Airbus is launching a new cabin design, called Airspace by Airbus, that promises to deliver enhanced passenger comfort by using new technologies it has recently developed. The concept will roll out in the new A330neo jet, which is expected to go into service in 2017.
The cabin is designed around comfort, ambience, service, and design, Airbus says. Its borrows some elements already used in the A350 XWB. It has wide seats in coach (18 inches), larger overhead storage bins, roomier bathrooms with antibacterial surfaces, unobstructed space under seats, and LED ambient lighting. On the sidewalls, the areas surrounding the windows are beveled to give the illusion of more space. The lighting, which can be found in the A350 XWB, is designed to help mitigate jet lag by cycling through various color temperatures, which helps adjust the body’s sleep-wake cycle – crucial in long-haul travel. A common design language is used throughout the plane, to tie everything together.
For the crew, the rest area will have new padding and mattress materials, as well as improved lighting and heating. By moving the area to the lower desk, Airbus says the A330neo lets airlines add more passenger seats. Like the cabin in Airbus’ larger A380, the A330neo’s will be one of the quietest, the company claims.
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.