Financial uncertainty, rising tariffs, and ongoing labor challenges are making it more durable than ever for meals producers to plan their subsequent transfer. However one Canadian potato chip maker discovered a option to enhance productiveness, cut back prices, and preserve flexibility—all with out hiring a single further employee.
The Star Wars licensed G1T4-M1N1 droid. Supply: Piaggio Quick Ahead
“Might the Fourth be with you” is a well known phrase to Star Wars followers. This Might 4, Piaggio Quick Ahead, or PFF, launched a particular version of its gitamini robotic, dubbed G1T4-M1N1. The cargo-carrying droid is the results of a collaboration between PFF’s designers and leisure conglomerate The Walt Disney Co.
“We’ve had conversations with Disney through the years,” mentioned Greg Lynn, CEO of Piaggio Quick Ahead. “It was keen on our merchandise, and inside per week of our preliminary name, we scheduled a gathering with its licensing staff out in Glendale, [Calif.] — it was by far the simplest introduction we’ve had.”
“We took gitaplus and gitamini to Disney’s campus, and a yr’s collaboration went fairly rapidly and easily,” he advised The Robotic Report. “We’ve achieved licensing earlier than, like dropping inserts [into the robot’s cargo compartment] or branding for workplace furnishings, a cooler firm, or catering, however nothing of this depth.”
PFF has offered gita to hospitality firms and can exhibit kilo at Automate this week in Detroit.
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Piaggio Quick Ahead’s design and embedded software program groups labored carefully with Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd., in keeping with Lynn. From the G1T4-M1N1’s decals to its consumer interface and smartphone app, the collaborators wanted time to get approvals.
“We actually wished to make it intuitive to make use of the robots proper out of the field,” Lynn recalled. “We wished to get the lighting and the sounds proper, and it was vital that we recognized which interval [of the Star Wars saga] it got here from.”
PFF narrowed its proposed robots to a few and finally selected a useful astromech droid much like R2-D2 or BB-8. This affected the selection of “language,” shade scheme, and even supplies, famous Lynn.
The firm labored with Lucasfilm to customise a library of twenty-two sounds to sign occasions resembling pairing and unpairing with a telephone by way of Bluetooth, charging, booting up, and accelerating or decelerating. That “language” made G1T4-M1N1 far more interactive than a typical gitamini.
Disney Imagineers demonstrated how they offer robots character eventually yr’s Robotics Summit & Expo.
“We determined for this mannequin to let the robotic talk with its chief when issues had been occurring,” Lynn defined. “We already had odometry for the gap from the consumer, however when the robotic turns a sure variety of levels, that triggers a sound. Individuals who love Star Wars are comfy with that stage of interplay.”
Not like a number of the preliminary advertising for gita or the present enterprise subscription focus for kilo, PFF is aiming G1T4-M1N1 at customers. It is obtainable for $2,875, can carry payloads as much as 20 lb. (9 kg), and may observe customers on sidewalks or indoors.
“We’re all the time occupied with clients,” mentioned Lynn. “There’s a Venn diagram of individuals able to undertake a robotic and Star Wars followers, and there’s an enormous overlap. We had a robotic within the Instances Sq. Disney Retailer, and we’ve had plenty of optimistic feedback from individuals who had been there and on social media.”
As well as, clients are prone to interact with G1T4-M1N1 longer than with different robots, Lynn mentioned. PFF is a part of Piaggio Group, which is finest identified for its Vespa scooters.
G1T4-M1N1 doesn’t have a microphone for extra in-depth interplay, and Lynn acknowledged that it may have extra customization choices. Nevertheless, favorable response to the preliminary launch may result in extra options sooner or later.
“We had our first clients and had a very nice weekend,” mentioned Lynn. “We met or exceeded our targets and located a variety of enthusiasm.”
A brand new research reveals that biofilms in washing machines could include potential pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes, posing doable dangers for laundering healthcare employees’ uniforms at dwelling.
Washing healthcare uniforms at dwelling could possibly be inadvertently aiding the unfold of antibiotic-resistant infections inside hospitals, based on new analysis led by Katie Laird of De Montfort College. The findings had been just lately revealed within the open-access journal PLOS One.
Hospital-acquired infections stay a critical public well being challenge, partly as a result of they typically contain micro organism proof against antibiotics. Whereas many healthcare professionals launder their uniforms at dwelling utilizing standard washing machines, earlier analysis has proven that clothes can function a car for bacterial transmission. This raises issues about whether or not dwelling washing strategies are ample to get rid of dangerous pathogens.
On this new research, researchers examined six completely different fashions of home washing machines by laundering material swatches contaminated with micro organism beneath each fast and customary hot-water cycles. Outcomes confirmed that fifty% of the machines didn’t successfully disinfect the samples through the fast cycle. Alarmingly, one-third additionally failed to completely decontaminate the materials even through the longer, customary wash cycle.
The group additionally sampled biofilms from inside 12 washing machines. DNA sequencing revealed the presence of doubtless pathogenic micro organism and antibiotic resistance genes. Investigations additionally confirmed that micro organism can develop resistance to home detergent, which additionally elevated their resistance to sure antibiotics.
Collectively, the findings counsel that many dwelling washing machines could also be inadequate for decontaminating healthcare employee uniforms, and could also be contributing to the unfold of hospital-acquired infections and antibiotic resistance. The researchers suggest that the laundering pointers given to healthcare employees must be revised to make sure that dwelling washing machines are cleansing successfully. Alternatively, healthcare services may use on-site industrial machines to launder uniforms to enhance affected person security and management the unfold of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
The authors add: “Our analysis reveals that home washing machines typically fail to disinfect textiles, permitting antibiotic-resistant micro organism to outlive. If we’re critical about transmission of infectious illness by way of textiles and tackling antimicrobial resistance, we should rethink how we launder what our healthcare employees put on.”
