First developed more than 100,000 years ago, clothing is one of humanity’s earliest — and most culturally significant — inventions, providing wearers not just protection from the environment and elements but also signifying social status, membership in a community and their role within that group. As robots increasingly move out of labs, off of factory floors and into our everyday lives, a similar garment revolution could soon be upon us once again, according to a new research study out of New York’s Cornell University.

“We believe that robot clothes present an underutilized opportunity for the field of designing interactive systems,” the team argues in What Robots Need From Clothing, which was submitted to the In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. “Clothes can help robots become better robots — by helping them be useful in a new, wider array of contexts, or better adapt and function in the contexts they are already in.”

“I started by looking at how different materials would move on robots and thinking about the readability of that motion — like, what is the robot's intention based on the way materials move on the robot,” Natalie Friedman, a PhD student at Cornell Tech and lead author on the paper, explained to Engadget. “From there, I started thinking about all the different social functions that clothes have for people and how that could influence how the robot is viewed.”

While tomorrow’s robots may wear white button down dress shirts and black bow ties while serving hors d'oeuvres to party guests or wear candy stripes while working as nurses, it’s not simply a matter of tossing human clothing onto a robotic chassis. “What robot clothes are is integrally tied to what robots need from clothing. Robot clothing should analogously fulfill needs robots have, rather than just being human clothes on a robot,” the researchers wrote.

Robo-clothes could take any number of forms, depending on their wearer’s specific function. Robotic firefighters, such as the Thermite from Howe and Howe, might theoretically be issued heat-resistant overcoats akin to what humans wear but embedded with thermochromic ink to provide the robot’s operator an easy visual reference to the area’s ambient temperature or indicate that the robot is in danger of overheating. Conversely, search-and-rescue bots could wear waterproof garments when conducting oceanic operations and then strap on extra-grippy boots when searching for lost hikers in mountainous terrain or survivors of a building collapse.

"I think this work is important to helping engineers and technologists understand the functional importance of aesthetics and signaling in design,” Cornell Tech professor and co-author Wendy Ju, said in a recent blog. “It's not ‘just fashion’ - what the robot wears helps people understand how to interact with it in ways that are critical to safety and task execution."

Overall, the use of swappable attire could lead to more generalized robot designs as the specific capabilities the clothing provides don't have to be baked into the robot’s construction. “It is more difficult to build a new robot than to build new clothes,” Friedman said. “I think that clothes are going to influence robot design and robot designs are going to influence clothes. Maybe it'll start in one direction — clothes made to fit robots — but, in the future, I think that robots might be built to better fit in clothes.” She notes that Pepper, though recently discontinued by SoftBank, offers an online merch store with a wide variety of costumes and outfits for the robot to wear including outfits designating cultural, national, professional and religious affiliations.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

But clothing on robots isn’t just for their own benefit, it also serves to demystify and humanize these cutting-edge machines in the eyes of the people they’re working with. For example, clothing could help protect a robot’s sense of shame — or rather that of its user.

“The need for wire modesty — to cover up nudity — stems from anthropomorphic priggishness, since robots do not get embarrassed about wires poking out of them,” the researchers wrote. “However, both humanoid and non-humanoid robots have pragmatic reasons to maintain a clean and covered aesthetic, because exposed wires present a real risk to function. Any wire that is pulled out or cut will remove power or signal to a subsystem, and that can be risky to the robot and any people or objects in the environment.”

“I definitely see a future where [when robots] aren't wearing clothes, it might look a little funny,” Friedman added. “I mean we are just mapping our ideas onto robots, right? Robots don’t have consciousness, so they don't feel shame.”

However, putting clothes on robots could also prove problematic especially if the apparel style has been culturally appropriated. You can bet your bottom dollar that the first cannabis dispensary to dress an automated budtender in rastafarian garb is going to make headlines — and not the kind that are good for business — same as if you outfitted a Roomba with a Native American headdress. “Hawaiian shirts, for example, used to be a marker of ‘casual Friday’ office attire, but more recently are affiliated with the extremist ‘Boogaloo Boys,’” the researchers wrote.

