News

Robot UAVs Set To Revolutionize Abu Dhabi Maritime Patrols

In a few weeks, robotics experts will compete to create the best autonomous drone to detect criminals along Abu Dhabi’s coastline.

Published

3 years ago

January 22, 2024

Nour Nasir

robot uavs set to revolutionize abu dhabi maritime patrols

MBZIRC

This year, the Mohammed bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) Maritime Grand Challenge will pit five elite teams of robotics specialists against one another in the ultimate showdown.

Handpicked from a pool of 52 contenders, the scientists will gather on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, to solve real-world maritime issues, encompassing problems like illicit fishing, smuggling, and human trafficking, all through the deployment of autonomous drones. Launched in 2017 by Khalifa University, the competition is jointly hosted by ASPIRE and Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC).

The scientists’ missions will include tasks such as autonomous target inspection and identification aboard vessels without relying on GPS, object retrieval via drones, and seamless collaboration between UAVs and robotic manipulators.

Professor Lakmal Seneviratne, Director of the Centre for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS) at Khalifa University, remarked, “We can train our robots and AI to do many things in a very controlled environment,” adding, “For example, factory automation has been around since the 1980s in highly controlled environments. But when you go out into the real world, the uncertainty is huge. So the adaptability and algorithms of our robots are the key aspects to look at in this challenge”.

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Dr. Irfan Hussain, team leader of Fly Eagle, one of the finalists, explained that adaptability will be crucial to win the contest. “They have only a few days to adapt to the environment here, and many parameters are still unknown until the day of the challenge,” says Dr. Hussain. “So their algorithms and their approach need to be robust enough to complete the task regardless of the conditions”.

The unpredictability of the scenarios mirror real-world conditions at sea, where turbulent weather could hamper the missions of autonomous drones tasked with detecting illicit vessels, and GPS signals might also falter in such circumstances.

Come the first week of February, the five finalists will vie for a coveted first-place prize of $2 million to bring their groundbreaking innovations to production.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

2 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

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“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.