Reference: “Home laundering of healthcare textiles: Disinfection efficacy and dangers of antibiotic resistance transmission” by Caroline Cayrou, Katie Silver, Lucy Owen, Jake Dunlop and Katie Laird, 30 April 2025, PLOS ONE.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0321467
This analysis was funded by De Montfort College and the Textile Providers Affiliation.
Posted by Robbie McLachlan – Developer Advertising and marketing
In our newest #WeArePlay movie, which celebrates the individuals behind apps and video games on Google Play, we meet Clément, the founding father of Think about Video games. His sport, My Beautiful Planet, turns informal cellular gaming into tangible environmental motion, planting actual bushes and supporting reforestation tasks worldwide. Uncover the inspiration behind My Beautiful Planet and the influence it’s had to this point.
I’ve all the time cherished gaming and believed in know-how’s potential to sort out environmental challenges. However it was my time working with an NGO in Madagascar, the place I witnessed firsthand the devastating results of environmental adjustments that really sparked my mission. Combining gaming and sustainability simply made sense. Billions of individuals play video games, so why not harness that leisure to create real-world influence? To this point, the outcomes converse for themselves: we have constructed an engaged world group dedicated to defending the surroundings.
With My Beautiful Planet, planting a tree within the sport means planting an actual tree on this planet. Our group has already planted over 360,000 bushes by way of partnerships with NGOs like Graines de Vie in Madagascar, Kenya, and France. We have additionally supported ocean-cleaning, bee-protection, and drone reforestation tasks.
Balancing enjoyable with influence was key. Gamers wouldn’t keep only for the mission, so we centered on making a genuinely enjoyable match-3 fashion sport. As soon as gameplay was robust, we made real-world actions like tree planting core rewards within the sport, serving to gamers really feel naturally related to their influence. Our aim is to continue to grow this mannequin to guard biodiversity and combat local weather change.
Our newest initiative includes utilizing drones to reforest areas severely impacted by insect infestations and different environmental points. We’re dropping over a million specially-coated seeds by drone, which is a totally new and environment friendly approach of reforesting massive areas. It’s thrilling as a result of if this pilot succeeds, it might be replicated worldwide, considerably boosting world reforestation efforts.
Google Play has been essential for My Beautiful Planet – it is our fundamental distribution channel, with about 70% of our gamers coming by way of the platform. It makes it extremely straightforward and handy for anybody to obtain and begin enjoying instantly. which is important for participating a world group. Plus, from a developer’s standpoint, the pliability, responsiveness, and highly effective testing instruments Google Play gives have made launching and scaling our sport quicker and smoother, permitting us to focus much more on our environmental influence.
Proper now, we’re centered on increasing the sport expertise by including extra participating ranges, and introducing thrilling new options like integrating our eco-friendly cryptocurrency, My Beautiful Coin, into gameplay. Following the success of our first drone-led reforestation undertaking in France, our subsequent step is monitoring its influence and increasing this method to different areas. In the end, we purpose to construct the world’s largest gaming group devoted to defending the surroundings, empowering tens of millions to make a distinction whereas having fun with the sport.
Uncover different inspiring app and sport founders featured in #WeArePlay.
The Mannequin Context Protocol, or MCP, is a brand new open normal that connects AI assistants to arbitrary knowledge sources and instruments, corresponding to codebases, APIs, and content material repositories. As an alternative of constructing bespoke integrations for every system, builders can use MCP to determine safe, scalable connections between AI fashions and the info they want. By standardizing this connection layer, MCP permits fashions to entry related info in actual time, resulting in extra correct and context-aware responses.
David Soria Parra is a Member of the Technical Workers at Anthropic, the place he co-created the Mannequin Context Protocol. He joins the podcast to speak about his profession and the way forward for context-aware AI.
Jordi Mon Companys is a product supervisor and marketer that makes a speciality of software program supply, developer expertise, cloud native and open supply. He has developed his profession at firms like GitLab, Weaveworks, Harness and different platform and devtool suppliers. His pursuits vary from software program provide chain safety to open supply innovation. You possibly can attain out to him on Twitter at @jordimonpmm
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This episode of Software program Engineering Every day is delivered to you by Capital One.
How does Capital One stack? It begins with utilized analysis and leveraging knowledge to construct AI fashions. Their engineering groups use the facility of the cloud and platform standardization and automation to embed AI options all through the enterprise. Actual-time knowledge at scale permits these proprietary AI options to assist Capital One enhance the monetary lives of its prospects. That’s know-how at Capital One.
Study extra about how Capital One’s trendy tech stack, knowledge ecosystem, and utility of AI/ML are central to the enterprise by visiting www.capitalone.com/tech.
Builders, we’ve all been there… It’s 3 AM and your cellphone blares, jolting you awake. One other alert. You scramble to troubleshoot, however the complexity of your microservices atmosphere makes it practically unimaginable to pinpoint the issue rapidly.
That’s why Chronosphere is on a mission that will help you take again management with Differential Analysis, a brand new distributed tracing characteristic that takes the guesswork out of troubleshooting. With only one click on, DDx routinely analyzes all spans and dimensions associated to a service, pinpointing the most definitely reason for the difficulty.
Don’t let troubleshooting drag you into the early hours of the morning. Simply “DDx it” and resolve points sooner.
See why Chronosphere was named a frontrunner within the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms at chronosphere.io/sed.
