The U.S. may have just won a decisive victory against Japan on the soccer field, but whether that will hold in a larger-than-life battle between two mega robots has yet to be determined. In the real life version of a Transformers fight, the Japanese robot Kuratas has accepted the challenge for a duel from American MegaBots. The American robot may be young (having only been unveiled three weeks ago), but what it lacks in venerability it makes up for in supreme self-confidence, as it immediately sought to put its guns (quite literally) to the test, picking a fight with one of the most well-established robots in the industry.
The fight, which is slated for June of 2016, will be a ground-shaking display of machine power and strength. There is one key stipulation though — the two robots must engage in hand-to-hand combat only, with no guns allowed. Japanese CEO Kogoro Kurata said in his acceptance of the match, “My reaction? Come on guys, make it cooler. Just building something huge and sticking guns on it is… super American.”
Kurata continued, “We can’t let another country win this. Giant robots are Japanese culture. But you know, we really need… Melee combat.” And it’ll be quite the combat. Kuratas specs are impressive — a single pilot will control a mammoth of a robot (which is really more of a suit) weighing in at 9,000 pounds and standing 12 feet tall. It also boasts an enormous BB gun and moves on wheels. On the other hand, MegaBot, the less sleek and elegant of the two machines, stands at 15 feet and weighs a whopping 12,000 pounds (or 6 tons). It comes complete with a tank-like set-up, rolling on tracks, a giant cannon that fires paintballs at 100 mph, and space for two pilots.
The details of the match are yet to be ironed out, and of course, there will need to be significant safety measures in place to protect the human operators of the machines. But prepare yourselves, robot lovers. The showdown of all showdowns approacheth.
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.