are almost on the same level of success as their human “companions.” From robo-interns to robo-experts The task they had to do is the most alienating and example of chain work that you can imagine. The system collects the nuts from an automatic supply equipment and deposits them in the indicated place, where the automatic screwing is subsequently carried out. Indeed: the robots were putting nuts… and that’s it. In March, Lei Jun said the robots had achieved a 90.2% success rate in placing nuts during three hours of continuous autonomous operation. This figure indicates the number of correct operations compared to the total attempts made and, in addition, they detailed that they adjusted to a production cycle of 76 seconds. Timing in these factories is crucial, especially when all steps are so automated if the car output goals are to be achieved. Now, although putting on nuts seems simple, they are not like those on an Ikea piece of furniture and there are some things to consider. A key challenge in this process is getting the self-tapping nut to precisely align, center and seat on the locating pin before screwing. Otherwise, the system crashes and the join is incomplete. And this process is complicated by three main factors: Grip variability: The orientation of the nut on the robot gripper changes with each cycle. Design and physical forces– The internal knurling of the nut and the magnetic attraction of the pin make exact adjustment difficult. Operating environment: There are limitations on the working angle and external interference in the assembly area. For the robot it is more complicated than it seems, but now it has been Lei Jun himself who has turned to come to the fore to point out that robots have gone from that success rate of 90.2% to 98%. They are, according to the executive, just one percentage point behind human workers. And most importantly, they are ready to take on more complex tasks. Because thanks to that success, it has been decided that Robots can begin to tackle more complex tasks. Because from tightening nuts, they have moved on to new stations that included tasks such as installing the side panels of the center console, as well as folding and recycling parts. The side panel task is complex because it is a large, flexible, irregularly shaped component that requires multiple pick-and-place cycles in different positions. Xiaomi says this is the first time a humanoid robot has completed prolonged manipulation of such a part on a real automotive production line and estimates the success rate to be over 90%. In four months we will see where that percentage is, but although it is clear that the evolution of the company’s humanoid tobots It is being remarkable, we are talking about robots that are still in the testing phase and in a single workstation. They are taking data and running every possible metric to determine if they are up to par for a productive, full-scale deployment. Human workers can rest easy, at least for a few more months. What I don’t understand is why they have to look like robots taken from the reboot from ‘Robocop’. In Xataka | In the war of humanoid robots, those from the United States dance and those from China work by the piece. It is not a technological issue

Huawei is building a semiconductor empire. And in the middle of the crisis, now it is going for its own DRAM factory

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If Huawei has a message for the United States that tried to ostracize it with the five-year-old vetothat message is “thank you.” It was the same president of the Chinese company who commented a few days ago that, without the pressure from the westChina and Huawei could not have developed their technology at the speed they have. Because Huawei is developing an empire, and the latest reports suggest that they are going for the missing piece: DRAM memory. And they are creating a megafactory so as not to depend on anyone in a market that is far from improving. DRAM factory. It is estimated that SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have more than 90% of the global DRAM market. With the big three focusing all their production on AI platforms, neither consumers nor companies of consumer products can access components at competitive prices, so they look for alternatives. It is said that Apple would be looking at the Chinese CXMTbut now there are those point that Huawei is creating a DRAM factory with government support. The company Swaysure, from Shenzhen, one of the technological hearts of the country, would be building with Huawei a factory with the capacity to create 12-inch wafers. The planned production would be 140,000 wafers per month and, in charge of all this, would be a former director of TSMC. chip empire. China has one goal: that at least 80% of basic technology that their companies use is supplied by national companies, and Huawei plays a fundamental role there. It is no longer about the huge campuses that they have to promote their own business, but also their presence in all the technological sectors of the country and the importance that they are gaining by becoming one of the pivots of semiconductors in China. With the help of SMIC, they have managed to develop chips with an advanced architecture in record time and, in addition, it is estimated that at least 11 factories throughout the country operate it with the help of allied companies. They create logic chips, have foundry services, and also operate in the DRAM chip segment. With the new company led by Swaysure, they would take another step to achieve greater independence from the big players in the memory and NAND chip sector. In the end, it is about creating an industrial network that allows us to achieve that 80% goal and, above all, be more independent from foreign technology. Images from Planet Labs and Financial Times in which you can see the evolution in the construction of a Huawei and SwaySure plant between 2022 and 2025. parallel reality. To achieve this, Huawei has some of the most impressive technological and R&D campuses on the planet, which has allowed them in a very short time to not only rise from the ashes, but create a parallel reality. In terms of software, HarmonyOS is on more than 1 billion devices, the Huawei Clouyd service is growing outside of China in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and then there are the chips. They have the Ascend and Kunpeng optimized for both AI and edge computingrecently introduced a supercluster for advanced AI tasks and intend to change the paradigm of the evolution and development of processors with a ‘Tau Law’ under which they will begin to create their new Kirin consumer chips that we can see in devices such as mobile phones and tablets. And that they have the Chinese government support It is a guarantee. Chinese lever. Returning to Huawei’s RAM, this movement is not designed to compete against the big three in the sector, but rather to not depend on them. That is, Huawei should not want to be Samsung in such a short time, but having the capacity to make its DRAM, it could stop depending on Samsung or SK Hynix, for example. Furthermore, these types of movements are part of a more long-term strategy, one in which Huawei has gone from being a large company in China to being one of the lungs of the country’s technological developmentdriving the AI ​​platforms of other companies with its hardware and being the heart of some of the data centers in which China is going to invest 300 billion dollars over the next five years. HE esteemIn fact, Huawei will take over 60% of the Chinese AI chip market in 2026. Now, no matter how much they invest and create new foundries, they still have a hot potato: no one manufactures advanced lithography machines like ASML’s to which Chinese companies have restricted access. They are advancing through alternative techniques and reverse engineeringbut if China wants to be the first technological nation in the short term (an objective that they have marked themselves), at some point they will need those huge, next-generation “printers.” Image | ASML In Xataka | US adds Netherlands to Pax Silica alliance: ASML host nation enters anti-Chinese bloc

