Shenzen, China-based 101Hero says it can bring 3D printing to the masses for less than the price of a fancy steak dinner, and is asking help from Kickstarter backers to make it a reality. While all the $49 “early bird” spots to get an actual working model of the 3D printer are gone, there are still several spots available to get it for $74, which includes two filaments.
The printer will ship 90% assembled, with a power supply compatible to your country’s power system. 101Hero does say you’ll “need to turn a few screws.” but at such a low cost, especially for a fully working 3D printer, it just might be worth the extra effort.
101Hero had initially planned to launch its product in December 2014, but issues surrounding the prototyping phase delayed launch until now. The Kickstarter is fully funded (nearly $59,000 raised, almost three times the goal), so barring any big hiccups in manufacturing, the first 3D printers should begin shipping sometime around October 2016.
Now in all fairness, after seeing the snafu that happened with the Peachy Printer, some Kickstarter backers might be understandably leery of yet another sub-$100 3D printer. It’s worth noting, however, that the Peachy team was actually well on its way to making the printer a reality, and the project was only derailed because one of the company’s co-founders secretly embezzled over $300,000 CAD from company funds.
Low-level backers will get a version of the 101Hero that requires the 3D print files to be loaded onto an SD card in order to print. Those who pledge their support with larger donations will get USB functionality, allowing the 101Hero printer to be used just like a conventional one.
As for filament options, it’s pretty much wide open. 101Hero will produce its own filaments, but the company says you can use just about any standard 1.75 millimeter PLA, HIPS, and ABS filament available on the market. Pledge $99 and you don’t only get the printer, but 10 different colors of filament.
For those of us leery of high-flying, sounds-too-good-to-be-true crowdfunding campaigns, there’s no immediate word as to when 101Hero plans to make its printer available commercially. If/when that happens though, the company reportedly plans to set a retail price of $99 for printer, which will include two spools of filament in the package.
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.