When it comes to tech, it seems as though the most impressive sizes are always on opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, 3D-printed luxury homes are making waves as a revolutionary new development, but on the other hand, a team from South Korea is garnering significant attention for their equally impressive (though much physically smaller) accomplishment. Researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology have developed a new high-resolution 3D printer that layers special inks to form tiny 3D forms, some as small as just 0.001 millimeters. To put this in perspective, bear in mind that a single human red blood cell ranges in size between 0.006 and 0.008 millimeters, meaning these new printers are printing truly microscopic objects.
This printer actually operates similarly to the ones the average inkjet printer the American consumer is accustomed to, but instead of your day-to-day cartridges, the electrohydrodynamic inkjet employs very specific inks that stack upon one another to form tiny 3D objects, including arched bridges, zig-zags, and even pillars.
Whereas the current 3D printers on the market have trouble creating smooth objects, and instead have more obvious, rougher textures that reveal how they were made, these new printers may eliminate this shortcoming by operating at high rates of precision. These printers could also be used to help manufacture objects where small size is key, like computer chips, circuit boards, and other items that have only gotten smaller as technology has become more advanced.
Park Jang-ung, the material science and engineering professor leading the initiative, believes that this new technology “will provide a new paradigm in the research field of 3D printing.”
“The existing ultrafine pattern production methods in semiconductor manufacturing procedure had difficulties in reproducing 3D patterns,” Park says. “But this new technology can realize those in high resolution. We believe the technology has set a new paradigm for research using 3D printing and wearable electronic devices.”
Bigger isn’t always better, and this latest form of 3D printing really drives that point home.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.