a colossal textile factory from a thousand years ago with its own Amancio Ortega

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There are many myths surrounding the Vikings: they were not a pure superior race how supremacists think neither pillage was their way of life. Yes indeed, They were even more violent of what the collective imagination thinks. But they were not savages or illiterate: their society was more complex and advanced than it may seem. So much so that They had a huge workshop set up textile. The discovery. The Moesgaard Museum, the institution linked to Aarhus University and an authentic reference in Danish Viking archaeology, has presented the preliminary results of an ongoing excavation in Søften, north of Aros, the Viking city that is the origin of modern-day Aarhus. There they have found 82 underground workshop huts (grubehuse) in an area of ​​at least 100,000 square meters. Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, director of the excavation, points out that the layout of the site, with differentiated areas of production, crafts and a single home, suggests that it was an activity directed by someone with control over the resources, it was not just any agricultural town. Why is it important. Moesgaard historian Kasper H. Andersen explains that Søften and Lisbjerg are examples of how Aros was integrated into international economic networks thanks to these productive centers in the periphery. That is, it reinforces the theory that there artisanal production was organized in satellite settlements around emporiums, such as Ribe or Hedeby. Context. In addition to this Søften site, there are two other Viking sites near Aros: Lisbjerg, where the Moesgaard museum had previously excavated an aristocratic settlement where they found 30 graves in 2025 and Elstedwhere in 2024 an archeology student found a Viking silver hoard. This set of sites reinforces the image of a densely organized region around Aarhus during the Viking Age, probably between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, although the exact dating of the Søften site is yet to be confirmed by scientific analysis, according to collects mithsonian Magazine. In detail. Of the 82 grubehuse, 48 have been located in this campaign in an area that covers 60,000 square meters and the remaining 34 come from from previous excavations carried out in 2008 and 2013. Among the objects recovered were loom weights and spindles for textile production, silver cuttings, coins and glass beads, goods linked to commerce and the economic activity of the place. Likewise, there was a cobblestone area next to a wet area, which made traffic easier. Yes, but. At the moment we are looking at conclusions from the preliminary study, not an academic publication with peer review. Furthermore, the hypothesis of “centralized control” is an interpretation of the excavation director, Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, pending more precise dating and fiber analysis that places the site exactly within the Viking era. In Xataka | We knew that Viking society was violent, but not that violent: a new study sheds light on their level of weaponry In Xataka | Science already knows when the Viking Age began. Thanks to a solar flare Cover | Ashutosh Gupta and Moesgaard Museum

After taking the plunge into games in physical format, Sony’s large disc factory is preparing for another future: optical microlenses