Despite the potential drawbacks to putting pants on robots, doing so could help make the entire field of research more attractive to a new generation of roboticists. “I like to think about girls in robotics,” Friedman said. “When they're young, I think robotics seems like a really intimidating thing but I see clothes as kind of a way to welcome, you know, the stereotypically feminine... skills that women have. I see clothes as a way to welcome girls into [robotics].”

When EA and DICE revealed Battlefield 2042 in June, they had to contend with a wave of leaks and spoiled surprises, but they were able to keep details about the game's third and final mode under wraps. Today, the secret's out. Battlefield Portal is the third mode in Battlefield 2042, and it's all about community interaction and user-created levels.

Battlefield Portal includes all seven maps from 2042's All-Out Warfare mode, plus six classic environments from previous Battlefield titles. The classic maps are Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein from Battlefield 1942, Arica Harbor and Valparaiso from Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Caspian Border and Noshahr Canals from Battlefield 3. 

EA

The mode features pre-programmed, reimagined experiences from these past titles, including conquest, rush and team deathmatch. All of the maps, including the classic ones, will support matches of up to 128 players on PC, Xbox Series consoles and PlayStation 5. As with Battlefield 2042's main All-Out Warfare mode, matches on older-gen hardware will be capped at 64 players.

Here's where it gets custom. Along with the updated, old-school playgrounds, Battlefield Portal includes more than 40 weapons, more than 40 vehicles, and more than 30 gadgets from three theaters of war, plus all of the related content from Battlefield 2042. This means the M1 Garand, Panzerschreck, B17 Bomber, Spitfire, defibrillator and other fan-favorite tools are back.

EA

Factions are also returning to Battlefield Portal. On top of the specialists from Battlefield 2042, the mode features seven armies from the classic games, including the UK, US and Germany out of 1942, and the US and Russia from Bad Company 2. Battlefield Portal also supports classic soldier archetypes like Battlefield 3's assault, recon, support and engineer roles.

All of this culminates in the Builder tool in Battlefield Portal. In Builder, players can design their own matches and share them with the community, adjusting a range of settings including the game logic itself. Players will have control over the maps and modes in their custom games, including traits like available factions, weapons and gear; the ability to toggle down sights or go prone; the size of the battle and conditions for victory. 

EA

Players won't be able to edit any of the actual maps, but overall, Portal has an extremely rich customization mode. All progress in Battlefield Portal is shared across consoles, just like stats in the main game. 

Battlefield 2042 — including Battlefield Portal — is due out on October 22nd, for $60 on PC, Xbox One and PS4, and $70 on Xbox Series X/S and PS5. There's still one more game mode yet to be revealed, Hazard Zone. We know it's a "high-stakes squad-based game type never seen before in the Battlefield franchise," and it's not a battle royale mode, but that's about it.

With the global popularity of Instagram, there’s a good chance you’ve run into Stories that haven’t been in English or any other language you might know. Until today, you had to go outside of the app to understand what those messages were communicating. Not any more. Instagram has introduced a new feature that will translate any foreign text you see in Stories, and that feature is now rolling out to users across the globe.

When the app detects you’re viewing a Story in another language, it will display a “See Translation” prompt toward the top left of the interface. All you have to do is tap the banner to see the text in your native tongue. With today’s launch, the feature can translate text between more than 90 languages — though it doesn’t work with audio at the moment. Inevitably that means they’ll be Stories where you might not understand what someone is saying. Still, it’s a step toward making Instagram as inclusive as possible. People can also take advantage of Instagram’s recently added auto-captioning feature to get around the current translation limitation.

Google has introduced a few Maps features that could help you ease back into the world, now that COVID-19 vaccines are available. One of the most useful changes to Maps is the expansion of transit crowdedness predictions to over 10,000 cities in 100 countries. 

Companies are expecting their staff to get back to the office in the near future, and crowdedness prediction can let you know if the train or bus line you're waiting for has a lot of open seats, or if it's already crowded. That way, you can decide whether to hop on or wait for the next one in hopes that it isn't as jam-packed. Maps can make predictions by combining AI tech with contributions from people using Google Maps, along with historical location trends.

