WowWee, the toymaker best known for the Robosapien, its 2004 hit product, showed off its latest smart toy at the 2016 CE Week show in New York, a pet robot named CHiP. Chief Technology Officer Davin Sufer gave a demonstration of how the toy works
Although CHiP is geared toward children, it has quite a lot of artificial intelligence compared to an ordinary toy. Like a real pet, it’s able to react to human actions and responses, like hands clapping and touching (what WowWee calls GestureSense), voice recognition, and when it’s picked up. CHiP can also detect its immediate surroundings through infrared vision and beacon-based technology.
When paired with a smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy, you get greater control over CHiP, as well as play fetch with it by using a special ball. Like a Roomba, when CHiP is low on power, it automatically returns to its charging station. If you’re wearing a connected wristband, it can follow you around, too.
For WowWee, CHiP demonstrates how far technology has come since the first Robosapien, a dancing robot that was more about amusement than anything else. CHiP’s AI, however, gives it the potential to actually bond with children. Through continuous interaction, each CHiP can be trained to react uniquely with a particular owner.
The toy arrives on August 30, and it’s available now for pre-order sales via Amazon.
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).