As a global aerospace, defense, and security giant, it’s no great surprise to hear that Lockheed Martin has some pretty advanced technologies at its disposal. For its current project building NASA’s Orion spacecraft, however, Lockheed is turning to some smart tech that’s actually available to regular consumers: Microsoft’s mixed reality Hololens smartglasses.
The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is an American-European interplanetary spacecraft that may eventually carry a crew of four astronauts as far afield as Mars. Announced in May 2011, the Orion MPCV is currently being constructed by Lockheed Martin at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. According to a report by the MIT Technology Review, the Lockheed team working on it is doing so using the Hololens to replace a 1,500-page binder of written work instructions. This enables the technicians to learn tasks or check directions in a way that overlays the information on top of the real world, therefore being less likely to disrupt their work.
Using the headset, the works on the Orion project see holograms displaying models created using engineering design software made by Scope AR. These models display the necessary parts and labels, complete with information such as correct torquing techniques and more. Parts are color-coded according to the role of the person wearing the headset. The Hololens also allows the technicians to see what the project will look like when it is fully completed.
So as to not have to wear the Hololens glasses the whole time, the users supposedly use it to check information in 15-minute increments, as opposed to receiving a constant stream of instructions throughout the day.
Lockheed Martin is not the only aerospace organization to investigate augmented reality to replace the enormous paper manuals they otherwise rely on. Other large firms including Boeing and Airbus have also experimented with the technology. However, neither has reportedly taken the plunge by embracing the technology beyond the simple testing phases. Does that give Lockheed the edge? We’ll get a better idea when we see the quality of the finished Orion MPCV — and then observe how many other firms are keen to follow its example.
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.