In its quest to develop functional -- and sometimes terrifying -- robots, Boston Dynamics has unleashed a veritable petting zoo of futuristic-looking machines. In recent years, the tech company, owned by Japan's SoftBank Group, has released videos showing dog-like robots unloading dishwashers and climbing stairs, galloping Bovidae-like creatures that can run move faster than Usain Bolt, and a mesmerizing humanoid robot that leaves some YouTube viewers convinced that a robot takeover is imminent. In its latest video, the first to surface in about five months, a Boston Dynamics robot has acquired a new form, one that resembles an emu. Despite its large size -- it's six feet tall and weighs 231 pounds -- the wheeled machine glides across a warehouse floor with ease, demonstrating its ability to pick up and move large boxes using what appear to be suction cups at the end of a long neck. It's referred to as "Handle" and, according to the company, was designed to carry up to 33 pounds while maneuvering in tight spaces.

You're cool chatting up Amazon Alexa, the Google Assistant and Siri and having each come alive when you utter the "Alexa," "Hey, Google" or "Hey, Siri" wake words. But your kids are also engaging with the popular digital voices inside the smart speakers in your home and your big concern has mostly to do with privacy. Amazon and Google really cornered the smart speaker market. That's the chief takeaway from a new study, exclusive to USA TODAY and conducted in February, by Common Sense Media and SurveyMonkey Audience. Robocall crackdown: FTC continues robocall crackdown, stops groups responsible for'billions' of calls More than 4 in 10 of the 1,127 parents of children ages 2 to 8 who participated in the survey say their family uses a smart speaker such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home.

A self-driving car has learned to make high-speed turns without spinning out. The skill could come in useful during emergency manoeuvres. J Christian Gerdes and colleagues at Stanford University used a type of artificial intelligence algorithm called a neural network, which is loosely based on the neural networks in our brains, to create the self-driving system. They trained the neural network on data from more than 200,000 motion samples taken from test drives on a variety of surfaces, including on a mix of snow and ice at a track near the Arctic Circle. The team equipped a Volkswagen GTI with the algorithm and tested it on an oval-shaped race track.

The Octobot is fabricated by combining soft lithography, molding, and 3D printing. In a laboratory at Yale University, a soft toy horse with prosthetic coverings around its foam-stuffed legs has taken its first tentative steps. Despite its stiff and not entirely coordinated gait, the toy demonstration may point the way toward helping space agencies put lighter, more versatile robots into space. Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, assistant professor at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, says she was wrestling with the problem of how to allow robots to handle a wider variety of jobs than current approaches, which often focus on performing a single function well, when the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a request for novel robot designs based on lighter, plastic approaches. Rather than attempt to lift many single-task robots into orbit, the space agency wants a single reconfigurable machine to be able to handle different tasks and, occasionally, to act as prosthetics for human astronauts.

On 21 November 2015, James Bates had three friends over to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks play the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Bates, who lived in Bentonville, Arkansas, and his friends drank beer and did vodka shots as a tight football game unfolded. After the Razorbacks lost 51–50, one of the men went home; the others went out to Bates's hot tub and continued to drink. Bates would later say that he went to bed around 1am and that the other two men – one of whom was named Victor Collins – planned to crash at his house for the night. When Bates got up the next morning, he didn't see either of his friends. But when he opened his back door, he saw a body floating face-down in the hot tub. A grim local affair, the death of Victor Collins would never have attracted international attention if it were not for a facet of the investigation that pitted the Bentonville authorities against one of the world's most powerful companies – Amazon. Collins' death triggered a broad debate about privacy in the voice-computing era, a discussion that makes the big tech companies squirm.

In the food industry, it seems, the robot revolution is well underway, with machines mastering skilled tasks that have always been performed by people. In Boston, robots have replaced chefs and are creating complex bowls of food for customers. In Prague, machines are displacing bartenders and servers using an app. Robots are even making the perfect loaf of bread these days, taking charge of an art that has remained in human hands for thousands of years. Now comes Briggo, a company that has created a fully automated, robotic brewing machine that can push out 100 cups of coffee in a single hour -- equaling the output of three to four baristas, according to the company.

It might not be the first place you imagine when you think about robots. But in the Renaissance splendour of the Vatican, thousands of miles from Silicon Valley, scientists, ethicists and theologians gather to discuss the future of robotics. The ideas go to the heart of what it means to be human and could define future generations on the planet. The workshop, Roboethics: Humans, Machines and Health was hosted by The Pontifical Academy for Life. The Academy was created 25 years ago by Pope John Paul II in response to rapid changes in biomedicine.

To celebrate the German composer's March 21, 1685 birthday, Doodle lets users compose a melody in Bach's style. The interactive Doodle is the product of collaboration between Google's Magenta – which helps people make their own music and art through machine learning – and Google's PAIR – which makes the tools that allow machine-learning to be accessed by everyone. A machine-learning model called Coconet made it all possible. Developed by Google, Coconet was trained on 306 of Bach's chorale harmonizations. "His chorales always have four voices: each carries their own melodic line, creating a rich harmonic progression when played together," writes Google.

A swarm of robots inspired by living cells can squeeze through gaps and keep moving even if many of its parts fail. Living cells gather together and collectively migrate under certain conditions, such as when inflammatory cells travel through the bloodstream to a wound site to help the healing process. To mimic this, Hod Lipson at Columbia University in New York and his colleagues created 25 disc-shaped robots that can join together. Each is equipped with cogs that cause the robot's outer shell to expand and contract and magnets around its perimeter that let it stick to neighbouring bots. Individually, the bots can't move, but once stuck together, the swarm can slither across a surface by making individual bots expand and contract at different times.

The world's smallest bears copy one another's facial expressions as a means of communication. A team at the University of Portsmouth, UK, studied 22 sun bears at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Malaysia. In total, 21 matched the open-mouthed expressions of their playmates during face-to-face interactions. When they were facing each other, 13 bears made the expressions within 1 second of observing a similar expression from their playmate. "Mimicking the facial expressions of others in exact ways is one of the pillars of human communication," says Marina Davila-Ross, who was part of the team.