Exoskeletons are shedding their bulky, sci-fi image to become lightweight, AI-powered consumer devices that manufacturers hope will become as commonplace as smartwatches, targeting everyone from hikers to seniors seeking to stay active.The metal contraptions are impossible to miss in the aisles of the CES consumer technology show in Las Vegas, with visitors eager to try out devices that, depending on the model, help to train the legs, support the knees, and strengthen the back. Some say they do all three at once.The Hardiman suit, the first exoskeleton of the modern era created by engineer Ralph Mosher for General Electric in the mid-1960s, is a far cry from these new models.It was massive in appearance, resembling the boxy “Transformers” characters from the toys and movies. By contrast, several models presented in Las Vegas weigh less than two kilograms (4.4 pounds) without batteries.Although exoskeletons gradually made their way into industry and healthcare more than 20 years ago to relieve warehouse workers or assist in patient rehabilitation, they have remained niche products until now.Today, a host of startups are looking to capitalize on equipment more adapted to everyday use, with improved battery life and more affordable prices.Several of them offer products costing around $1,000 each, equipped with sensors that use artificial intelligence to adapt the mechanical assistance to the terrain and walking pace.Some are also designed for running, such as an offering from Dnsys, which claims a maximum speed of 27 kilometers (16.8 miles) per hour — faster than the sprinting pace of the vast majority of humans.Casual walkers and experienced hikers alike are being targeted by exoskeleton manufacturers, which are almost exclusively Chinese and dream of success in the vast US market.”We’re working hard to make exoskeletons commonplace so people don’t feel that social anxiety of wearing something like this,” said Toby Knisely, communications manager at Hypershell, which says it has already sold 20,000 units.”It’ll hit a critical mass at some point, and maybe become as commonplace as smartwatches or glasses,” he said.- You do the work -After trying out an Ascentiz exoskeleton, Trevor Bills, a Canadian entrepreneur visiting CES, was quite impressed.”You hardly feel it, because it seems to be very good at keeping up with you,” he said.”It was only when I slowed down that I was fighting it a little bit.”One of the obstacles to overcome is the idea that exoskeletons reduce physical effort and diminish the health benefits of exercise.”It doesn’t do the work for you,” said Bills, his forehead glistening with sweat.”If it gets people out and about and makes them more active, that’s a good thing.”Half of Dnsys’s customers are over-50s “who enjoy walking but do so less as they get older,” says Xiangyu Li, co-founder of the company.Hypershell states on its website that users must be able to walk and balance on their own to ensure that everyone uses the device safely and not as a crutch or walking aid.When these machines become more common on the streets, “social anxiety, or the embarrassment associated with wearing an exoskeleton” will fade, said Knisely.”People don’t want to look like robots,” said Xiangyu Li.

The White House said Thursday that US law enforcement was under “organized attack” as protesters clashed with officers in Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent.The victim of Wednesday’s shooting, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was shot in the head as she apparently tried to drive away from agents approaching her car, which they said was blocking their way.Vice President JD Vance said, without providing evidence, that she was part of a “broader left-wing network” opposed to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, and he insisted the officer acted in “self-defense.”The day after the shooting, officers armed with pepperball guns and tear gas jostled with a large crowd of protesters beside a government facility in Fort Snelling just outside Minneapolis.A noisy crowd chanted slogans attacking ICE as officers pushed against protesters, detaining several including one who struck an agent with a cardboard sign.Footage of Wednesday’s incident shows a masked agent attempt to open the victim’s car door before another masked agent, standing near the vehicle’s front bumper, fired three times into the Honda SUV.The vehicle then hurtled out of control and smashed into stationary vehicles, as horrified onlookers hurled abuse at the federal officers.Her bloodied body is then seen slumped in the crashed vehicle. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said she leaves behind a wife and six-year-old child, for whom a fundraiser has received more than $600,000.President Donald Trump and senior officials quickly claimed Good was trying to kill the agents, an assertion Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey dismissed.”I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Times.Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Kristi Noem called the incident “domestic terrorism” later saying she was not opposed to deploying more officers to Minneapolis.Witness Tyrice told US media he heard “three gunshots and then I hear a car crash.””I see this lady hugging the victim,” he said.”There’s blood all in the snow in front of our house. And I could see a lady in the car…You could see the wounds and everything, like a whole bunch of blood.”Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told CNN that Good was not the target of immigration enforcement action and that she was only suspected of blocking traffic.Vance told a briefing Thursday that Good was “part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to doxx, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday’s incident was “a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement” and “law enforcement are under organized attack.”- Immigrant deportations -Protests grew after Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Walz called it a “patriotic duty” to demonstrate for justice.On Thursday he said Minnesota must be part of the probe into the shooting alongside federal investigators — as otherwise Noem “is judge, jury and basically executioner.”But Vance seemed to suggest the officer would be cleared by a federal probe that would exclude state-level officials.”The idea that this was not justified is absurd,” he said.Minneapolis schools were closed Thursday and Friday as a precaution against unrest.ICE officers have been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation drive, with raids carried out over the objections of some local officials.Wednesday’s incident came during protests over immigration enforcement in the southern part of Minneapolis.They are part of widespread anger over the Trump administration’s high-profile crackdown on undocumented immigrants, with the Republican vowing to arrest and deport “millions.The victim’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter “was probably terrified” and “not part” of anti-ICE activity.Good was a mother and poet who studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, US media reported.On Thursday, religious leaders addressed hundreds of people attending a vigil at the scene of the shooting, with a growing memorial of flowers and candles erected to commemorate Good’s life.

There’s a few special words that will perk the ears of many a dog — hungry, park, and of course T-R-E-A-T.But a choice group of gifted canines appear to have remarkable capacity for learning human vocabulary, to the point that they acquire language by eavesdropping the way young toddlers do.That’s according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, which shows that some “gifted word learner” dogs already known capable of learning toy names through training and play can also pick up words simply by overhearing people speak to each other.Cognitive researcher Shany Dror of the Veterinary University of Vienna’s Clever Dog Lab has spent years running a “Genius Dog Challenge” that recruits canines who’ve demonstrated particular ability to learn language through social interactions.In her research she noticed that some dogs seemed to be listening in on their owners: “They would tell me stories, like we were talking about ordering a pizza, and then the dog came into the living room with the toy named pizza,” Dror told AFP.So she and a team out of Hungary’s Eotvos Lorand University set out to test whether their group of particularly intelligent dogs could create the association of a new word to a new object without being directly taught the connection.And in a new development they found the gifted dogs could learn new toy names just as well from overheard speech as they did when directly addressed, proving it by later retrieving the toys.These dogs are considered outliers: Dror said her team has been searching for some seven years for dogs who know toy names, and have found about 45.Yet she said the findings offer some clues about the “complex machinery needed for social learning, to see if it exists in an animal that does not have language.””We found that it does exist,” Dror said. “This gives us a kind of hint to the fact that before humans developed language, they first had this very complex cognitive ability to learn from others.”- Canine savants? -Clive Wynne, a canine behaviorist at Arizona State University, called the study “very nicely done,” but cautioned that the animals studied were “deeply exceptional” and that people shouldn’t expect genius qualities from their family pets.But how do these intelligent pups become so smart?”One obvious possibility is that these dogs are true canine savants,” said Wynne. “But another possibility is that it’s not their cognition that’s exceptional, it’s their motivational system — that they have motivational systems that can be activated and yet never fill up.”Wynne gave the example of the dog Chaser, who had a phenomenal vocabulary of more than a 1,000 words — and who also had a phenomenal capacity for training and play that isn’t representative of the species.Chaser was a Border Collie, a working dog breed Dror said is among the top dog types among gifted word learners.But she said they have seen a “surprising” range of breeds represented including a Shih Tzu, a Pekingese, Yorkshires along with mixed breeds including a rescue.Even though “typical” dogs aren’t likely to learn from overheard speech, Dror emphasized that dogs in general still “are really good at understanding human communicative cues.””Even if our dogs do not know the names of objects, I think we can still pay more attention to how we are conducting ourselves when we’re interacting with our dogs,” Drof said, “with the underlying thought that maybe our dogs are learning something from this.”