Welp, time to pack up and call it a night. Boston Dynamics’ all-terrain robot BigDog, a brother bot to ones that could run 40 mph, jot, and rollover, has now learned the sweet art of destruction. In the organization’s latest video, the DARPA-funded robot has been equipped with a front-facing arm/head that could grab a concrete cinderblock and toss it aside, using its body as a force to hurl blocks at least 15 feet away.
While we can’t figure out exactly why one would ever need robots that can fling concrete bricks, the video is both amazing and terrifying all at once. Since BigDog replies on its hydraulic legs to stay steady, it’s also amusing to see the robot slightly lose balance when it first picks up the cinderblock. The destruction that cometh after, however, is a whole ‘nother story. Perhaps one could argue that a robot with the ability to pick up heavy objects and toss it away could be helpful in clearing obstructed path in military searches and missions, but it’s obvious everyone else is thinking BigDog is eventually going to be made for offense. That’s a pretty wild thought knowing that a giant automaton will possibly hurl objects at enemies – given its additional specs include a 240-pound body, legs that can run nearly 13 miles without stopping, and ability to carry 340 pounds and climb slopes up to 35 degrees under all-weather terrain. What other tricks could Boston Dynamics teach this dog? We’ll just have to wait until the team integrates voice recognition.
Scared or impressed, the development makes for an interesting video to watch, so here is BigDog in all its glory. Doesn’t it look like it had a bit too much to drink?
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.