Humans may sometimes regard robots with apprehension or resentment over the increasing automation of labor, but the coronavirus pandemic is showing how the two can work together in new ways that might save lives during a crisis. Around the globe, robots and other technologies, like drones and telehealth devices, are being used in a variety of settings and capacities to assist in the COVID-19 response since there is a level of elevated risk for human workers. Automated devices have delivered meals to quarantined travelers in a Chinese hotel; enforced curfews in Tunisia; scanned visitors for fevers entering a South Korean hospital; monitored patients in a hard-hit Italian city; and tracked social distancing compliance from the skies in a number of cities around the world, including Elizabeth, New Jersey. Many of the technologies were available commercially prior to the coronavirus outbreak, said Texas A&M University professor Robin Murphy, who studies how robots can be deployed during disasters. But now, "they are being used 24/7 and adapted to fit the needs of those using them," Murphy added.

Moovit, an 8-year-old company based in Israel, makes an app that compiles data from public transit systems, ride-hailing services and other resources to help its 800 million users plan the best ways to get around. Intel plans to combine Moovit with Mobileye, a self-driving car specialist that Intel bought for about $15 billion in 2017.

Facebook has launched a new chatbot that it claims is able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality. "Blender" was trained using available public domain conversations which included 1.5 billion examples of human exchanges. The social media giant said 49% of people preferred interactions with the chatbot, compared with another human. But experts say training the artificial intelligence (AI) using a platform such as Reddit has its drawbacks. Numerous issues arose during longer conversations.

To protect the whales, scientists need to know where they are, which is what the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and the New England Aquarium are doing in what they call "counting whales from space." Taking data from satellites, sonar, radar, human sightings, ocean currents and more, they are training a machine-learning algorithm to create a probability model of where the whales might be. With such information, the federal, state and local authorities could make decisions about shipping lanes and speeds and fishing more quickly, helping them to better protect the whales, according to Sheila Hemami, director of global challenges at Draper.

A drone company that had to abandon its fast-food delivery tests has partnered with Ireland's health authority to deliver prescriptions instead. Manna Aero is working with the Health Service Executive to deliver medicines and other essential supplies to vulnerable people in the small rural town of Moneygall. The company's trial uses autonomous drones made in Wales. And it is looking at the possibility of testing in the UK within weeks. The UK has already announced a test of drones to carry supplies to the Isle of Wight during the pandemic.

It's hard to imagine anything less personable than a vacuum cleaner--until you give it a mind of its own. Almost as soon as iRobot released the Roomba into the world, a community of autonomous vacuum enthusiasts started giving their Roombas names, backstories, and custom wardrobes. One of the company's early TV ads acknowledged this unlikely bond, featuring people talking about their Roomba like it was a person. It's a big emotional investment in a tool whose sole purpose is to suck up filth, but Paolo Pirjanian, former CTO of iRobot, totally gets it. "There's something innate in our mind that triggers when you see something move on its own," says Pirjanian.

Artificial intelligence is getting down in the weeds. An AI-powered robot that can distinguish weeds from crops and remove them could eventually be used as an alternative to chemical insecticides. Kevin Patel and Nihar Chaniyara at tech start-up AutoRoboCulture in Gandhinagar, India, have created a prototype of the device, called Nindamani, specifically for cauliflower crops. The robot is powered by a pre-existing image-recognition algorithm.

Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant can set a timer, play a song, or check the weather with ease, but for a real conversation you may as well try talking to the toaster. Speaking as naturally as a person requires common-sense understanding of the world, knowledge of facts and current events, and the ability to read another person's feelings and character. It's no wonder machines aren't all that talkative. A chatbot developed by artificial intelligence researchers at Facebook shows that combining a huge amount of training data with a little artificial empathy, personality, and general knowledge can go some way toward fostering the illusion of good chitchat. The new chatbot, dubbed Blender, combines and builds on recent advances in AI and language from Facebook and others.

The collaboration between Hastings Contemporary and Bristol Robotics Laboratory is being trialled while the gallery is closed to visitors during the coronavirus lockdown.

Collin Kaufman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues built biological robots using 3D-printed muscles made of lab-grown mouse cells. But on their own, the muscles can't do much – what is needed is some way to control them.