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On July 1, PlayStation gave the death blow to physical games. Starting in January 2028, there will be no new games in this format for PlayStation consoles, marking the most aggressive initiative against this format that we have seen since Xbox’s moves in 2013 and Nintendo’s Game Key Card with Nintendo Switch 2. Let the physical format die It is an anti-consumer measure whose announcement comes just when Sony itself demonstrated, removing more than 500 films of your digital store, that users we do not own the digital products that we buy We only buy permission from companies to be able to use it for an indefinite period of time that ends when these companies decide that this is how it should be. These days in networks there was a big question: faced with such a drastic measure, Would Sony back down? Well, everything indicates that it is not because in Austria there is the only Sony disc factory, the one from which the majority of games come out in physical format for PlayStation and one in which its employees would already be receiving training to dedicate themselves to other things. And those things are optical microlenses. The great PlayStation game factory is recycled The proof that PlayStation’s decision does not only affect PlayStation’s own games is in the game box. If you look at almost any PS3, PS4, or PS5 game cover, will specify “made in Austria”. This is because in Austria, specifically in Thalgauis located (now the only one after the conversions and closures of American and Japanese plants) main Sony record factory. Sony’s own games come out of it, but also those of the rest of the companies that manufacture for PlayStation. It is estimated that Thalgau produces 600,000 discs every day, half of them for PlayStation, but as things are about to change, employees are already preparing. According to the Austrian media ORF Salzburgthe 300 employees of the plant found out about the decision on the same July 1 in which Sony announced the end of physical games for PlayStation, but contrary to what we might think, there will be no layoffs but a restructuring. They point out that Sony has invested 30 million euros in equipment to convert the factory into an optical microlens factory and employees are already receiving training for this. According to the report, the idea is that Sony will begin mass production of these microlenses next year. Your application? There are several, and in the age of AI, they can be used as equipment to connect racks, but from the department Sony Micro Optics they point out that an application of microoptics can be for the automotive sector. “Micro-optics is the miniaturization of optical systems and elements that serve to focus and direct light in the smallest possible space. For example, a car turn signal that is projected onto the asphalt.” And this is important because, as we say, since last Wednesday there have been voices that suggest that, with a year and a half left until 2028, Sony may rethink things and turn back. The problem with that thinking is that This is not a decision to be made lightly.and this immediate restructuring of their large record factory shows that the Japanese have been thinking about change for some time. No matter how many signature platforms are in place, it seems that the decision is irrevocable. And also a sample of what happens when you have no competition, since Xbox is neither here nor expected in this area of ​​living room consoles after the failure of their last two machines. And more now with the internal situation they have. Image | sony In Xataka | There are more and more physical video games that are paperweights. It is a tremendous problem for video games as art.

China launches the first factory for personalized vaccines with artificial intelligence

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Cancer treatment is on the verge of a historic revolution driven by the hyperpersonalization of medicine. Until now we were working with the idea of ​​manufacturing general medicines to treat cancer, but the idea of ​​manufacturing a unique and exclusive medicine for the genetics of each patient’s tumor has been around for years in laboratories, but the great bottleneck has always been the manufacturing time and, logically, the immense costs. A new step. China just gave the green light to the world’s first production line for cancer vaccines powered entirely by artificial intelligence. Located in Beijing, this facility is owned by Likang Life Sciences, a firm that has invested approximately $16.1 million in setting up a factory designed to operate at unprecedented speed. Its most advanced product is the LK101 neoantigen vaccine and it delegates the complex task of sequencing tumor DNApromising to synthesize customized doses in just one day. The definitive objective of this technological deployment is for patients to receive their personalized injection a few days after undergoing the biopsy. Why an AI? The key here is in the “neoantigens”, small mutated proteins that are exclusively in tumor cells and in each patient we find specific antigens. Here AI intervenes as an ultra-fast analytical engine by scrutinizing the tumor’s genetic information and predicting which parts of the antigen will be most effective in awakening and directing immune system cells to kill the tumor. Because here the only thing we seek is to activate the natural defenses we have, as we already do with immunotherapy, so that it is able to find tumor cells and destroy them, just as it does, for example, when we have an infection. But this is a process that requires great personalization and, above all, great speed to act as soon as possible on patients. And this is something an AI can do. for a long time Science has been paving this path, as we saw with an article published in 2024 which demonstrated that the integration of AI in the design of mRNA and DNA oncological vaccines is essential to know with maximum accuracy the composition of a tumor and its weak points. And to avoid failures, the algorithms are trained with large databases that we already have, where all the possible variants that a tumor may have are found. Another good news is that pioneering publications in Nature had already demonstrated the feasibility of RNA vaccines to induce specific and memory immune responses in patients with melanoma or even in such lethal and complex tumors. like pancreatic cancer. The nuance. It must be made very clear, first of all, that the promising results obtained in animals do not directly guarantee success in all patients, with clinical efficacy in humans still being very limited. And currently the vast majority of studies focused on this new personalized treatment are in very early stages. On the other hand, although China has built the first large algorithmic factory, its clinical research ecosystem remains very closed, and the data indicates that between 2014 and 2024 89 clinical trials of oncological vaccines were registered in this country. Something that greatly clashes with the 757 tests that have been carried out in the United States in this same period. And more limited. Added to this is that Chinese trials have an almost exclusively domestic vocation, with barely 2.2% global reach compared to 47.6% in the United States. But they also address less oncological diversity, focusing on about 5 types of cancer compared to the more than 20 studied by North American competitors. Images | Testalize In Xataka | Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

