National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

The America250 time capsule is built to last. We have done everything to ensure that when future Americans open it in the year 2276, the items inside will be dry and intact. This is how we built it: https://lnkd.in/eA4WT3Gc

Robots can vacuum your floors or deliver food, but many more advanced robots are being used in manufacturing and other industrial settings. But how can researchers know how skilled a robot is at simple tasks, such as picking things up and putting them down? Now, researchers can put their robots to the test and get a quick grade for how well they can complete tasks. Competitors log in to the portal, known as ManipulationNet, and have the robots complete certain jobs on camera. First, the robot may have to put a peg in a large hole, which is fairly easy. The holes get progressively smaller for the robot as the challenge goes on. AI gives the robots a score on how well they do with progressively harder tasks, and experts double-check the AI scoring. Among those experts are NIST researchers Kenneth Kimble and Robert Seney. Previously, these competitions were local and ad hoc, or in simulations only. But now, competitors worldwide can know where their robots stand on a leaderboard and tweak their efforts accordingly to improve. In other words, the competition now happens at any time from anywhere in the world, and with any robots the participants choose. Over time, more tasks will be added to the ManipulationNet to challenge robots with real-world challenges. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/eNBDdt3S

Today, NIST’s National Construction Safety Team released its technical findings on the cause of the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South building on June 24, 2021, which took the lives of 98 people. Following an extensive technical investigation, the team has concluded that the collapse began in early June 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed. These initial column failures caused cracks to grow and loads to redistribute in the pool deck over the next three weeks, resulting in the transfer of their loads to adjacent slab-column connections that were not strong enough to support them. This led to the larger catastrophic collapse on June 24. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eACVYpHt

No SRMs were harmed in the making of this meme.

Try as we might, we can never render an AI system completely safe from attack from the get-go. We knew why nearly a century ago. NIST’s Apostol Vassilev has published a mathematical proof building on work published in 1931 by famed logician Kurt Gödel, whose incompleteness theorems showed that there are limits to what can be proved within a system built on a finite number of rules. The guardrails that govern an AI’s behavior are such a system, and one of the proof’s implications is there will always be a way to prompt an AI system to disregard its rules. Those deploying AI systems, therefore, need to dedicate resources to finding prompts that would break the security of AI systems and to address them before adversaries can exploit them. For details, including what we can do about it, click here: https://lnkd.in/d6SE-_me

Why do we preserve history? To understand where we’ve been, ground ourselves in who we are, and build a better future. The time capsule, built in honor of America’s 250th birthday, has officially been sealed. This isn't just a collection of objects—it’s a representation of the people, places, ideas, and innovations shaping the United States at this historic milestone. Engineered by scientists at NIST and preservation experts at the Library of Congress, this capsule is built to withstand 2.5 centuries underground. Inside are contributions from all 50 states, 5 U.S. territories, Washington, D.C., and all three branches of the federal government. 📍 The Next Chapter: On July 4, 2026, the capsule will be buried at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia in conjunction with the National Park Service. It will remain sealed until the year 2276, offering future generations a window into our world today. 🔗 Learn more about the time capsule and its contents here: https://lnkd.in/eYekVBuT

A plane is flying when suddenly the GPS is jammed. GPS jamming and spoofing can cause on-board navigation systems to show the plane in the wrong location. Today, pilots must rely on old-school radar and inertial navigation tools when GPS is jammed or unavailable. While flying with disrupted GPS remains safe, it can be mentally taxing for pilots and cause delays. In the future, pilots could use quantum sensors to overcome this challenge. NIST scientists are developing a new kind of quantum sensor based on tiny defects hidden inside diamonds. These sensors can pick up extremely faint magnetic signals, such as the magnetic field produced by the Earth at the airplane’s altitude. Paired with maps of Earth’s magnetic field, a diamond-based quantum sensor could someday help pilots navigate confidently with or without GPS. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eyJdDcrA

The programming language Python, which powers many websites, has a history that includes NIST.  In the 1990s, Python’s creator, Guido van Rossum, briefly worked at NIST as a guest researcher. During his time here, he continued to develop the programming language named after Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  Learn more – including which iconic Monty Python sketches are van Rossum’s favorites – in our latest Taking Measure blog post: https://lnkd.in/eD2akqRE  #Python #PythonProgramming 

NIST hosted soccer competitions in the late 2000s, both at the global scale and at the nanoscale.    In conjunction with RoboCup, an international organization dedicated to using the game of soccer as a testing ground for robotics technologies, we coordinated soccer competitions between the world’s then-smallest robots. These nanoscale robots were meant to show the feasibility and accessibility of technologies for fabricating MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), tiny mechanical devices built onto semiconductor chips.    Contestants controlled the nanobots under an optical microscope by remote control, moving them in response to changing magnetic fields or electrical signals transmitted across the microchip arena (1/2). The silicon dioxide disk shown here (2/2) served as the ball in the game and could be pushed across the field by the bots.    Although the bots were micrometers long, they were considered nanoscale by their mass, which ranged from a few nanograms to a few hundred nanograms.    #Nano #Nanobots #Nanotechnology 

NIST has added tens of thousands of new items to its comprehensive library of chemical fingerprints. Scientists at NIST generated the fingerprints using a mass spectrometer. This process provides researchers with the information to create a bar-chart-like graph known as a mass spectrum that is unique to each particular chemical. Manufacturers and researchers who encounter an unknown compound create their own bar graph of the mystery substance and run it through the NIST library, searching for a match. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ePPhjZt8