When you picture an electric wheelchair, the first thing that comes to mind may be something slow, clunky, and impractical. Whill’s newest addition to its line of personal electric vehicles is anything but those things. With a patented front-wheel design, speeds of up to 5 miles per hour, and a lightweight body, the Model Ci looks like something straight out of the future. Whill’s Model M may have turned a few heads at last year’s CES, but its newest model really knocks it out of the park — so much so that it garnered a CES 2018 Innovation Award.
While the Model Ci is loaded with cool features, the front wheels are perhaps the most intriguing of them. Made up of 24 separate rollers, they allow for smooth movement in just about every direction. Combined with it’s ultra-portable design, they make the Model Ci the ideal vehicle for maneuvering in tight spaces. The wheelchair’s sporty, rugged design also allows you to tackle off-road terrain, so those accustomed to a more adventurous lifestyle can stray from the cemented path.
Weighing in at just 115 pounds, it’s one of the lightest chairs on the market. This can be attributed to an upgraded lithium-ion battery, which offers up to 10 miles in travel on a single charge, despite its lightweight build. The Model Ci also addresses concerns about portability; the chair breaks down into three separate parts, making it far more convenient for travel than previous models.
You can control this futuristic electric wheelchair using the joystick built into right armrest, or with an accompanying mobile app, the latter of which allows for complete control using your smartphone. Though relatively new, Whill’s Model Ci is currently available for $4,000 from various retailers. You can also take a look at the Model M and Model A, both of which incorporate the aforementioned front-wheel design.
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.