An artisanal cheese factory in California was on the verge of bankruptcy. Today it is a buoyant business thanks to something: AI agents

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North of San Francisco there is a city called Petaluma where there is a cheese factory with the same name. Petaluma Creamery has more than a century of history and generated $50 million in its golden age, but several factors caused it to be on the verge of disappearing. The story of their salvation is proof that AI does not always come to destroy jobs, it can also save businesses. A legendary cheese factory about to disappear. They count in Fortune that Larry Peter bought Petaluma Creamery in 2004 when the cooperative was about to close. It was he who turned it into a renowned brand that supplied hundreds of supermarkets and restaurants. After more than a decade of success, 2020 was the beginning of the end: the pandemic caused orders to drop, Larry had health problems and they lost Chipotle, one of their most important clients. The computer cousin. It’s not a meme. Larry Peter had a cousin, Daniel Peter, who was not a computer scientist but something even better: 17 years working at Salesforce implementing planning systems for manufacturers. Furthermore, he had just taken a sabbatical so it was the perfect opportunity and he ended up becoming the CTO of the cheese factory (goodbye, sabbatical). What Daniel found was a company that operated in a completely archaic way. All orders were recorded on paper, but invoices were entered in QuickBooks, an accounting software. The problem is that each of the more than 150 items had a code that employees had to know by heart, such as CY for yellow cheddar. As if that were not enough, it was invoiced in pounds, but the orders were always boxes or pieces. Goodbye, gap year. First step: digitize. The first thing the company’s new CTO did was install fiber optic internet and began taking all the data accumulated over decades to the cloud. Once everything was digitalized and the house was tidy, Daniel built an operating system based on Salesforce and the Agentforce AI platform. This is where things got interesting. AI agents to the rescue. With the house now in order, the intelligence layer was added and different tools were created to run the business. The first thing he did was load the jungle of codes for each article and replaced it with one that allowed searching with natural text. In addition, it automatically transforms boxes or pieces of cheese into pounds, making order registration a much faster process. Another of the agents that he implemented is capable of predicting what a customer is going to order based on the purchase history, so orders can be placed faster and if a customer forgets something the system remembers it. There is also an agent who plans delivery routes that can be modified with natural prompts and, finally, an agent is dedicated to controlling the traceability of the milk, recording data such as weight, temperature, time and origin. The human touch. AI agents improved the entire company’s operations, but there is one thing they do not know how to do and that is search for clients. For this, Larry Peter had the help of Kevin Goddard, who worked as a salesperson in the sector for decades. The result of joining their network of contacts with the new tools, managed to make the company go from having only 13 clients to more than 300. Petaluma Creamery is still far from billing 50 million at its peak, but they already plan to reach 10 million next year. The future. AI is reconfiguring the labor market and in many cases that translates into massive layoffsbut this is not always the case and the story of this cheese factory shows the other side of automation and AI. “It is very likely that this place would not exist without her” says Daniel Peter, the CTO cousin. In the end, it seems that he liked life between the factory and the farm and the sabbatical year is going to last a little longer than expected. Image | Petaluma Creamery In Xataka | Enterprises have successfully embraced AI agents. So much so that they are drowning in them