Google

If you're in New York and Sydney, you can even see a train's level of crowdedness down to transit car level in real time. Maps will mark the least crowded cars, so you can line up for one of them, thanks to data from transport agencies in the areas. It's still a pilot at the moment, but Google says the feature will be available in more cities soon. 

In addition, the tech giant has launched a new Timeline Insights tab for the Maps app. So long as you're on Android and you have Location History switched on, you'll be able to view "monthly trends about how you’re navigating the world." For instance, that's where you can see how much time you spend at different places, such as shops or airports, and the distance and time for each mode of transportation you've taken. The tech giant says it developed the feature after users told the company that they want "to be more intentional about how they spend their time" after living through the pandemic.

Finally, Trips in the Timeline tab is now available to everyone on Android, so you can relive the vacations you've had in the past. In case your favorite travel destination still isn't welcoming tourists, you can go to the section and virtually visit hotels, restaurants and other places you've previously enjoyed.

Critics have previously claimed that NSO Group spyware was misued to target the media and other innocent people, but new findings might have revealed the extent of that misuse. The Washington Post has shared a multi-partner investigation claiming that NSO's Pegasus software was used to successfully hack 37 phones, including journalists, activists and the two women closest to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The victims were on a 2016-era list of 50,000 phone numbers from countries believed to conduct both extensive surveillance and use of NSO tools, such as Hungary and Saudi Arabia. The list included 1,000 people who didn't obviously fit the software's intended criminal targets, including over 600 politicians, 189 journalists, 85 humans rights activists and 65 business executives.

Roughly a dozen Americans working overseas were on the list, but the investigation partners couldn't conduct forensic studies on most of their phones or find evidence of successful hacks. NSO previously said Pegasus couldn't be used to snoop on American devices.

NSO flatly denied the claims stemming from the investigation. It maintained that the information had "no factual basis," and rejected the notion that Pegasus was used to target Khashoggi or his associates. It maintained that it shut down access "multiple times" over past abuses, and that the list was too large to be focused solely on numbers its client countries would have targeted. The company went so far as to hire a libel attorney, Thomas Clare, that accused the investigation partners of having "misinterpreted and mischaracterized" data while making "speculative and baseless assumptions."

NSO has historically pinned abuse claims on the countries themselves, and has said it reviewed the human rights records of a given nation before doing business.

The report comes a year and a half after Facebook sued NSO for allegedly enabling call exploit attacks against WhatsApp, and mere months after Citizen Lab claimed that NSO software was used to hack Al Jazeera journalists' iPhones using an iMessage flaw. However true the accusations might be, they'll at least affect NSO's reputation — they cast doubt on the company's assertion that it only serves customers pursuing obvious targets like terrorists.

Facebook is testing a change that will let users know when their post was removed as a result of automation. The new experiment comes in response to the Oversight Board, which has said the social network should be more transparent with users about how their posts are removed.

The company revealed the new test in a new report that provides updates on how Facebook is handling the Oversight Board’s policy recommendations. The test comes in response to one of the first cases the Oversight Board took up, which dealt with an Instagram post meant to raise awareness of breast cancer that the company removed under its nudity rules.

Facebook restored the post, saying its automated systems had made a mistake, and updated Instagram’s rules to allow for “health-related nudity.” But the Oversight Board had also recommended that Facebook alert users in cases when a post was removed with automation rather than as a result of a human content reviewer. Facebook previously said it would test this change, which is now in effect.

“We’ve launched a test on Facebook to assess the impact of telling people more about whether automation was involved in enforcement,” facebook writes in its report. “People in the test now see whether technology or a Facebook content reviewer made the enforcement decision about their content. We will analyze the results to see if people had a clearer understanding of who removed their content, while also watching for a potential rise in recidivism and appeals rates.” The company added that it will provide an update on the test later this year.

The report also shed some additional insight into how the company is working with the Oversight Board. The report notes that between November 2020 and March 2021 it referred 26 cases to the board, though it’s only chosen to take up three — one of which was in response to its suspension of Donald Trump. (Notably, the latest report only covers the first quarter of 2021, so it doesn’t address the board’s recommendations in response to Trump’s suspension.)

