North By Northwest

"Into the Ice By Mark Synnott Dutton, 432 pages, $33 Many people reassessed their lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mark Synnott, an accomplished mountaineer and writer, decided it was a good time to refit his sailboat, the Polar Sun, and navigate the Northwest Passage -- the icy arctic waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. "Could I sail a forty-year-old fiberglass boat from Maine to Alaska -- a voyage of some seven thousand miles -- and live to tell my own tale?" he wonders. "It was a question that would soon all but consume me, in the same way I knew it had done to the European explorers who had ventured into these same waters long ago when this part of the world was still a blank on their maps." For centuries the search for a polar trade route had indeed consumed -- and bettered -- more-experienced explorers, until Roald Amundsen successfully sailed it between 1903 and 1906. Today the passage remains a daunting journey fraught with danger, from the frigid waters and the shifting currents to "Jakobshavn, the fastest-moving glacier in Greenland, which surges forward" up to 130 feet a day and is responsible for about 10% "of all icebergs spawned from the Greenland Ice Cap." Further complicating his adventure: Mr. Synnott was recently remarried and the father of a young son. As he sat on his boat docked in its marina and contemplated the idea of traveling the Northwest Passage, Mr. Synnott, then in his 40s, asked himself: "What do you really want to do with the time that you have left?" To which he reflected: "I [want] to spend as much of it as possible with the two human beings sleeping below and with my three other children." But he also admits that "I'm someone who has always needed more than that. I need epic adventure and exploration in my life." He would find both on this journey, and live to write about it in "Into the Ice: The Northwest Passage, the Polar Sun, and a 175-Year-Old Mystery." The mystery of the subtitle is what happened to John Franklin. On May 19, 1845, the Royal Navy expedition commander set off from Greenhithe, England, in search of the Northwest Passage. In September 1846, Franklin's two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, became trapped in the ice near King William Island in northern Canada. "Not a single one of them made it out," Mr. Synnott tells us of Franklin's crew, "and no detailed written account of their ordeal has ever been found." Solving that mystery became Mr. Synnott's mission and justification for leaving his family behind for much of this six-month lark. Lucky for him, his second wife, Hampton, herself somewhat of a free spirit, supported him. Lucky for him, too, that he surrounded himself with the right people. Mr. Synnott was smart enough to know that he didn't have the sailing chops to pull this off alone. So he enlisted an old climbing buddy, Ben Zartman, who had far more experience on the high seas. He also convinced National Geographic to foot the bill for the expedition, in exchange for bringing along a camera crew to produce a podcast and an hourlong television special. Once under way, serendipity intervenes in Greenland, where Mr. Synnott meets Jens Erik Kjeldsen, another peripatetic soul who had sailed the Northwest Passage in 2018 with his wife, Dorthe. Mr. Kjeldsen introduces Mr. Synnott to Povl Linnet, who promptly produces, Mr. Synnott tells us, a "rusted steel cable as thick as my wrist." It was from the Fox, the boat that Francis Leopold McClintock sailed in the 1850s in search of Franklin and his expedition. The two Greenlanders give Mr. Synnott navigation advice and charts of safe anchorages, including a whaling station. "If you look around," Mr. Linnet tells him, "you might find the iron bollards that Franklin used" to secure his ships nearly two centuries before. Once inside the passage, Mr. Synnott and the rest of his small crew of five encounter Alan Cresswell and his partner, who are also sailing the passage, but in their much-sturdier 50-foot aluminum sailboat. Together, the two boats buddy-sail through the most treacherous parts of the voyage. Mr. Cresswell leads the Polar Sun out of a crushing ice floe to open water and safety. Mr. Synnott's narrative often brings readers onto the boat with him, sluicing through the icy waters. "As a weak sun struggled to burn through the haze overhead, we all stripped down and jumped off the stern, hooting and hollering as we briefly plunged into the 42-degree water," he writes of their celebration upon crossing the Arctic Circle. There's also a good deal of environmental preaching. Mr. Synnott frets that the very success of this trip depends on man-made global warming to keep the Northwest Passage free from ice too thick for his boat to break through. When his boat is in peril of being crushed by a growing ice field, he's more worried about spilling diesel fuel than about surviving the arctic. Yet after describing all the horrors of 19th-century commercial whaling, Mr. Synnott is able to enjoy the whale meat left for him by some Greenland fishermen. "The meat was tender, with a delicate flavor I would describe as much closer to beef or venison than fish. I savored every morsel." Mr. Synnott does a lot of soul searching along the way. He recalls an essay by John Harries, a "high-latitude sailor" who in 2014 wrote about people attempting the Northwest Passage, comparing them to the tourists who scale Mount Everest. "For these crews it's not a voyage with the associated appreciation and learning about the surrounding lands and seas," Mr. Harries writes. "It's a mad dash, starting way too late in the season, just to say they did it." "Was I really all that different from the hordes he was describing?" Mr. Synnott wonders. "I had, in fact, climbed Everest, and now here I was apparently going for the sailing equivalent." In the end, he completes the passage, arriving in coastal Alaska on Sept. 20, 2022, having spent 112 days and logged 6,736 miles aboard the Polar Sun. He doesn't solve the Franklin mystery, but finds a storybook ending all the same. "Hampton and I put our house in New Hampshire up for rent, sold our cars, and pulled Tommy out of school," he writes. "And with any luck, by the time you're reading this, we'll be on our way to the South Pacific." [1]

