We heard something about free lattes down at the Create tent at SXSW and naturally, had to drag our sleep-deprived selves down for a complimentary cup of Joe. But GE’s Brilliant Brew truck wasn’t churning out just your average caffeine fix – the crew came equipped with robot coffee makers that will take your photo and draw them onto the foam as latte art.
The best way to understand the simple technology behind this is to think of the coffee makers as printers. Baristas will start out by snapping a photo of you or a logo on your business card with their webcam. Then, a program simplifies the outline of your face or logo and draws them out as X, Y, and Z axes. Using this data, the coffee maker takes a syringe of coffee and draws out the axes atop your latte foam as one would with ink on paper. Essentially, the machine prints out the lines on the foam to craft a unique, personalized drink.
However, while the idea seemed simple enough, the process was a bit more difficult in practice. If there is too much light in the base photo, the webcam won’t recognize some features of a person’s face – such as nose, mouth, eyes, or eyebrows. If there isn’t enough light, the outline just looks like a giant blob. Plus, since the canvas is basically foam bubbles, it was only a matter of time before the air dissipates and the coffee outline blows the art out of proportion. We had to make do with GE’s situation out on this sunny, windy day in Austin, and the result? Well…
I never thought I’d be vain enough to say this about myself, but I think I look better in person. At least the coffee version of myself tasted pretty darn good.
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.