If you’ve ever wondered how much of a beating DJI’s Mavic Pro drone can take, sit back and watch as DigitalRev bites the bullet and puts a Mavic drone through every abusive act it can think of.
For those not familiar with DigitalRev, it has a reputation for putting camera equipment through incredibly rigorous torture tests. In the past, DigitalRev has frozen DSLRs in a brick of ice, thrown cameras down flights of stairs, and even lit a few ablaze, all in the name of truly putting camera equipment to the test.
This time, DigitalRev took to the skies to see just how well the Mavic Pro would hold up against some very unlikely scenarios. In the 15-minute video, DigitalRev sprays the drone with water guns, nails it with rogue Barbie dolls, slams it into walls at full speed, and, of course, attempts to set it on fire alongside a chicken dinner.
Amazingly, the Mavic Pro held its own across almost every test DigitalRev threw at it. In speaking to PetaPixel, DigitalRev’s Richard Yu said the only major component that was damaged on the drone — outside the vision sensor, which was damaged in the synthesized heavy rain — was its gimbal, which probably could’ve survived had it been protected with the included cover.
Yu also explained that in the event your Mavic Pro is damaged by water, it’s probably best to avoid rice, as the air vents on the drone are large enough for the rice to fall through.
Overall, the tests go to show that the Mavic Pro can hold its own against a slew of abuse. That said, it’s not suggested you try any of these tests at home if you want your investment to live a long and prosperous life.
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.