Though the Oversight Board has only weighed in on a handful of cases, its decisions have resulted in a few policychanges by Facebook that could have a much broader effect. However, in some areas, the company has declined to follow up on its policy suggestions, such as one that Facebook study its own role in enabling the events of January 6th. In a blog post, the company noted that “the size and scope of the board’s recommendations go beyond the policy guidance that we first anticipated when we set up the board, and several require multi-month or multi-year investments.”

Though it’s still best known for its capture cards, Elgato is working toward taking over your entire streaming setup. The past half decade has seen the introduction of the Stream Deckline for easily initiating macros during a broadcast; different kinds of lighting; and, last year, the company’s first gaming microphones. The one thing missing in this list was a webcam — until today’s introduction of the Elgato FaceCam.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

On its surface, the $200 camera is not that unique. It’s a chunky rectangular box that can be easily clipped on top of a monitor, or connected to Elgato’s multi mount system. It shoots 1080p at 60fps, with a Sony-made STARVIS CMOS sensor. It may not be 4K, but most streamers don’t need that kind of resolution right now. The FaceCam makes up for it with a robust suite of settings in its dedicated Camera Hub program. Yes, you’ll have to download another piece of software for this camera to run alongside Game Capture, Stream Deck, Wave Link (for the mics) and Control Center (for the lighting), which is a little annoying. Other companies bundle all their different drivers and settings into one tool, but I suppose keeping them separate probably makes sending out updates easier.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

In the Camera Hub you’ll have easy access to things like contrast, exposure and white balance. (The latter two can be set to automatic so you have one less thing to fuss over.) The automatic white balance was a little warm for my taste, but it was easy enough to turn it off and knock the number down to a cooler 4000K. The software also comes with zoom options, but it’s nothing to write home about, as the camera is fixed focus. You’ll always be sharp as long as you always remain between 12 inches (30 cm) and 47 inches (120 cm) from the camera. That should take care of anyone working at a desk; anyone who moves further back would be better served with something a little more portable with advanced settings.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

The biggest draw of the Camera Hub is the real-time ISO reading, which makes it a lot easier to detect and react to changes in your lighting. Maybe your lights are too bright, or maybe the natural light from outside vanished with an oncoming thunderstorm (which is exactly what’s happening as I type this). The exposure and white balance can adjust automatically, or you can tweak the settings yourself on the fly. There’s a Stream Deck plugin available, which should make it possible to adjust the settings with the touch of a button. Of course, that’s dependent on you having smart lighting in the first place, like Elgato’s Key Light or Ring Light.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

There’s a definite sense that you’re meant to go all-in on Elgato’s streaming lineup, probably best evidenced by the lack of a microphone in the FaceCam. The company says it didn’t bother since most gamers tend to use headsets anyway, but let’s face it: Elgato would rather you pick up one of its Wave:1 or Wave:3 mics. They do indeed sound great, but they’re not my preferred microphones thanks to some issues I had with getting the Wave:3 to work while I was wearing a headset — yes, even one made by Elgato’s parent company Corsair.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

For the most part, the FaceCam has a lot fewer kinks. My biggest problem was plugging it in, as it must be plugged into your system directly and not via a hub. And that’s tough with many modern laptops, which may only have two USB-C ports. The FaceCam comes with a USB-C to USB-A cord, and the company recommends you use the included wire instead of providing your own. I was forced to search around for a converter dongle. While I commend companies for finally embracing USB-C in their gaming accessories, we need some solutions on the software side to ensure that they can actually be used with hubs. My Logitech C920 works with a hub and it comes with a built-in mic, so it’s likely to remain my default webcam for most purposes.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Still, the FaceCam is off to a promising start. The video quality is crisp and free of noise, and when it’s not there’s a built-in filter you can enable. I haven’t needed it to, though, as the camera has handled my Google Hangouts and Zoom calls with ease. The price is a bit steep, but still on par with Logitech’s Brio 4K and Razer’s Kiyo Pro, both of which cost $200. What your money gets you here is the assurance that it will work seamlessly with your Elgato Stream Deck — a piece of equipment that, right now at least, has no real competition.

