We here at Digital Trends are big fans of 3D printing. Like so many others, we see it as one of the most potentially disruptive technologies currently on the market – something that could substantially change the way we shop, work, and create. Problem is, at the moment, consumer-level 3D printers are mostly an expensive way to make cheap plastic trinkets.
Of course, that will soon change – perhaps sooner than you think. This week, newly launched startup MarkForged announced the world’s first 3D printer capable of printing objects in carbon fiber, the super-strong and lightweight material. Dubbed the Mark One, the 3D printer also prints in fiberglass, nylon, and PLA (the common plastic filament used by many 3D printers).
MarkForged, which debuted this week at the SolidWorks World 2014 conference in San Diego, is founded by Gregory Mark, co-owner of Aeromotions, a company that produces high-end airfoils for high-speed cars. It is from this foundation of “form and function” that Mark created the Mark One printer, he tells Popular Mechanics.
The benefits of carbon fiber is that it is far stronger than plastic 3D-printed items, and 20 times stiffer than ABS thermoplastic filament (an alternative to PLA). As such, carbon fiber is better suited for creating things like prosthetics, which are one of the most promising types of goods currently created by 3D printers.
“It’s a material that everybody knows, but probably most people haven’t used,” Mark tells Popular Mechanics. “So we made the price low and you can start using it. We wanted to make it really easy for people to start printing with it, so they can explore prosthetics, custom bones, tools, and fixtures.”
Measuring 22.6 inches wide, 14.2 inches tall, and 12.7 inches deep, the Mark One will put you out $5,000 when it goes on sale later this year. Pre-orders will start in February, and you can sign up for notifications about Mark One pre-orders on the MarkForged website.
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.