While most of us associate DJI more with their line of popular and best-selling drones, the company actually has other products, including first-person-view (FPV) goggles and a selfie-stick-like product called the Osmo.
The Osmo Mobile 2, a stabilizer intended for use with smartphones, and the Ronin S stabilizer are the two biggest announcements at CES 2018 for DJI. Michael Perry, the company’s managing director for the North American market, stopped by the Digital Trends booth at CES in Las Vegas on Wednesday afternoon to talk about these products.
With the Osmo Mobile 2, battery life is increased to 15 hours, a dramatic increase over the 4.5 hours of the first-generation stabilizer. With so many video creators turning to their smartphones to create content, the better battery power makes it possible to use the Osmo Mobile 2 for an entire day’s worth of filming without having to stop for a recharge.
Other notable features include the capability to use the stabilizer in portrait mode, and a dramatically lower price point of $129, $70 cheaper than the first-generation model. Perry told us that DJI expects the much cheaper price point to allow a broader range of consumers to take advantage of the cinematic-like qualities of stabilizers to make stunning videos.
While you may have come here hoping for a bit of drone news from DJI, you’ll be disappointed. The company instead seems to be focusing on more than just physical products. For example, since CES 2017, DJI has spent a considerable amount of time focusing on getting over what Perry calls the “intuitiveness barrier” when it comes to drones, as well as working on better camera technology.
Perry told us that DJI and the drone industry will likely make improving camera technology a priority over the next few years, versus producing drones to which you attach a GoPro or other camera.
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.