The race to develop satellite internet includes some pretty big players like SpaceX, Amazon, Softbank and Facebook. However, Facebook has now essentially thrown in the towel in that business, selling its internet satellite team to Amazon, The Information has reported. For Amazon, it's a significant step in its effort to develop its Project Kuiper satellite network and catch up with SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation.

Like Starlink, Project Kuiper is designed to provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to users around the world. Amazon aims to have a 3,236-satellite constellation in orbit by 2029, with half of it launched by 2026. It also plans to build 12 ground stations around the world to transmit data to and from the satellites. 

The company has said it will spend more than $10 billion to make all that happen and recently received FAA approval for the project. It also announced last year that it would use United Launch Alliance's ultra-reliable Atlas V rocket for the initial satellite launches. 

Amazon has significantly ramped up hiring efforts for Project Kuiper at its Redmond headquarters, with 500 employees currently aboard and 200 open positions. The employees coming from Facebook are reportedly based in the Los Angeles area and include physicists as well as optical, prototyping, mechanical and software engineers. Facebook's former head of Southern California connectivity, Jin Bains, is now listed as a Project Kuiper director in his LinkedIn page. 

Meanwhile, it seems Facebook is getting out of the satellite internet business and focusing on terrestrial programs, having invested in subsea and terrestrial fiber as well as wireless services like ExpressWiFi. The company recently launched an "Athena" satellite through its PointView Tech subsidiary, but it was only a test mission rather than the start of a satellite internet constellation. With the sale of its satellite team to Amazon, it appears that any ambitions it may have had in that area are over. 

Starting today, Instagram is introducing a new feature to help people secure their accounts following instances where they may have been hacked. Dubbed “Security Checkup,” the tool will prompt you to do things like check recent login activity, review your profile information and update your contact information in case you need to recover your account.

Instagram

Notably, one thing it appears the tool won’t recommend is adding two-factor authentication (2FA) to your account, but that’s something Instagram says it “strongly” recommends. On that front, the company notes sometime in the next few weeks it will start allowing people in some countries to use their WhatsApp number to authenticate their accounts. The WhatsApp integration is similar to Instagram’s existing SMS authentication feature. Anytime you attempt to log into your account, you’ll need to input the six-digit code that’s set to you over WhatsApp.

Later in the same blog post, Instagram notes its seen an increase in recent months of malicious actors trying to phish sensitive information from people like their account passwords. “They may tell you that your account is at risk of being banned, that you are violating our policies around intellectual property, or that your photos are being shared elsewhere,” the company said. “These messages are often scams and violate our policies.” Instagram points out if it ever needs to contact you about your account, it won’t send you a direct message. Instead, you’ll find any communication from the company in the “Emails from Instagram” tab found in the app’s settings menu.

Health-focused brand Amazfit has revealed its latest earbuds, the PowerBuds Pro. They're true wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation (ANC) up to 40dB and several health monitoring features, building on the original PowerBuds' heart rate monitoring.

According to the company, PowerBuds Pro can use an accelerometer to detect the sitting angle of your cervical spine. If your neck has been in the same position for too long, the earbuds can nudge you to make an adjustment and improve your posture. In addition, Amazfit says the buds can detect when you start running and automatically start tracking your run time, speed, distance, calories burned and more. You can sync heart rate data with fitness apps such as RunKeeper and MapMyRun.

There are a few ANC profiles that you can select depending on your surroundings. Indoor mode is centered around eliminating souls like typing, air conditioning and background chatter. In outdoor mode, you'll still hear announcements, Amazfit claims, but the ANC tech will stamp out trembling engines. There's also a workout mode, which blocks noises like wind but still lets you hear traffic for safety. The adaptive mode, meanwhile, will adjust the ANC based on your environment.

Amazfit

The earbuds each have three microphones and AI noise-reduction with the aim of helping you have clear phone call quality. PowerBuds Pro will run for up to nine hours on a single charge, according to Amazfit, and the charging case can extend the lifespan to 30 hours.

We found the company's $70 Bip S to be a decent, inexpensive running watch. If Amazfit can maintain a solid level of quality with its latest earbuds, they might be worth checking out.

Pre-orders for PowerBuds Pro open on July 15th. They start at $150 in the US and €130 in France, Spain, Italy and Germany.