Let’s face it: We live in a pretty jaded society. In such a “been there, seen that” environment, the promise of a regular ole’ waterpark wouldn’t be enough to prompt even an eye-roll emoji in response from many people. Thank goodness, then, for an amusement park in Germany whose new, world-first waterslide adds in a dose of scintillating virtual reality in an effort to make us feel something again.
“Ballast originally started by making an experimental headset that can be used underwater,” Stephen Greenwood, the CEO of Ballast VR, the company behind VRSlide, told Digital Trends. “Last summer, we were approached by German waterslide manufacturer Wiegand-Maelzer to see if we could build a system that worked on waterslides. The biggest challenge with VR on waterslides, compared to roller coasters or other track-based rides, is that every rider moves at a unique speed — meaning that in order for everything to be perfectly synchronized, we had to invent a tracking system that knows precisely where each rider is and display the VR content at a variable speed.”
A bit like the opening credits to the Naked Gun movies, in which a cop car is transported to everywhere from the inside of a pinball machine to the Death Star trench, once VRSlide riders put on their goggles, their perspective changes to give the illusion of them flying through a variety of settings. Sure, the virtual reality looks a bit more like a PlayStation 2 game than cutting-edge graphics, but Greenwood said that the results are surprisingly effective.
“We were skeptical when considering to take on the project,” he explained. “But when we did some very early tests, even without the tracking system it became clear that it’s a bizarre combination that produces a really thrilling experience. I think it’s more fun than roller coaster VR, because there are multiple senses being stimulated — you have water splashing against the rider, unexpected twists and turns when the rider thinks they are going one way in VR, but then actually take a sharp turn in the other direction. Riders can also experience a new world every time they go down, so the same slide can be refreshed as much as the park operators would like.”
At present, the slide at Therme Erding, 30 minutes outside Munich, is the only place you can try the experience. However, Greenwood said the company is interested in taking the technology global. “We are currently in discussions with parks outside of Germany to expand,” he noted.
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.