1. North By Northwest. Yost, Mark.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Apr 2025: A15.

 

Kinija lenktyniauja humanoidiniais robotais per pusmaratonį --- Žmonės bėgo su 21 robotu, demonstruojant pažangiausias Pekino technologijas

 „PEKINAS – metalas atsitrenkė į asfaltą pusmaratonyje, kuriame dalyvavo tūkstančiai bėgikų žmonių ir 21 Kinijos humanoidinio roboto modelis.

 

 Šeštadienį Pekine vykusios lenktynės plente, kuriose dalyvavo bėgikai ir daugybė robotų, buvo laikomos pažangiausių Kinijos technologijų demonstracija.

 

 Iš tiesų, robotai ir jų kūrėjai turėjo daug įtakos didelio atgarsio sulaukusiam renginiui. Jei robotai nukristų, užstrigtų ar pasiklystų per plačiai reklamuojamą renginį, tai būtų gėda jų kūrėjams.

 

 13 mylių lenktynės, kurios, anot jų organizatorių, buvo pirmosios tokio pobūdžio, buvo galimybė Kinijai parodyti naujausią jos humanoidų būklę – vieną iš kelių technologijų sričių, kuri yra JAV ir Kinijos technologijų konkurencijos priešakyje. Kinija pareiškė norinti, kad šalis iki 2027 m. taptų pasaulio lydere humanoidinių robotų srityje. Kinijos valdžia skyrė subsidijų, talentų premijų ir mokesčių lengvatų robotikos įmonėms.

 

 Tiesą sakant, lenktynės parodė, kaip greitai ir sklandžiai gali bėgti kai kurie robotai, bet ir kaip toli humanoidai vis dar yra nuo gebėjimo imituoti žmogaus veiklą.

 

 „Bėgimas yra pagrindinis žmonių gebėjimas“, – sakė Pekino humanoidinių robotų inovacijų centro, sukūrusio vieną iš robotų „Tien Kung Ultra“, vyriausiasis technologijų pareigūnas Tangas Jianas. „Kadangi kuriame į žmones panašius robotus, norime suteikti jiems kuo daugiau pagrindinių žmogiškųjų gebėjimų“, – tai būtų labai svarbu, juos panaudojant pramoniniais tikslais.

 

 Kinija labai stengiasi gaminti vis sudėtingesnę robotiką, iš dalies siekdama padidinti savo gamyklų automatizavimo lygį.

 

 Prieš lenktynes ​​tūkstančiai žmonių bėgikų susigrūdo vienoje juostoje už starto linijos, daugelis bėgo vietoje, kad sušiltų. Humanoidai, tvoromis atskirti į kitą juostą nuo žmonių bėgikų, laukdami starto, iš esmės stovėjo vietoje.

 

 Sirenai paženklinus lenktynių pradžią 7.30 val., žmonės bėgikai puolė ir išsiliejo į trasą. Tačiau robotų paleidimai buvo nutolę vienas nuo kito po minutę ar dvi, kad jie nesusitrenktų vienas į kitą.

 

 Pirmasis robotas buvo Tien Kung Ultra, 5 pėdų 9 colių, 115 svarų sveriantis humanoidas, turintis juodą galvą ir oranžinės spalvos viršutinę dalį. Trys žmonės lydėjo jį, kad padėti valdyti robotą.

 

 Lenktynės buvo kelis mėnesius trukusių humanoidų treniruočių kulminacija, kuri turėjo įvaldyti žmonėms įgimtus įgūdžius. Pasak organizatorių, jie turėjo bėgti lygiais ir kalvotais trasos keliais ir manevruoti šešiuose posūkiuose į kairę ir aštuonis posūkius į dešinę. Kūrėjai turėjo išmokyti robotus išlaikyti stabilumą ir pusiausvyrą, kad nenukristų per pusės maratono distanciją.

 

 Iš pradžių organizatoriai planavo varžybas nutraukti likus maždaug 3,5 valandos, o tai reiškia, kad minimalus vidutinis robotų bėgikų greitis finišuoti buvo apie 3,7 mylios per valandą.

