Latest Technology

Ugreen’s HomeAgent H100 Pro hub combines local storage, on-device AI, and a new voice assistant, Uliya, to run your smart home. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Ugreen, known for its phone power banks, chargers, and NAS storage solutions, is moving into the smart home - in a big way. This week at the IFA tech show, the company launched its HomeAgent smart home platform that combines security camera storage, on-device AI, and smart home control in one system, managed by a voice assistant called Uliya, with the promise that everything runs locally. At the core of Ugreen's HomeAgent system is a hub that acts as the brain of your smart home, running a local-first AI (with some caveats) that you can interact with using natural language via Uliya. There are three hub configurations to choose from, each … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/ydl1LVE

DJI has announced a second generation of its Romo robovac. The Romo 2 series is quieter, more powerful, and better at climbing over small steps and other obstacles. But more importantly for DJI, a new local-only data mode should go some way to reassuring anyone concerned by the first Romo's serious security flaws . There are actually two new Romo models, the transparent P2 and the opaque A2. Both benefit from improved navigation, apparently able to avoid cables and other obstacles as small as 2mm in size, as well as transparent objects like mirrors or glass. There's also "human-like reasoning and concept transfer" that supposedly allows Romo … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/Hqgl6Xi

Mammotion’s Luba 4 AWD can clean up the sides of your driveway and flower beds with its edger attachement. | Image: Mammotion Anker's new robot lawnmower might take over for your weedwacker, too. Announced at IFA 2026, the Eufy Robot Lawn Mower S2 Max comes with an extendable trimming arm to clean up the grass around your driveway and flowerbeds. The dual-blade mower offers vSLAM navigation that uses built-in cameras to build a 3D map of your yard, eliminating the need to set up boundary wires or a Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) base station. Anker says the Mower S2 Max can map and mow up to 3.7 acres, while handling yards with up to 80 percent (38-degree) slopes. The robot mower is AWD and will launch in May 2027 for €3,999. There's no word on US pricing or availabili … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/fHumgJF

Believe it or not, the Tesla Cybercab is coming . Nearly two years after Elon Musk first unveiled the gold-tinted, gull-wing door sporting, steering wheel-free two-seaters as the future of Tesla's autonomy efforts, the company is finally putting them into operation as part of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. Public rides are here, and as Musk fans will assert, the era of Tesla's robotaxi dominance will begin. Or will it? Musk has bet his company - and his trillion-dollar pay package - on a stripped down, barebones autonomous driving system that eschews multiple sensors used by all of his rivals in favor of a camera-only approach. Th … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/th5aH8c

LG’s CLOiD is a robot housekeeper on wheels, not legs. The company says it’s developing a robot foundation model by training hundreds of CLOiDs in home environments. | Image: LG The idea of humanoid robots running our homes has been the stuff of science fiction for years. But unlike hoverboards and self-tying sneakers, a robot housekeeper has never felt close to rolling into our homes. Until now. This has been the year of the humanoid robot. At CES, there were dozens of human-shaped bots on the show floor, a handful designed for homes . US-based robotics company 1X has already put its $20,000 Neo robot into homes to do housework (with a lot of remote assistance); and this week at the IFA tech show in Berlin, around half a dozen humanoids, mostly from China , will take to a catwalk to show off the alarming (?) accele … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/NofYW42

In 2007, the US was on the cusp of an economic recession, and Buddy Rizer was tasked with finding Loudoun County, Virginia, a new way to make money. Rizer’s earlier career as a radio DJ didn’t exactly make him an obvious candidate to find a solution, but he was looking for what he called a “real job” and stumbled into a role at Loudoun’s economic development authority.  This new gig came with urgency thanks to the bursting of the housing bubble: More than 80 percent of the county’s revenue came from residential real estate. The goal, at the time, was to raise the commercial tax base from about 19 percent of revenue to something like 23 percent, Rizer recalls. Today, just over half of the county’s tax revenue comes from commercial sources.   To jumpstart that turnaround, Rizer turned to the carcasses of another recent bubble burst — those of the dot-com era. The county had been home to the headquarters of AOL, which by 2000 was the US’s larg...