The field of go-karts has seen little innovation for the past several decades, but there’s at least one Silicon Valley startup that’s keen to to give these little four-wheeled vehicles a much-needed update. Introducing The Arrow Smart-Kart from Actev Motors: the first ever smart go-kart designed for kids.
Unlike the bare-bones carts you’re used to seeing, this smart go-kart is built with high-tech safety features similar to those found in an adult-sized car. The Arrow features variable speed settings (up to 12 miles per hour) that parents can control through a smartphone app via the kart’s built-in Wi-Fi and GPS. Parents are also able to geofence the kart to refrain their child from wandering astray.
An inactivity timer helps keep track of children that are out of sight and the kart can be disabled in times of emergency. Intrestingly enough, the Arrow is installed with collision auto-brake, allowing the kart to come to a halt if it detects objects in its way.
Drivers are allowed to switch gears between drive and reverse if they haven’t mastered the double tap of the brake pedal. This gear selection also allows drivers to place the kart on Park when the vehicle has stopped, and it can even be placed in neutral, making it easier to push the kart when it’s off. Kids are also able to create a Driver Profile, allowing for customized settings and speed adjustments for each driver. In addition, the Driver Profiles feature enables kids to track their performance and own driving results.
As a long time-car enthusiast, I wanted to leverage my 35 years of technology experience to bring a whole new category of fun and safe vehicles to families,” said Dave Bell, CEO and co-founder of Actev Motors. “Simple battery-powered ride-on cars don’t excite today’s kids – they seek high-tech interactive experiences. The Arrow Smart-Kart gets kids off the couch and outside, and behind the wheel of a real driving machine.”
The Arrow Smart-Kart can be pre-ordered for $599.95 and will begin shipping the models early summer of 2016.
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.