For safety considerations, Google mentions a “layered, holistic approach” that maintains traditional robot safety measures like collision avoidance and force limitations. The company describes developing a “Robot Constitution” framework inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and releasing a dataset unsurprisingly called “ASIMOV” to help researchers evaluate safety implications of robotic actions.
This new ASIMOV dataset represents Google’s attempt to create standardized ways to assess robot safety beyond physical harm prevention. The dataset appears designed to help researchers test how well AI models understand the potential consequences of actions a robot might take in various scenarios. According to Google’s announcement, the dataset will “help researchers to rigorously measure the safety implications of robotic actions in real-world scenarios.”
Gemini 2.0 Flash won’t just remove watermarks, but will also attempt to fill in any gaps created by a watermark’s deletion. Other AI-powered tools do this, too, but Gemini 2.0 Flash seems to be exceptionally skilled at it — and free to use.
Stable Virtual Camera offers advanced capabilities for generating 3D videos, including:
Dynamic Camera Control: Supports user-defined camera trajectories as well as multiple dynamic camera paths, including: 360°, Lemniscate (∞ shaped path), Spiral, Dolly Zoom In, Dolly Zoom Out, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Move Forward, Move Backward, Pan Up, Pan Down, Pan Left, Pan Right, and Roll.
Flexible Inputs: Generates 3D videos from just one input image or up to 32.
Multiple Aspect Ratios: Capable of producing videos in square (1:1), portrait (9:16), landscape (16:9), and other custom aspect ratios without additional training.
Long Video Generation: Ensures 3D consistency in videos up to 1,000 frames, enabling seamless
Model limitations
In its initial version, Stable Virtual Camera may produce lower-quality results in certain scenarios. Input images featuring humans, animals, or dynamic textures like water often lead to degraded outputs. Additionally, highly ambiguous scenes, complex camera paths that intersect objects or surfaces, and irregularly shaped objects can cause flickering artifacts, especially when target viewpoints differ significantly from the input images.
A demo video, first reported by The Verge, showed an AI version of the character Aloy from the Playstation game Horizon Forbidden West conversing through voice prompts during gameplay on the PS5 console.
The character’s facial expressions are also powered by Sony’s advanced AI software Mockingbird, while the speech artificially replicates the voice of the actor Ashly Burch.
BEAR claims to be the most intuitive and easy-to-use rigging tool available, offering production-proven features that streamline the rigging workflow for maximum efficiency and consistency.
According to a report in Indian news outlet, Animation Xpress, Jellyfish is facing financial struggles and has temporarily suspended its global operations.
Programmable Optics for LiDAR and 3D Sensing: How Lumotive’s LCM is Changing the Game
For decades, LiDAR and 3D sensing systems have relied on mechanical mirrors and bulky optics to direct light and measure distance. But at CES 2025, Lumotive unveiled a breakthrough—a semiconductor-based programmable optic that removes the need for moving parts altogether.
The Problem with Traditional LiDAR and Optical Systems
LiDAR and 3D sensing systems work by sending out light and measuring when it returns, creating a precise depth map of the environment. However, traditional systems have relied on physically moving mirrors and lenses, which introduce several limitations:
Size and weight – Bulky components make integration difficult.
Complexity – Mechanical parts are prone to failure and expensive to produce.
Speed limitations – Physical movement slows down scanning and responsiveness.
To bring high-resolution depth sensing to wearables, smart devices, and autonomous systems, a new approach is needed.
Enter the Light Control Metasurface (LCM)
Lumotive’s Light Control Metasurface (LCM) replaces mechanical mirrors with a semiconductor-based optical chip. This allows LiDAR and 3D sensing systems to steer light electronically, just like a processor manages data. The advantages are game-changing:
No moving parts – Increased durability and reliability
Ultra-compact form factor – Fits into small devices and wearables
Real-time reconfigurability – Optics can adapt instantly to changing environments
Energy-efficient scanning – Focuses on relevant areas, saving power
How Does it Work?
