At DT, we flip out over Internet-connected goodies a lot, from baby monitors to stoves and washing machines. But why wait for manufacturers to figure out how to integrate remote Web control into your everyday item when all you have to do is go at it from the root of the power: the battery.
That’s where Tethercell aims to change a few things. By inserting your average AAA batteries into a Tethercell chamber, those ordinary tubes have all of a sudden gained Bluetooth connectivity which makes it controllable by your iOS and Android devices (it also bumps the size of AAA batteries into AA). This means you can add remote app access to toys, fans, game consoles, alarm clocks, flashlights – literally anything that runs on AA batteries can become Bluetooth-enabled. With Tethercell, the device can also send alerts to your smartphones when batteries are running low, and you can set On/Off timers for various gadgets around the house.
Sounds too good to be true? Perhaps, but it’s not just a concept. The project is currently asking for funding via IndieGoGo to create Tethercells that run on Bluetooth 4.0, promising an average runtime of six to twelve months in battery life apiece. The range obviously varies depending on each gadget’s power suckage. There’s just a little over one month left to fund Tethercell, running at $35 each for those who want to be the first to try it out. With scale, the company aims to lower individual prices to between $10 to $20. What would you use Tethercells for? We think it’d be a perfect companion to a hilarious prank.
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.