Lifeboat Foundation

It’s not often you encounter a device that looks like it came straight out of a movie set. But Lenovo’s Project Crystal, supposedly the world’s first laptop with a transparent microLED display, is an example of sci-fi come to life.

Currently there are no plans to turn Project Crystal into a retail product. Instead Lenovo’s latest concept device was commissioned by its ThinkPad division to explore the potential of transparent microLED panels and AI integration. The most obvious use case would be sharing info somewhere, like a doctor’s office or a hotel desk. Instead of needing to flip a screen around, you could simply reverse the display via software, allowing anyone on the other side to see it while getting an in-depth explanation.

Silas Adekunle was born in Nigeria and moved to the UK at about 11 years old. He spent much of his childhood obsessed with science and technology, playing with Lego robot kits and watching YouTube videos to get ideas for simple robots he could build himself at home.

Now 27, Adekunle is the CEO and founder of a robotics company that he says has raised $10 million in funding. He also built what he calls the world’s first gaming robot, which impressed Apple executives enough that, in 2017, the tech giant signed an exclusive distribution deal with Adekunle’s UK-based company, Reach Robotics. Apple now sells the robots at $250 a pop.

Adekunle still remembers the first time he built his own robot, “if you could even call it a robot,” he tells CNBC Make It. He was only about 9 years old, still living in his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria.

Some folks prefer to get a grip on things to better understand concepts. Researchers have developed smart gloves for tactile learners that use haptic feedback and AI to teach users new skills, fast-track precision training and control robots remotely.

We’re all different, and that affects how we approach learning. Generally speaking, there are those who benefit most from observing or seeing things, others who take in more if the information is reinforced by sound, some absorb most when stuff is written down or through writing out concepts themselves. And then there are folks who prefer to get handsy or learn by doing. Or combinations of the above.

A team that includes researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed sensor-packed smart gloves to help kinesthetic – or tactile – learners better grasp new tasks or skills.

Reports suggest the tech giant is considering plans to power Airpods with AI cameras, smart ring, and smart glasses.

With wearables taking over the consumer electronics market, especially in the last five years, tech giant–Apple is considering plans for wearable devices.

TECNO’s Dynamic 1 is allegedly inspired by a German Shepherd.

Chinese technology company TECNO has officially unveiled its artificial intelligence (AI) enabled robotic dog called Dynamic 1. Showcased at the Mobile World Congress on Monday, February 26, in Barcelona, Dynamic 1 is the latest in robotic canines making the news of late.

According to reports on the robot’s capabilities, Dynamic 1 can climb up a flight of stairs thanks to its torque output of 45 Newton meters per kilogram (Nm/kg) and can also bow and “shake hands.”

Elon Musk has shared a new video on X of Tesla’s incredible Optimus robot taking a casual stroll around Tesla’s laboratory. Since being published on Saturday, February 24, the 1-minute and 18-second clip has garnered much attention, with almost 79 million views in a few days (at the time of writing).

The clip shows Optimus in a more complete aesthetic than previously released videos. It also shows how mobile the robot truly is. However, as other commentators have said, Tesla’s Optimus’ progress would have been impressive only a few years ago but lags behind other efforts like those by Boston Dynamics.

A team led by former Twitter engineers is rethinking how AI can be used to help people process news and information. Particle.news, which entered into private beta over the weekend, is a new startup offering a personalized, “multi-perspective” news reading experience that not only leverages AI to summarize the news, but also aims to do so in a way that fairly compensates authors and publishers — or so is the claim.

While Particle hasn’t yet shared its business model, it arrives at a time when there’s a growing concern about the impact of AI on a rapidly shrinking news ecosystem. News that is summarized by AI could limit clicks to publishers’ websites, which means their ability to monetize via advertising would also be reduced.

The startup was founded last year by former Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter, Sara Beykpour, who worked on products like Twitter Blue, Twitter Video, and conversations, and who spearheaded the experimental app, twttr. She had been at Twitter from 2015 through 2021, growing her position from software engineering to that of a senior director of product management. Her co-founder is a former senior engineer at both Twitter and Tesla, Marcel Molina.

Figure AI, a startup developing human-like robots, is reportedly in the process of raising $675 million in funding, with a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion.

Among the investors are Jeff Bezos’ Explore Investments, Microsoft, Nvidia and an Amazon-affiliated fund, Bloomberg reported Friday (Feb. 23), citing unnamed sources.

Other backers include Intel ’s venture capital arm, LG Innotek, Samsung ’s investment group, Parkway Venture Capital, Align Ventures, ARK Venture Fund, Aliya Capital Partners, Tamarack, Boscolo Intervest and BOLD Capital Partners, according to the report.

OpenAI’s new text-to-video model, Sora, will likely remain in development for some time before a public release.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has not yet set an exact release schedule. There are two reasons for this: One is that OpenAI does not want to take any safety risks, given the number of elections this year. The second reason is that the model is not yet technically ready for release.

When OpenAI unveiled Sora, the company pointed out shortcomings in the model’s physical understanding and consistency. Bloomberg’s tests with two OpenAI-generated prompts confirmed these issues. For example, in the video below, the parrot turns into a monkey at the end.