 

 Kūrėjai teigė, kad humanoidiniai robotai paprastai gali veikti ne ilgiau, kaip dvi valandas, vienu akumuliatoriaus įkrovimu. Kuo greičiau jie bėga, tuo trumpesnį atstumą gali įveikti.

 

 Veikdami komponentai ir dalys gali lengvai sulūžti, todėl kūrėjai plastikines dalis pakeitė metalinėmis ir naudojo ypač tvirtas, bet brangias medžiagas.

 

 „Tien Kung Ultra“ sukūrė Pekino humanoidinių robotų inovacijų centras, tyrimų institutas, dar vadinamas X-Humanoid, kurį suformavo robotikos įmonė „UBTech“, elektronikos ir elektrinių transporto priemonių gamintojas „Xiaomi“ ir vietinė Pekino vyriausybė. Jis galėjo bėgti vidutiniškai 6 mylias per valandą ir galėjo įveikti kalvas, laiptus, žolę ir smėlį, rodo internete paskelbtas Tien Kung Ultra profilis.

 

 X-Humanoid atnaujino esamą roboto modelį pusmaratoniui. Valstybinė žiniasklaida pranešė, kad „Tien Kung Ultra“ turi ilgesnes kojas, nei originalus modelis ir yra maždaug 4 coliais aukštesnis, todėl jis bėga greičiau. Kūrėjai taip pat naudojo tvirtesnes medžiagas, kad padarytų roboto klubų sąnarius, o roboto pėdose sumontavo porą sportbačių padų, kad sugertų smūgius ir sumažintų kojų bei pėdų pažeidimus.

 

 Tien Kung Ultra iš esmės pralenkė kitus maršrute esančius robotus. Jis parpuolė vieną kartą, kai sugedo baterija, sakė Tangas. Robotams buvo leista keisti baterijas, o „Tien Kung Ultra“ bateriją keitė tris kartus.

 

 Nors daugelis robotų buvo valdomi nuotolinio valdymo pulteliu, „Tien Kung Ultra“ naudojo belaidę sekimo technologiją, leidžiančią bendrauti su, priešais bėgančiu, žmogumi.

 

 Be Tien Kung Ultra, buvo Xiaowantong N2 arba Little Rascal N2, 4 pėdų ir 66 kilogramus sveriantis vaikiškas robotas, kurį sukūrė Noetix Robotics. 5 pėdų 6 colių ūgio Huanhuanas buvo vienintelis, kurio galva buvo panaši į žmogų. Kitas robotas, vadinamas Shennong, turėjo sraigtus.

 

 Kai kurie buvo stabilūs ir gerai subalansuoti, o kiti vaikščiojo – vos. Kai kurie niekada nepateko daug toliau už starto linijos. Huanhuanas buvo nestabilus, kartais pasukdamas ne ta kryptimi, greitai baigė jo lenktynes, ​​atsisėdęs trasoje ir atsisakęs eiti toliau.

 

 Shennongas buvo ypač pragaištingas, pašėlusiai siūbuodamas iškart po starto, todėl jį suvaldyti bandęs bėgikas suklupo. Robotas atsitrenkė į tvorą ir suskilo į gabalus. Shennongo ranka kabojo, kai jis paliko kursą.

 

 Žmogus, vyrų čempionas, lenktynes ​​įveikė per valandą, dvi minutes ir 36 sekundes.

 

 Po dviejų valandų, 40 minučių ir 42 sekundžių Tien Kung Ultra buvo pirmasis robotas, pasiekęs finišą. Nekantriai robotų laukė didžiulė minia žiūrovų, tarp kurių buvo ir valdžios atstovai. Daugelis apsupo Tien Kung Ultra fotografuoti. Robotas išlaikė savo tuščią išraišką." [1]

 

Pamatysite kinišką robotą, bėgantį su automatu, greitai bėkite pas Nausėdą ir klauskite, ką daryti. Po Gabrieliaus Landsbergio pabėgimo iš Lietuvos politikos, santykiams su Kinija vadovauja Nausėda. Tie santykiai tokie painūs, kad be gero puslitrio aš negalėsiu jums paaiškinti. Trumpai pasakius, atrodo, kad mes durniausi pasaulyje, vieninteliai supykdėme Kiniją, niekas kitas to nedaro. Laukite daug Tien Kung Ultra kopijų, bėgiojančių su automatais.

 

1.  World News: China Races Humanoid Robots in Half-Marathon --- Humans ran with 21 robots in a showcase of Beijing's cutting- edge technology. Kubota, Yoko; Huang, Raffaele.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Apr 2025: A9.  

