An igloo created with indigenous Martian ice was the winner of the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, a competition sponsored jointly by NASA and America Makes. The finale for the first phase of the challenge was held this weekend in New York as part of the World Maker Faire.
Designed by Search Consortium and Clouds AO, the Mars Ice House is constructed to be technologically sound and also provide a pleasing environment in which to live. The structure is conceptualized as a series of vertical nested domes that are enclosed with ETFE membrane, a polymer that is highly resistant to corrosion. Water in the form of ice was chosen as the primary building material due to its predicted abundance on Mars and other potential extra-terrestrial outposts. Now that water has been discovered on Mars, these 3D printed ice houses take on greater significance and may play an important role in the first manned Mars mission.
The construction and 3D printing process was conceived with efficiency in mind. A lander will touch ground first, creating a crater that can be used without further excavation for igloo construction. Semi-autonomous robots and self-assembling devices will exit the lander and begin constructing the igloo before the astronaut team arrives. The 3D printing process uses in-situ materials found on the planet’s surface, which allows the robots and the astronauts to travel without the need to bring heavy equipment and other materials along with them.
Inside the structure will be hollowed out “ice rooms” that provide a sensation of open space. Because they’re made from ice, light can pass through the semi-translucent walls, allowing astronauts to experience a natural diurnal cycle and enjoy a view of the Martian landscape. There also will be a hydroponic greenhouse for food and oxygen and an interstitial zone that functions as a front yard, allowing astronauts to stroll outside their living quarters with having to wear a bulky EVA suit.
SEArch Consortium and Clouds AO received a $25,000 prize for their Mars Ice House winning idea, while second place finisher Gamma and third-place Lava Hive were awarded $15,000 and $10,000 respectively. These funds will be used towards the second phase of the competition, which challenges the groups to build a full-scale habitat.
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.