Hope for cyber security in the age of quantum computing
With hopes for the future of quantum computing come fears of the implications for cybersecurity. Researchers in Switzerland have developed a new communications system hardened by quantum-resistant encryption, which will shield communications systems from quantum computing-powered attacks.
A number, not a name.
Swiss technology developer SEALSQ presented the system called ‘QS7001’, in January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The company describes its Quantum Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (Quantum ASIC) as a breakthrough in semiconductor design.
QS7001 uses a chip with two embedded quantum-resistant encryption protocols. Another feature is a dramatically reduced data transmission time, making it far harder to attack a system equipped with QS7001.
In 2023, the market for such ASICs was worth $24.6 billion. With demand for better security and a growing fear of attacks using quantum computers, projections put the value of the Quantum ASICs market at $41.7 billion by 2030.
In the future, quantum computers will have a processing power far ahead of what is available to classic computers now. This, coupled with the far greater capability of quantum computers to solve highly complex equations, presents a serious challenge to current encryption methods.
The shape of the future takes on many forms
In Terminator 2, a shape-shifting robot from the future threatens the world's present and future. This week, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Dresden University of Technology (Technische Universität Dresden) announced they had developed shape-shifting robots that can behave like materials, although not sent from the future.
The new device consists of a swarm of tiny ice-hockey-puck-like robots that can transition between a rigid and a fluid state using a combination of light, magnets, and motors. Each unit of the swarm is programmed to group together into different configurations, each with its own shape and strength. This means the new device could behave like a material and a device, and be rigid and fluid as needed.
For inspiration, the team looked to embryos and their ability to shape-shift. What makes embryos special is their unique ability to change from a group of cells to take the shape of something definite, such as limbs, organs, or bones. Each new form will have its own density and consistency.
The team had to mimic the forces that allow an embryo’s cells to move around each other, the biochemical signals that allow the cells to organise themselves and cohere, and their ability to adhere to each other.
Each robot in the material has a set of magnets around its exterior, is equipped with eight tiny motors and light sensors on its top and bottom. These help the unit stick to other units, move with other units and orient itself in space to know which way is up.
Just like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, this material could carry a load, manipulate objects and self-heal. As yet, it can not mimic the human voice and run faster than a cheetah.
One giant leap for a robot
Scientists at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Boston, Massachusetts, have developed a micro-robot that can mimic the jump of a springtail.
Springtail, with visible furcula. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Going back approximately 410 million years in the fossil record, the springtail is one of the most common creatures in a landscape. Classed as a non-insect hexapod, its distinguishing feature is a fork-like structure called a furcula attached to the underside of its body. This allows the springtail to jump ten centimetres, or sixty times its own body length, into the air, rotating 368 times per second. The leap takes one thousandth of a second, and a specialist camera is needed to film it.
Inspired by the cockroach, the Harvard Ambulatory Micro-robot (HAMR) is a machine that can walk and leap over anything put in its way. but the team added a furcula to give it an impressive jump capability. The furcula is a latch-like mechanism that stores potential energy until needed. It takes milliseconds to release and resembles a catapult.
When it comes, the jump can stretch up to four and a half feet, or twenty-three times its body length. The research team developed microfabrication techniques to bring the weight down, as such the micro-robot may be the size of the palm of a human hand, but it weighs no more than a paperclip.
It is highly agile and can climb, jump, walk, and strike or scoop up objects. All of which means it could follow terrain or get into spaces that a human could not. With artificial intelligence, its capabilities can only grow and blur the difference between science fiction and reality.
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