Need a helping hand? Well look no further — the uArm is a desktop robot that can act as your personal assistant … kind of.
As a smaller, sleeker version of the company’s original arm, the uArm Swift is an Arduino-controlled robot arm inspired by massive industrial robot arms often found in factories. Creator uFactory is running an Indiegogo campaign for it right now, and has already passed its goal with one month left to go.
By programming the uArm Swift, you can make it do all sorts of things, like picking stuff up assembly-line style, playing games with you, or even laser engraving. And programming it doesn’t require you to know how to code — according to UFactory, uArm will have a function that allows the device to record movement for later playback. Software also comes with the device, uArm Studio, for easy, Blockly-based programming. A mobile app allows for users to control their uArm Swift remotely—but it’s only ready out of the box on uArm Swift Pro devices, as they come with built-in Bluetooth.
uArm Swift uses suction cups and gripping mechanisms to pick stuff up. The device is on Indiegogo now, with a series of different reward tiers that scale up depending on what you want to do with uArm. It starts at $209 USD and heads upward from there.
Delivery on the device is expected to begin in April 2017, with all pledges shipped their uArm Swift by May 2017. UFactory’s first robot arm successfully hit its goals on Kickstarter three years ago, and the company is optimistic to hit these, too—especially since they’re already created the device and are doing internal testing.
The new, lightweight model is a serious upgrade when it comes to aesthetics and movement. uArm Swift wouldn’t look out of place on any sleek, minimal desk, while the Pro version guarantees the smoothest movement possible. The $209 price tag makes the uArm Swift even more affordable than it was before.
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.