Kawasaki made a rideable robotic goat

Move over, Spot, there’s a new quadruped robot in town. Meet Kawasaki’s Bex. Unveiled at last week’s International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Bex is a four-legged robot that’s inexplicably modeled after an Ibex, a species of wild goat that’s native to parts of Eurasia and Africa.

Bex came out of the company’s Kaleido program, which has seen it work on bipedal robots since 2015. Partway through that project, Kawasaki’s engineers decided to build a robot that could both move quickly across level ground and navigate tricky terrain. As you can see from the video spotted by Gizmodo, Bex features a set of wheels on its knees, allowing it to move faster on smooth surfaces than the glacial pace it plods along when walking. 

Bex can carry approximately 220 pounds of cargo. In addition to transporting construction materials and the like, Kawasaki envisions it carrying out remote industrial site inspections, much like Spot is already doing at Hyundai factories in Korea. To that end, the top half of Bex is fully modular, so it doesn’t have to look like a goat. But if you ask us, what kind of monster wouldn’t want a goat protecting their factories? 

Apple releases iOS 15.4 with mask-friendly Face ID unlock

Apple has begun rolling out iOS 15.4. The highly anticipated update adds a handful of features many iPhone users have been waiting to try out since the company first began testing them back in January. Among the most notable is the option to unlock your device while wearing a mask, making it so that you don’t need an Apple Watch to unlock your phone without removing a face covering or inputting your passcode. Once you’ve installed iOS 15.4, you’ll need to activate it manually in the Face ID and Passcode section of the Settings menu. iOS 15.4 also comes with a new voice option for Siri.

Apple has also released iPadOS 15.4. It introduces another highly anticipated feature: Universal Control. First announced at WWDC in June and then delayed at the end of the year, it allows you control multiple Macs and iPads with a single keyboard and trackpad or mouse. The two updates also with the 37 new emoji characters introduced as part of Unicode 14.0. That means you can use characters like the “melting face” in your text conversations, and add skin tones to the handshake emoji.     

To download the new updates, launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, then tap “General” followed by Software Update.  

Ford will sell some Explorer SUVs without rear climate controls due to chip shortages

With no end in sight to the global semiconductor shortage, Ford will temporarily offer some Explorer SUVs without the electronics necessary to access the car’s heating and air conditioning controls from the rear passenger seats. Following a report from…

This website allows Westerners to talk to Russians about the war in Ukraine

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Holoride’s in-car VR tech arrives in Audi vehicles this summer

Virtual reality is coming to Audi vehicles. On Saturday, the automaker announced it would support Holoride’s in-car VR technology starting this summer. In June, select Audi models with the company’s MIB 3 infotainment system, including the A4, A6, A8, Q5 and e-tron GT, will ship with the necessary software to sync with Holoride-compatible headsets, with the company planning to support the feature first in Germany, the UK and US before making it available in other markets.

At the center of the experience is something Holoride calls “Elastic Content.” When passengers play an interactive video or game, the experience adapts to the car’s movements. So say you’re playing something involving a spacecraft. When the vehicle accelerates, so will the spaceship. In that way, not only is the experience more immersive, but it’s also less likely to lead to motion sickness, according to Holoride.

Holoride spun out of Audi, but the startup’s system is brand-agostic, which means other automakers have the option to support the tech in their vehicle. The software for making Holoride content is open-source as well.

‘Star Trek: Picard’ features a time-traveling Samsung Galaxy Z Fold

For decades, Star Trek has defined the future of consumer technology. We have smartphones and voice assistants because in-universe devices like the Tricorder inspired engineers at Apple, Google and other companies to recreate those technologies in the …