In the summer of 2009, the Israeli neuroscientist Henry Markram strode onto the TED stage in Oxford, England, and made an immodest proposal: Within a decade, he said, he and his colleagues would build a complete simulation of the human brain inside a supercomputer. They'd already spent years mapping the cells in the neocortex, the supposed seat of thought and perception. "It's a bit like going and cataloging a piece of the rain forest," Markram explained. "How many trees does it have? What shapes are the trees?"

Tesla is raising the price of its "self-driving" option on its electric vehicles worldwide starting with a $1,000 (£820) hike. Founder Elon Musk tweeted that the price "will continue to rise" as its technology improves. But the entrepreneur said the technology it's adding will be worth more than $100,000. Mr Musk has been in a battle with officials in California over the restarting of Tesla's US car assembly. Tesla's "full self-driving" (FSD) option is called Autopilot, although it isn't fully autonomous.

Countries around the world have responded to the Covid-19 coronavirus with lockdowns, restrictions, and technology solutions that use artificial intelligence to combat the virus. As the world begins to emerge from the pandemic, China is first to emerge from Covid-19 imposed lockdowns thanks to cutting-edge technology, with autonomous vehicles and smart cities seeing an acceleration during this time. In China, new opportunities for the autonomous driving industry and intelligent solutions have stood out. Restrictions on retail, dining, and everyday life during the outbreak have increased demand for driverless deliveries and non-contact operations, both heavily relying on autonomous driving technologies. As the outbreak progresses, all sectors of Chinese society continue to apply AI, big data capabilities, and robot services to prevent and control the coronavirus.

Maybe you're sad, plodding along with your head slumped and shoulders sagging. Maybe you're angry and alert, hurrying along upright. Whatever your gait, that combined with your facial expression is nonverbally signaling to other people how much space they should give you--and being able to accurately read these cues is an essential skill for our social species. Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed an algorithm called ProxEmo, which gives a little wheeled robot the power to analyze your gait in real time, and to take a guess at how you might be feeling. Based on that perceived emotion, the robot can choose its route to give you more or less space.

Early in 2018, the volcano Anak Krakatau in Indonesia started falling apart. It was a subtle transformation -- one that nobody noticed at the time. The southern and southwestern flanks of the volcano were slipping towards the ocean at a rate of about 4 millimetres per month, a shift so small that researchers only saw it after the fact as they combed through satellite radar data. By June, though, the mountain began showing obvious signs of unrest. It spewed fiery ash and rocks into the sky in a series of small eruptions. And it was heating up.

IBM's and Google's platforms work in similar ways. They make it easy for clients to spin up chat or voice-based agents that act a lot like Alexa or Siri but are tailored to different applications. When users text or call in, they are free to speak in open-ended sentences. The system then uses natural-language processing to parse their "intent" and responds with the appropriate scripted answer or reroutes them to a human agent. For queries that can't be answered automatically, the algorithms group similar ones together to show the most commonly missed intents.

Engineer and YouTuber Shane Wighton has made a basketball hoop that uses a Microsoft Kinect and facial recognition in order to build a basketball hoop that means the shooter never misses. On the YouTube channel Stuff Made Here, Wighton explains that the backboard is tracking the information in the room, including the ball and its trajectory. With that information, the backboard can calculate where it needs to move in order to ensure the ball gets into the hoop. Since there are only 600 milliseconds (a thousandth of a second) between when the ball is thrown and when it hits the backboard, the calculations need to be made in an incredibly short amount of time. Therefore, Wighton said, when designing the board he had to prioritise fast movement.

Robot in Singapore is cracking down on people's social distancing Singapore has employed a four-legged robot named SPOT to patrol a popular park and remind people to maintain social distancing.