Researchers in Japan and at the University of Michigan recently said that they had figured out how to take control over Google Home, Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri devices from several feet away by shining laser pointers, and even flashlights, at the devices' mouthpieces. What brought this one was the ascent of the voice-controlled digital assistants, introduced a couple of years back and the security experts have expressed their worries that systems like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa were a privacy danger and could be effectively and easily hacked. Kevin Fu, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan with respect to the usage of laser pointers said that "This opens up an entirely new class of vulnerabilities, it's difficult to know how many products are affected because this is so basic." The computer science and electrical engineering researchers -- Takeshi Sugawara at the College of Electro-Interchanges in Japan and Mr. Fu, Daniel Genkin, Sara Rampazzi, and Benjamin Cyr at the College of Michigan -- all of them released their findings regarding the same issue in a paper on the 4th of November. The researchers said they had informed Tesla, Portage, Amazon, Apple, and Google to the light vulnerability and the companies all responded saying that they were'studying' the conclusions in the paper that was released.

Carnegie Mellon's teams now compete against Georgia Tech and the University of Texas at Austin in the four-legged robot league, and against Texas in the simulation league. Georgia Tech's team is led by Veloso's former post-doctoral researcher, Tucker Balch, and the Texas teams are led by Veloso's former graduate student Peter Stone. At the international level, Veloso's former graduate student, Will Uther, participates on the team from the University of New South Wales in Australia, which finished second to Carnegie Mellon in the four-legged robot league at RoboCup 2002.