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.
The now-deleted ad described four to six hours of walking, with no previous experience required. The dogs used in the experiment were $2,000 machines from Chinese manufacturer Unitree, controllable through a handheld remote or mobile app.
The walkers steer while the robots’ cameras and sensors record the journey. Those demonstrations give Dimensional examples of human navigation to help improve its autonomous systems. The babysitting serves a purpose, even if the trainee occasionally needs carrying.
Dimensional is developing dimOS, an open-source software platform intended to let AI agents operate different robots through natural-language instructions. The ambition extends beyond robot dogs to humanoids, connecting an agent’s decisions to the machine’s sensors and controls.
Its public repository labels the platform as a prerelease beta. It also documents remote operation through a browser or Meta Quest headset, giving people a way to drive the robots themselves.
In Anthropic’s July research, every tested language model paired with a trained controller performed worse on familiar simulated object-handling tasks than that controller alone. Some models overruled actions they should’ve accepted.
A robot’s ability to hold a conversation tells you little about whether it’ll finish an errand. Before paying for a future robot helper, ask how often a person needs to step in. The purchase looks less compelling if it comes with a second job.
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.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).