There’s drone flying, and then there’s drone flying that takes the activity to a whole new level. In a recent promo video released by Ford Europe, World Drone Prix champion Luke Banister of the drone racing teammate Tornado XBlades and his teammate Brett Collis take on the Ford line of automobiles in this incredible obstacle course video. Shot in a warehouse, the pair send their drones screaming through van interiors, underneath trucks and around squealing and smoking tires.
Dubbed Dronekehana One after the YouTube sensation Gymkhana, the video was filmed at Ford’s headquarters in Cologne, Germany. Beside fancy flying, the video showcases some of Ford’s best automobiles including the hot new Ford Focus RS in a drift maneuver, a Ranger pickup, a B-MAX car, and an updated version of the classic muscle car Mustang. The obstacle course was designed to be challenging even for two of the world’s best drone pilots.
“It was a tough course, and we had some mishaps,” Bannister said, “but at least the Mustang’s all right, that’s all that matters.”
So how did Ford capture this incredible footage? The team shared its secrets in a behind-the-scenes video starring Bannister, Collis, and Victory Kirby from Xblades Racing; and VFX artist Joe Steel of Time-Slice Films, which handled the photography. The team used the first-person video footage captured by the drones themselves as well as camera-equipped drones that flew behind the stunt drones, capturing footage of the straightaways and other less technical moves.
To capture the complex angles, the video team also employed a rack of 36 GoPro cameras connected together and arranged in a line. This setup allowed the team to catch the flight in a bullet-time motion made famous by the Matrix. It also enabled them to record the maneuvers from a variety of different angles at a single time.
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.