1. One Thing That Helps
Four motors as thin as thread just lifted a chocolate bar. That’s FiberMotor, a 1 to 3 mm flexible linear motor from EPFL’s Soft Transducers Laboratory that turns electrical energy straight into sliding motion, with no rigid gears.
It’s two hollow fibres, one inside the other, each wrapped in insulated copper-wire electrodes only slightly thicker than a human hair. Apply voltage and the fibres pull into alignment, sliding the inner one along like a telescope. A single motor can hold about 75 grams, and a bundle of four can flex a robotic finger.
That matters because a lot of what we do with our bodies, like lifting, pushing and pulling, is straight-line motion, and motors strong enough to help usually need rigid gears and bulky transmissions. Artificial muscles are softer but only move as far as their materials can stretch. FiberMotor’s range is limited only by the length of its fibres, and it’s silent and flexible enough to sit inside clothing. So a mobility aid or lightweight prosthetic could be driven by motors running through the fabric instead of a rigid unit strapped to the body. And with no gears it’s backdriveable, so if you move against it the fibres just slide past each other. Change your mind halfway through a movement and you’re not wrestling a motor to stop it.
2. One To Be Wary Of
I’d thought the computer worm had been shelved, pushed out of the headlines by ransomware and identity theft. AI has just dragged it back.
Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team warns that small open-weight AI models may be months away from autonomous self-replication, forming decentralized “AI botnets” across cheap Internet of Things (IoT) devices. To show you don’t need a data centre, they took Google’s Gemma 4 26B and split it into shards across 15 off-the-shelf Android TV boxes at about $55 each. It worked at a blistering 0.39 tokens per second.
In short, a small AI could copy itself across many devices and borrow their computing power. Smart ovens and TV boxes could all end up hosting a shard of an AI worm, and with no central point to shut off, good luck pulling the plug. Instead of breaking into data centres, it would go after poorly secured, rarely updated smart devices in the home.
Anthropic says there’s no fully rogue replicator yet, but reckons small models could get there by the end of 2026. If only the oven updated as easily as the phone.
3. One To Amaze
The Dawn of the Age of the Exoskeleton
Fallout’s Power Armor just got a little less fictional, as cheaper motors, sensors and control systems bring exoskeletons into everyday work.
Wearable robotic frames are already on the front line and in the backcountry. Powered exoskeletons boost the wearer’s strength, assist or resist as needed in rehabilitation programs, or take full control of a paralysed patient’s body part.
In Ukraine, they help soldiers carry artillery shells. Seattle Mountain Rescue members have been hiking into the wilderness wearing them for extra lower-body strength. IKEA has fitted warehouse workers with them for years, and Ford, Boeing, Mazda and Toyota use them on assembly lines.
The common thread is less physical strain and less effort per task. Now I just need a leg frame to land a 900 on my skateboard!