June 18th 2025

Author

Max Gray
June 18, 2025

The Daily Innovation Newsletter

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June 18th 2025

💻 Technology

Chinese researchers developed a new AO-MDR synergy method that enables high-speed 1 Gbps data transmission from a geostationary satellite using only a 2-watt laser. This system, created by Peking University of Posts and Telecommunications and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, combines adaptive optics and mode diversity reception to overcome atmospheric distortion. The technique significantly boosts signal reliability, from 72% to 91.1%, making satellite laser communication more feasible for high-quality, high-bandwidth applications. The results were published in Chinese-language journal Acta Optica Sinica.

Chinese firm QuantumCTek has launched the ez-Q Engine 2.0, a superconducting quantum control system that supports over 1,000 qubits, placing it third globally after IBM and Atom Computing. Developed using indigenous components, it offers tenfold integration efficiency over its predecessor and significantly reduces costs and size. If independently validated, this marks a major step toward quantum sovereignty and positions China as a serious competitor in quantum infrastructure.

⚡️ Energy

Finnish startup Polar Night Energy has commissioned a 13 m-tall sand battery in Pornainen that stores surplus renewable electricity as heat in 2 000 t of crushed soapstone, providing 1 MW of thermal power and 100 MWh of storage for the local network run by Loviisan Lämpö. The system can supply almost a month of summer heating and a week in winter, eliminating oil use, cutting wood-chip consumption 60 %, and lowering district-heating carbon emissions by about 160 t a year. By pairing multi-day thermal storage with price-responsive controls, the project shows how sand batteries can stabilize renewable grids and accelerate municipal carbon-neutrality targets.

🦾 Robotics

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and University College London have created a flexible gel-based “electronic skin” that wraps around a robotic hand and senses pressure, temperature and damage through 860,000 conductive pathways. By training a machine-learning model on signals from just 32 electrodes, the team distilled 1.7 million data points into an ability to distinguish taps, heat, cuts and multi-point contact, giving robots a human-like sense of touch while remaining cheap and easily molded. Published in Science Robotics, the advance could make next-generation prosthetics safer and enable robots to handle delicate tasks in manufacturing or disaster zones.

Hexagon and NVIDIA have introduced AEON, a humanoid robot capable of running machines, inspecting parts, and scanning assets with real-time AI and simulation-trained precision. Developed with NVIDIA's Isaac platform and powered by Jetson Orin hardware, AEON learns industrial tasks virtually, accelerating deployment in manufacturing, logistics, and aerospace sectors. This marks a major step toward scalable, general-purpose robotics in industrial automation.

💊 Healthcare

Researchers at Macquarie University have discovered that a natural protein, disulphide isomerase (PDI), can enter the cell nucleus to repair DNA damage, potentially slowing aging and protecting brain cells from diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s. Demonstrated in human and animal models, PDI acts as a molecular “glue,” restoring DNA in non-dividing cells such as neurons. Published in Aging Cell, the findings open the door to new gene therapies targeting age-related neurodegeneration.

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Max

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