Barbie is keeping up with the times and replacing her pink convertible for a new method of transportation that suits her needs – a flying drone hover board, according to the Telegraph.
Unlike those silly two-wheeled “hoverboards” that technically don’t hover, Barbie’s new whip can actually fly. During the 2016 International Toy Fair in New York, Mattel showed off the Barbie Starlight Adventure RC Hoverboard RC, which comes with a lightweight foam version of the doll. The doll, dressed in an 80’s-inspired silver vest, skirt, and leggings, comes on top of the drone and can be controlled using a matching pink and blue controller. Mattel designed Barbie’s lightweight drone to accommodate the additional weight on top and made it easy to use for children ages 8 and up.
The latest accessory comes shortly after the brand’s attempt in modernizing the iconic doll. Last month, Mattel, the company that birthed Barbie, unveiled a new line of dolls that better depict the woman of today. Barbie’s new generation of dolls will come in three different body types, seven skin tones, and 24 different hair styles. Mattel’s Barbie makeover was reportedly created to appeal to “millennial moms,” as the company likes to call them. “We were seeing that Millennials are driven by social justice and attracted to brands with purpose and values, and they didn’t see Barbie in this category,” says Mattel’s Director of Global Brand Insights Tania Missad.
“Right now when you say ‘Barbie’ to someone, a very clear image of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slim doll comes to mind,” Kim Clumone, Barbie’s VP of Design, told the Telegraph. “In a few years, this will no longer be the case. We’re exploding a system of that’s been in place for 56 years and a heritage that’s been passed down from generation to generation.”
Barbie’s flying hover board will go on sale during the fall for $60.
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.