The Curiosity Rover has done its share of exploring Mars by land, but now, NASA is looking to take to the skies above the Red Planet. A team of Japanese and American engineers is hoping to send a team of drones inspired by bees, aptly named “Marsbees.”
NASA has granted the innovative researchers funding as part of its “Innovative Advanced Concepts” program, which selects a few early concept ideas for space exploration to support on a yearly basis. The scientists hope that with NASA’s blessing, they’ll be able to create a swarm of robo-bees capable of autonomously exploring our neighboring planet. The Marsbees would still be dependent upon a rover, which would serve as a central command station and a charging port. The rover would also download the information collected by the Marsbees, and would help transmit it back to Earth.
As for the bee-inspired drones, scientists describe them as “robotic flapping wing flyers of a bumblebee size with cicada-sized wings.” These disproportionally large wings, Fast Company explains, will help the drones compensate for the much thinner atmosphere of Mars (as compared to Earth).
But why would bees be better than rovers? According to the researchers, having a swarm of flying robots is much hardier than a singular rover. If one of the bees falls from the swarm, there will be plenty of others who can make up for its absence. Similarly, each bee can perform independent of its compatriots, but when needed, would be able to take on a team-based mentality to cover a wider swath of the planet. Researchers also believe that they’ll be able to program the bees to perform as various types of sensors. And of course, the Marsbees’ ability to fly will give scientists a new vantage point on the Mars’ surface.
But don’t get too excited about this concept. As it stands, it is still very much in concept stage. The team still needs to solidify the wing design, and determine exactly how these bees will fly and how much power they’ll require. Currently, the scientists are testing their prototypes in a special chamber that reflects the air density of the Martian atmosphere. In later testing phases, they’ll also look into the Marsbees’ maneuverability, takeoff and landing capacities, and establish a potential mission.
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.