China Races Humanoid Robots in Half-Marathon --- Humans ran with 21 robots in a showcase of Beijing's cutting- edge technology

"BEIJING -- Metal met asphalt in a half-marathon that featured thousands of human runners -- and 21 Chinese humanoid robot models.

Saturday's road race involving human runners and a score of robots in Beijing has been billed as a showcase of China's cutting-edge technology.

Indeed, the robots, and their developers, had much at stake in the high-profile event. If the robots fell, froze or got lost during the widely promoted event, it would be an embarrassment for their developers.

The 13-mile race -- which its organizers said was the first of its kind -- was a chance for China to show off the latest state of its humanoids, one of several technology areas at the forefront of the U.S.-China tech rivalry. China has said it wants the country to be a world leader in humanoid robots by 2027. Chinese authorities have lavished support such as subsidies, talent bonuses and tax breaks on robotics companies.

In reality, the race showed both how quickly and smoothly some robots are able to run, but also how far away humanoids still are from being able to mimic human activity.

"Running is a very basic ability of human beings," said Tang Jian, the chief technology officer of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, which developed one of the robots, Tien Kung Ultra. "Since we are making humanlike robots, we want to give them as many basic human abilities as possible," which would be critical in eventually deploying them for industrial purposes.

China is making a major push to produce more and more sophisticated robotics in part to raise the automation level of its factories.

Before the race, thousands of human runners crowded in one lane behind the starting line, many jogging in place to keep warm. The humanoids, separated by fences into another lane from the human runners, stood largely still as they waited for the start.

When a siren marked the start of the race at 7:30 a.m., the human runners dashed and spilled onto the course. But the robots' starts were staggered by a minute or two each to prevent them from ramming into each other.

The first robot off the mark was Tien Kung Ultra, a 5-foot-9 inch, 115-pound humanoid, featuring a pitch-black head and sporting an orange tank top. Three people accompanied it to help control the robot.

The race was the culmination of months of training for the humanoids, which had to master skills that are innate to humans. They had to navigate the course's flat and hilly roads and maneuver around six left turns and eight right turns, according to the organizers. Developers had to train the robots to keep their stability and balance to avoid falling over a half-marathon distance.

The organizers initially planned to cut off the race at around 3.5 hours, meaning that the minimum average speed for the robot runners to finish the race was about 3.7 miles an hour.

Developers said humanoid robots typically can operate for no more than two hours on a single charge of their batteries. The faster they run, the shorter the distance they can cover.

Components and parts could easily break while running, so developers replaced plastic parts with metal and used extra-strong -- but costly -- materials.

Tien Kung Ultra was developed by Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, a research institute also called X-Humanoid and formed by robotics firm UBTech, electronics and electric-vehicle maker Xiaomi and the local Beijing government. It could run on average 6 miles an hour and could handle hills, stairs, grass and sand, a profile of Tien Kung Ultra posted online showed.

X-Humanoid revamped an existing robot model for the half-marathon. Tien Kung Ultra has longer legs than its original model and is taller by around 4 inches, helping it run faster, state media reported. The developers also used stronger materials to make the hip joints of the robot and installed a pair of sneaker soles on the robot's feet to absorb shocks and reduce damage to its legs and feet.

Tien Kung Ultra largely breezed ahead of other robots on the route. It fell once when the battery failed, Tang said. The robots were allowed to swap batteries, and Tien Kung Ultra changed its battery three times.

While many robots were directed by a remote control, Tien Kung Ultra used wireless tracking technology that allowed it to communicate with a person running in front of it.

Besides Tien Kung Ultra, there was Xiaowantong N2, or Little Rascal N2, a 4-foot, 66-pound childlike robot developed by Noetix Robotics. At 5 feet 6 inches, Huanhuan was the only one with a head resembling a human. Another robot called Shennong had propellers.

Some were steady and well balanced while others walked -- barely. Some never made it much further beyond the starting line. Huanhuan wobbled, at times heading in the wrong direction, then ended its race quickly by sitting down on the course and refusing to go further.

Shennong was particularly disastrous, swinging wildly just after the start, causing the human support runner who was trying to control it to trip. The robot slammed into a fence, breaking into pieces. Shennong's arm dangled as it left the course.

The human male champion completed the race in one hour, two minutes and 36 seconds.

After two hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds, Tien Kung Ultra was the first robot to reach the finish line. A large crowd of spectators, including government officials, was eagerly awaiting the robots. Many surrounded Tien Kung Ultra to take photos. The robot maintained its blank expression." [1]

1.  World News: China Races Humanoid Robots in Half-Marathon --- Humans ran with 21 robots in a showcase of Beijing's cutting- edge technology. Kubota, Yoko; Huang, Raffaele.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Apr 2025: A9.