There’s Silicon Valley in San Francisco and Silicon Alley in New York City, but we’re of the humble opinion that Silicon Forest in Portland may just be one of the most innovative new tech hubs in the U.S. In our new video series, Got it Made, join host Ezra Cimino-Hurt as he meets some of the unique people who marry cutting edge tech with innovative ideas in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. And believe us, they’re doing Portland proud.
Meet Rich Burton of Hooperfly, a man who is hoping to hoping to democratize the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) building process. Operating under the belief that anyone should be able to build a flying device, Burton doesn’t rely upon kits or pre-made parts. His UAVs are constructed with resources that are lying around his garage.
Of course, they’re not exactly materials that would be lying around any garage, but they certainly are accessible. The foundation of all Hooperfly’s designs depend upon cross-linked polyethylene (or Pex). Burton shapes these “little pieces of white tubing” into a circle, then begins a repetitive connecting process with zipties and more Pex that ultimately forms the beginning of an airframe.
But the really cool thing about Hooperfly’s flying robots (because that’s what Burton considers them — not drones), is that they can be flown and launched without a transmitter. While most drones today require a one-to-one relationship between a flyer and an aircraft, Burton explained, his hope is to launch multiple UAVs around the world, simultaneously. And really, it’s transcended hope — Burton has met with already considerable success in this endeavor.
“We can do so much more when we’re connected and empowered to help each other,” he told us. And of course, being called out of the blue by musicians like MIA to create drones for her music videos isn’t a bad perk either.
“I’m just a guy trying to figure it out,” Burton said. And if you’d like to figure out drones along with him, just check out the Hooperfly Github page.
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.