Why walk through an airport when you can ride? And no, we are not advocating a joyride on those motorized carts designed for people with a disability. We prefer you leave those for the people who need them. We are talking about Modobag, the world’s first rideable travel bag.
Modobag is the first hybrid luggage — it is a part carry-on suitcase and a part motorized vehicle. Modobag can be used as a traditional wheeled bag — just extend the handle and pull it along on its wheels. When that Superman moment hits and you need to travel fast, you can quickly lower the bag into its riding position, jump on the built-in seating area and hit the throttle to go.
With its 200-watt electric motor at full throttle, this “little bag that can” is capable of whizzing 6 miles through the airport terminal at speeds up to 8 mph on a single charge. At that rate, you’ll be able to get to your destination three times faster than those slouches who have to walk their way to their boarding area. It also features a dual braking system for those “uh-oh” moments when you are about to crash into a travel companion or a fellow Modobag operator.
More than just a pretty bag with wheels, Modobag also has a high-performance, sealed bearing steering column, touch control dashboard and dual USB charging ports for power on the go. It even has an optional GPRS/GSM tracking system that’ll help you locate your bag with a companion iOS or Android app. It offers 2,000 cubic inches of packing space, has a base weight of 19 pounds, and can seat riders up to 260 pounds. Best of all, it’ll fit in an airplane’s overhead bin and is completely compliant with TSA, FAA, and IATA regulations.
Production of the Modobag is being funded via an Indiegogo campaign. You can pre-order yours with prices starting at $995 for the bag and $69 for the companion mobile app. The estimated ship date for both the luggage and app is January 2017.
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.