Doodling in the 21st century isn’t the same as it was a 100 years ago. Long gone are the days of quill and ink, of pen and pencil — and as at least one exhibitor at CES 2015 can attest — the days of 2D drawings. Although 3Doodler first burst onto the scene with its innovative 3D-printing pen nearly two years ago, the company is looking to bring the second installment of its immensely-popular device to consumers sometime in the coming months.
Much like its last-gen counterpart, 3Doodler 2.0 uses heated strands of ABS plastic or PLA filament that solidifies into a stable form within seconds of exiting the nozzle thanks to a built-in fan. It works almost like a hot glue gun, with fine lines of plastic instead of glue, allowing you to craft three-dimensional objects in space without the need for blueprints, or the exuberant cost of a 3D printer. The 3Doodler 2.0 also touts dual speeds and a slimmer, lighter profile than its predecessor. At 50 grams, it weighs less than half the weight of your average apple.
The mere shedding of bulk doesn’t necessarily minimize the 3Doodler 2.0’s functionality, though. It’s now encased with a stylish aluminum finish and houses a reworked nozzle design and heating algorithm, the latter of which are designed to make the new device quieter and more efficient than ever before. Manual temperature controls even allow you to make minute adjustments as you see fit, giving you greater control whether you decide to work from a template or free sketch like a modern-day Michelangelo.
The original 3Doodler obliterated its initial funding goal on Kickstarter with $2.3 million, and given how lucrative the crowdfunding platform has been for the company in the past, it’s no surprise it’s trying to replicate said success with the 3Doodler 2.0. “Early Bird” pledges begin at $50, with the first production models slated to ship within a month of the project launch if it hits its $30,000 goal. Let’s just hope you have a steady hand.
Check back with us for more details regarding the 3Doodler 2.0 as CES 2015 unfurls.
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.