Putting months of rumors and speculation to rest, DJI — the undisputed king of drone world — finally unveiled its much-anticipated Spark drone to the world today at a press event in New York City.
Weighing in at less than a pound and measuring just 5.6 inches wide and long, the Spark is easily the most compact and portable drone in DJI’s product lineup — but don’t let its diminutive size fool you. Despite the fact that it’s just slightly larger than a can of soda, the Spark has plenty of technological muscle under its hood.
In addition to a 16-megapixel camera that shoots video in 1080p at 30 frames per second, the drone also sports a two-axis gimbal. This enables the Spark to mechanically stabilize the camera and cancel out any jarring, shaky movements — ultimately resulting in smoother, better-looking footage. This also gives it a leg up on the competition, as most selfie drovnes only feature single-axis mechanical stabilization.
To complement the camera, the Spark also comes with a wide array of intelligent flying modes. In addition to DJI’s standard offerings like TapFly and Active Track, the drone sports a handful of brand-new modes, such as Rocket (ascent with camera pointing down), Dronie (fly up and backward while locked on subject), Circle (orbit a fixed point), and Helix (orbit outward in a spiral pattern). It also recognizes gestures, and can be controlled via hand gestures — without a controller or smartphone.
As if that weren’t enough, DJI also equipped the drone with a slew of environmental sensors that allow it to sense and react to its surroundings autonomously. On top of the usual GPS and GLONASS positioning systems, the Spark has a forward-facing 3D vision system, which is used for both indoor positioning and obstacle avoidance.
It’s pretty quick, too. According to DJI, Spark has a max speed of 31 miles per hour, and can stay airborne for about 16 minutes on a full charge. Range varies depending on your control style. Using gesture control only, the drone will stay within about 10-20 feet. Using your smartphone to fly gives you about 100 feet of range, and if you want even more distance, an accompanying controller stretches the maximum distance to over 100 yards.
Best of all is the price. You can pre-order the Spark today for just $499. That puts it squarely in competition with popular drones like the Yuneec Breeze and Hover Camera Passport — although on paper, DJI’s drone has significantly better specs. As for a release date, the company expects to begin shipping in June. Find out more here, and stay tuned for our hands-on review!
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.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.