the Atlas robot will go directly to a car factory

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Hyundai has finally taken full control of Boston Dynamics, as advances the South Korean newspaper Maeil Business Newspaper. The movement is a clear warning to surfers: robots are no longer for recording fun videos on the internet doing parkour or turning into pets, they are now preparing to work for real in car factories. The large companies in the sector are already moving chips to see who dominates this new industrial revolution in a practical way, that is, putting useful robots into their assembly lines as soon as possible to achieve competitive advantage and in this scenario the Korean automobile company has just hit the table. The purchase. As the South Korean media exclusively reports, Hyundai Motor Group has bought 9.65% of the missing shares of Boston Dynamics for 325 million dollars (about 283 million euros). The person who gets rid of these shares is the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. and does so by taking advantage of an agreement signed in 2021 to activate the sale just before the deadline expired, today, June 20. To fully close the deal, Hyundai would have transferred the RAI institute, a scientific artificial intelligence research center worth $100 million, to SoftBank. Why is it important. The acquisition is critical because it eliminates the usual frictions of shared management in one fell swoop: Hyundai is the sole owner of 100% of the company, so it can make decisions more quickly and without waiting for anyone. In other words, you can gear up to vertically integrate Boston Dynamics systems into your plants without reaching agreements or sharing roadmaps with outside investors. In addition, having complete control will allow Hyundai to much better prepare Boston Dynamics for its big goal: to start listing and selling shares on the Nasdaq. Gaining autonomy and agility is essential in the face of aggressive competition from Tesla or Figure AI and of course, China. The Chinese government is investing a lot of public money to encourage its own robotics companies, such as Unitree, to produce units en masse and at low cost, a strategy that in fact it has already applied recently with electric cars or solar panels. With this coup d’état, Hyundai ensures that it safeguards the valuable technology of the American Boston Dynamics in the hands of an allied country. Context. Boston Dynamics is probably the most famous robotics company in the world and its ownership history has been curious to say the least: it went from being an academic division of MIT to belong to Google in 2013, then he came to Softbank. In 2021, Hyundai was made with the majority of the company. Simultaneously, SoftBank is changing its eggs in the basket: from robotics hardware to AI in several aspects that go to infrastructure with data centers to software. In detail. Hyundai has been “lucky”: according to Maeil Business Newspaper has closed the agreement to get that last package of shares very cheap thanks to the fact that the cost was already signed and frozen five years ago, before robots became fashionable. In fact, the market value of Boston Dynamics has reached almost 30 trillion won (about 19.8 billion euros) last year. Internally, the shareholding would be divided as follows: president Euisun Chung retains his 22.6%, while the subsidiaries distribute the rest of the parent company, namely: Hyundai Motor with 28%, Kia with 17.2%, Hyundai Mobis with 11.3% and Hyundai Glovis with 11.25%. Yes, but. To begin with, this is an exclusive leak: neither Hyundai nor Softbank has officially communicated the transaction. In addition, the automobile company has had to pay a toll: getting rid of the RAI institute, for which Hyundai had invested $424 million in 2022. Hyundai keeps the factories and the body of the robots, but loses control of the brains of the machines. In Xataka | It assembles 1,500,000 cars a year and does so at a rate of one every 10 seconds: the keys to the fastest factory in the world In Xataka | A Chinese firm has just presented a quadruped that defies limits. Boston Dynamics no longer has a clear path Cover | hyundai

Elon Musk not only wants to reach the Moon, he also wants to turn it into a factory for satellites launched with catapults