LCM technology works by controlling how light is directed using programmable metasurfaces. Unlike traditional optics that require physical movement, Lumotive’s approach enables light to be redirected with software-controlled precision.
This means:
No mechanical delays – Everything happens at electronic speeds.
AI-enhanced tracking – The sensor can focus only on relevant objects.
Scalability – The same technology can be adapted for industrial, automotive, AR/VR, and smart city applications.
Live Demo: Real-Time 3D Sensing
At CES 2025, Lumotive showcased how their LCM-enabled sensor can scan a room in real time, creating an instant 3D point cloud. Unlike traditional LiDAR, which has a fixed scan pattern, this system can dynamically adjust to track people, objects, and even gestures on the fly.
This is a huge leap forward for AI-powered perception systems, allowing cameras and sensors to interpret their environment more intelligently than ever before.
Who Needs This Technology?
Lumotive’s programmable optics have the potential to disrupt multiple industries, including:
Automotive – Advanced LiDAR for autonomous vehicles
Industrial automation – Precision 3D scanning for robotics and smart factories
Smart cities – Real-time monitoring of public spaces
AR/VR/XR – Depth-aware tracking for immersive experiences
The Future of 3D Sensing Starts Here
Lumotive’s Light Control Metasurface represents a fundamental shift in how we think about optics and 3D sensing. By bringing programmability to light steering, it opens up new possibilities for faster, smarter, and more efficient depth-sensing technologies.
With traditional LiDAR now facing a serious challenge, the question is: Who will be the first to integrate programmable optics into their designs?
ComfyDock is a tool that allows you to easily manage your ComfyUI environments via Docker.
Common Challenges with ComfyUI
Custom Node Installation Issues: Installing new custom nodes can inadvertently change settings across the whole installation, potentially breaking the environment.
Workflow Compatibility: Workflows are often tested with specific custom nodes and ComfyUI versions. Running these workflows on different setups can lead to errors and frustration.
Security Risks: Installing custom nodes directly on your host machine increases the risk of malicious code execution.
How ComfyDock Helps
Environment Duplication: Easily duplicate your current environment before installing custom nodes. If something breaks, revert to the original environment effortlessly.
Deployment and Sharing: Workflow developers can commit their environments to a Docker image, which can be shared with others and run on cloud GPUs to ensure compatibility.
Enhanced Security: Containers help to isolate the environment, reducing the risk of malicious code impacting your host machine.
Every 11 years the Sun’s magnetic pole flips. Leading up to this event, there is a period of increased solar activity — from sunspots and solar flares to spectacular northern and southern lights. The current solar cycle began in 2019 and scientists predict it will peak sometime in 2024 or 2025 before the Sun returns to a lower level of activity in the early 2030s.
The most dramatic events produced by the solar photosphere (the “surface” of the Sun) are coronal mass ejections. When these occur and solar particles get spewed out into space, they can wash over the Earth and interact with our magnetic field. This interaction funnels the charged particles towards Earth’s own North and South magnetic poles — where the particles interact with molecules in Earth’s ionosphere and cause them to fluoresce — phenomena known as aurora borealis (northern lights) and aurora australis (southern lights).
In 2019, it was predicted that the solar maximum would likely occur sometime around July 2025. However, Nature does not have to conform with our predictions, and seems to be giving us the maximum earlier than expected.
Very strong solar activity — especially the coronal mass ejections — can indeed wreak some havoc on our satellite and communication electronics. Most often, it is fairly minor — we get what is known as a “radio blackout” that interferes with some of our radio communications. Once in a while, though, a major solar event occurs. The last of these was in 1859 in what is now known as the Carrington Event, which knocked out telegraph communications across Europe and North America. Should a similar solar storm happen today it would be fairly devastating, affecting major aspects of our infrastructure including our power grid and, (gasp), the internet itself.
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