The DJI Mavic 2, in both Zoom and Pro varieties, is already our favorite drone, and one of the best products of 2018, and it’s about to get even better as third-party accessories hit the market. Lume Cube, maker of small battery-powered LED lights for mobile photography, has announced a new lighting kit built specifically for the DJI Mavic 2 — the first of its kind. The kit, which is available for pre-order, costs $190 and includes two 1,500-lumen LED lights.
The cubical lights are made from durable aluminum and are both shockproof and waterproof. They tuck in just below the drone body, held in place via mounts that clip over the front propeller arms on the Mavic 2. The lights can rotate 360 degrees to achieve the desired lighting direction. Each mount weighs just 1 ounce, so hopefully they won’t drastically reduce the flight time of the drone. At full power, the lights offer 30 minutes of battery life and 750 lux at 1 meter.
Via Bluetooth, users can also control the power of the lights remotely via mobile app, but note that this does come with a range limit of just 100 feet. Also, while Lume Cube doesn’t state a maximum operational height, you’ll probably want to keep the drone at a relatively low altitude if you’re trying to illuminate the ground.
The most obvious use for the kit is for night-time filming. Even the relatively large 1-inch-type sensor in the Mavic 2 Pro isn’t sensitive enough to get clean footage in the dark. Lume Cube says a custom fresnel lens gives a 60-degree beam angle with no hot spots, which should offer a natural look for video recording.
The lights also make it easier to see obstacles while flying, and will even allow the Mavic 2’s obstacle avoidance sensors to work better at night. Naturally, they also increase the visibility of the drone itself. In a press release, Lume Cube states the lights offer both continuous and strobe functionality to meet FAA night flight regulation.
There are many less obvious uses for putting a light on a drone, like aiding search and rescue operations or performing industrial inspections. For photographers, a DJI Mavic 2 outfitted with lights also offers a unique opportunity for light-painting landscapes. With adjustable power, Bluetooth control, and the Mavic’s programmable flight modes, it should be possible to achieve evenly lit foregrounds in long exposures with relative ease.
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.