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What do they have in common ChinaSpaceX, Auriga Space and Electromagnetic Launch? Well, possibly several things, but one of them is that they have expressed interest in using mass cannons to launch from the Moon. Said to very roughlywant to use electromagnetic catapults loaded with satellites or construction materials to other points in space. Today, existing technologies are not optimized to launch large loads, but with so much power involved it would not be strange if it were finally achieved. The ethical implications would be many even if they only focused on science and communications. However, it could be even worse; Well, according to the analysis recently published by an expert, the arrival of the military applications It would only be a matter of time. From moon rocks to nuclear warheads. The idea of ​​the lunar mass cannon He initially proposed it a scientist named Gerard O’Neill in the 70s. His idea was to use them to extract minerals from the Moon and launch them into space to build space colonies with them. Over time, many space agencies, public and private, have become interested in its use. For this reason, the independent analyst specialized in cislunar security Andre Sonntag just published a report in which he recounts the risks that these catapults would entail. If the necessary technology is optimized to launch large payloads, they could be used to launch probes aimed at destroying satellites, inert projectiles and even ships loaded with nuclear warheads. Furthermore, if launches are made from the Moon they may be more difficult to detect by conventional early warning systems, so many attacks would go unnoticed. An ingenious design. Mass cannons are actually very interesting systems for space launch. They consist on a track in which one electromagnet is placed after another. A metal cart is circulated above and is attracted by said magnets. Each of these electromagnets is activated just when the car passes over it, giving it a new impulse, so that it accelerates more and more. The goal is to reach 2.4 kilometers per second, since this is the speed necessary to escape from the Moon. When this is achieved, the cargo on board the car is launched into space. In short, it is possible to catapult what is inside the car without having to consume propellant. Better on the Moon. This system has historically been proposed for use on the Moon for two reasons. To begin with, unlike what happens with a conventional rocketa very high speed is reached very quickly. If the process were done on Earth, the rocket would reach the atmosphere so quickly that it would catch fire due to friction when crossing it. On the other hand, there is no classical atmosphere on the Moon. On the other hand, since gravity on the Moon is much lower, a lower speed is needed than what would be needed to escape through this system on Earth. The case of Elon Musk. In his report, Sonntag has not mentioned any company or agency. However, it is well known that Elon Musk speak of the use of these mass cannons last February. He has been expressing his interest for a long time establish data centers in space and manufacture AI satellites directly on the Moon. This would avoid the energy, thermal management and launch logistics limitations that Earth poses for its ambitious plan. The vacuum of space would serve as a coolant and solar energy could be used to obtain electricity. The release waiting listIn addition, it would be much clearer than on Earth. In order not to have to carry large amounts of fuel to the Moon, their idea is to launch these satellites directly from our satellite. That is why he has already mentioned electromagnetic catapults on several occasions. There is legislation, but it is difficult to ensure. The United Nations Outer Space Treaty strictly prohibits the construction of military installations on celestial bodies. It also prohibits nuclear launches from space. However, Sonntag points out in his report that it would be quite difficult to verify. Therefore, he is concerned if these types of systems advance, given the interest of tycoons like Elon Musk. The payloads that could be launched with current technologies are minuscule. In fact, launching functional satellites directly with one of these cannons is science fiction. However, technology will advance. By then, we must be prepared, because those who have no scruples on Earth will not have them in space either. Image | SpaceX/xAI In Xataka | We knew there was water on the Moon, but not why some craters were empty. Finally we have the answer

In China they want humanoid robots to do household chores. The problem is that a house is not a factory

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For years we have seen humanoid robots do somersaults, danceppractice martial arts or move through factories with increasingly striking capabilities. The next step seems almost natural: taking them home to do the laundry, prepare a bed or support elder care. The problem is that this transition is not as direct as it seems. A factory is designed to reduce uncertainty; A home, on the other hand, is full of small exceptions. And for a robot, those exceptions can be exactly the difference between a flashy demo and a useful product. The concept. SCMP account That GigaAI has introduced the SeeLight S1 as the country’s first general-purpose home humanoid robot model, developed in collaboration with the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and the Hubei Humanoid Robotics Industry Alliance. In images released by the company, he appears performing very recognizable tasks: cutting vegetables, frying eggs, loading a washing machine, hanging clothes, making a bed or opening curtains. The company also plans to test it for free in homes in Wuhan in the first half of 2027. A house is not an assembly line. That is the fundamental difference. In a factory, the robot can work with known references, pieces always placed in the same way and movements that are repeated thousands of times with very few variations. In a home, on the other hand, nothing guarantees that the shirt is where it was yesterday, that the chair has not moved or that a pet does not cross in front of it just when the robot is trying to complete a task. Much movement, little understanding. Xinhua itself collects an idea that helps cool down the epic of the demonstrations and that does not only affect China, but humanoid robotics in general: humanoids have greatly improved in their “cerebellum”, the part linked to control and coordination, but they still have major problems in their “brain”. In other words, they can execute complex movements, but it is difficult for them to understand what a scene means and what function each object has within it. Home is also a data problem. Now, for these systems to work better in real homes, they need to learn from real homes, but the home is precisely one of the places where it is least easy to collect data. We are not just talking about room maps, but about objects, forces, angles, routines and physical decisions that are difficult to simulate. Advances and challenges. According to NSFCthe country expected to exceed 10,000 humanoid units sold in 2025, with a year-on-year growth of 125%, and there were already pilots in industrial manufacturing, delivery, catering and services. The important nuance is that none of this automatically turns this industrial career into a successful deployment within homes: the sector itself locates the path prudently, first industry, then logistics and commercial uses, and only later the home. A future easy to imagine, difficult to materialize. The difficult part is demonstrating that this can be done usefully, safely, and at reasonable cost outside of a prepared demonstration. There is the real border. China and other countries around the world can accelerate prototypes, pilots and production, but a home does not forgive clumsiness in the same way as a controlled stage. To get home, the robot will not have to understand human life better. Images | GigaAI In Xataka | In China there are already “schools” for robots. Its objective is the same as schools for humans: to teach them to work

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