The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas is, understandably, all about tech. But behind the melange of luxurious televisions and fitness-obsessed wearables lies a barrage of smart technology specifically designed for the outdoor adventurer who’d rather gaze intently at the powdered slopes of the nearest mountain than a high-resolution display. Case in point: Cerevo’s XON Snow-1 smart bindings.
The Japanese company’s most recent foray into snowboarding adds a lot more than just a smattering of LEDs. Each Snow-1 binding boasts four on-board load sensors at the bottom of each foot, as well as two flex sensors that rest on the head and tail of your board. Together, the two sensors work to track your every movement and shift of weight distribution, which is then synced with an accompanying app via Bluetooth, so you view metrics relating to your precise speed, acceleration, and GPS location.
The rechargeable bindings last six to eight hours on a single charge, meaning you can capture the metrics of an entire day without having to take a breather. Four LED strobes line the toe and heal of each binding, as well, each of which illuminates as you shift your weight to and fro on the board. When you’re done for the day, you can even view a video overlay that visually summarizes your ride. The Snow-1 smart bindings may not necessarily make you a better snowboarder, per se, but they will let you see where you went wrong when it comes to mastering a proper switch nollie.
The XON Snow-1 is slated for release in a variety of sizes in the fall, priced somewhere between $400 and $600.
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.