Crowdfunding is hot right now, but what do creators do once they’ve got the money? That’s the question Indiegogo wants to answer, and its CEO David Mandlebrot stopped by the DT booth at CES 2018 in Las Vegas to discuss that question and show off some neat new Indiegogo projects.
The company’s current focus is on a concept-to-market approach, where the crowdfunding site provides assistance to creators before, during, and after the crowdfunding experience. One example is Travis the Translator, a successful crowdfunding campaign for a device that can translate from and to 80 languages.
Mandlebrot says that Indiegogo assisted the Travis team by connecting them with partner Arrow Electronics. Arrow, in turn, helped Travis source parts to make its innovative handheld translator a reality.
But it’s not always about tech: Mandlebrot says that there’s typically a 50/50 split between tech gadgets and other useful inventions when it comes to crowdfunding projects. He had one such invention to show off at the DT booth called the Mifold — think of it as a booster seat without the boost. Instead of the child sitting on a seat that allows the safety belt to safely restrain him or her, the Mifold instead brings the top part of the belt down to the child’s shoulder, where it can safely restrain them without causing discomfort.
Of course, we’re a tech site here at DigitalTrends, so Mandlebrot had plenty to show us, including a new type of VR system called the VR Free by SensoryX. These new type of gloves include built-in sensors to track finger movements without the need for any other tracking devices, which the company claims makes its offering more immersive, intuitive, convenient, and precise.
We were impressed with the demo they showed us at the booth, which really seemed to allow for fine movements — like playing a virtual piano — that might be more difficult to do with other platforms.
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.