Researchers in Zurich are teaching a robot how to balance on wheels attached to its four legs.

For many cities, here's the toughest pill to swallow: Their mayors don't actually have control of their streets. This is true of the metro Phoenix area, where Google's self-driving sister company Waymo is testing cars without drivers inside. And Miami, where Ford will touch down with self-driving pizza delivery vehicles this month. And Boston, where cars powered by the developer NuTonomy are picking people up near the seaport. In the US, self-driving car testing is regulated on the state level.

Flippy the burger-flipping robot that started work this week in a California restaurant has been forced to take a break because it was too slow. The robot was installed at a Cali Burger outlet in Pasadena and replaced human cooks. But after just one day at work the robot has been taken offline, so it can be upgraded to cook more quickly. Its human helpers are also getting extra training to help it keep up with demand at the restaurant. USA Today reported that the robot was still in place behind the grill at the burger joint but was switched off.

MANILA – English school chain ECC Co. will launch a Japanese course in the Philippines in June in partnership with a local college amid growing interest in the language among Filipinos. The Osaka-based firm and the University of Perpetual Help plan to provide a 6-month e-learning program, including a weekly supplementary lecture, for 35,000 pesos (¥72,000), targeting employees of Japanese affiliates and those planning to study and work in Japan, the company said. ECC's first Japanese-language course overseas aims to cater to an increasing number of Filipinos taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, a widely used exam for evaluating and certifying the language proficiency of nonnative speakers, it said. In 2017, a record 14,062 Filipinos took the exam, up 21 percent from the previous year, while the tally for all examinees topped 1 million for the first time, according to the Japan Foundation, which administers the test. The private university, founded in 1975, has three campuses in the south of Manila with about 2,000 employees and some 18,000 students, according to ECC.

Several people who own Amazon's Echo speakers have reported a strange bug: the Alexa voice assistant has been laughing for no reason. Some users on Twitter and Reddit say the outbursts have been entirely spontaneous. Others have said that Alexa has laughed after being asked to turn on the lights -- and may have misheard the command. "Having an office conversation about pretty confidential stuff and Alexa just laughed," Twitter user @DavidSven wrote recently. "Anybody else ever have that? It didn't chime as if we had accidentally triggered her to wake. Said another Twitter user, @taylorkatelynne: "[So] my mom & I are just sitting in the living room, neither of us said a word & our Alexa lit up and laughed for no reason.

The great promise of self-driving cars is that they will save innumerable lives by removing the most fallible and unpredictable element from vehicle traffic: the human. But in San Francisco at least, fickle human behavior is taking a stand. Two of the six collisions involving autonomous vehicles in California so far this year involved humans colliding with self-driving cars, apparently on purpose, according to incident reports collected by the California department of motor vehicles. On 10 January, a pedestrian in San Francisco's Mission District ran across the street to confront a GM Cruise autonomous vehicle that was waiting for people to cross the road, according to an incident report filed by the car company. The pedestrian was "shouting", the report states, and "struck the left side of the Cruise AV's rear bumper and hatch with his entire body".

To counter the threats posed by small drones, the U.S. military may have to rapidly step up its R&D timeframes, according to a new report commissioned by the U.S. Army. Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) have become increasingly affordable and sophisticated. With millions of these drones now available worldwide, "It's become very easy for an adversary to use them in nefarious ways," says Albert Sciarretta, chair of the committee behind the new study and president of CNS Technologies in Springfield, Virginia. The U.S. Army asked for a detailed report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that analyzes potential risks from these devices, especially to dismounted infantry (that is, foot soldiers) and lightly armored vehicles. For example, hobby drones could be fitted with lethal weapons such as explosive, chemical, biological, or radiological payloads--or modified to jam military radio signals, Sciarretta says.

To counter the threats posed by small drones, the U.S. military may have to rapidly step up its R&D timeframes, according to a new report commissioned by the U.S. Army. Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) have become increasingly affordable and sophisticated. With millions of these drones now available worldwide, "It's become very easy for an adversary to use them in nefarious ways," says Albert Sciarretta, chair of the committee behind the new study and president of CNS Technologies in Springfield, Virginia. The U.S. Army asked for a detailed report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that analyzes potential risks from these devices, especially to dismounted infantry (that is, foot soldiers) and lightly armored vehicles. For example, hobby drones could be fitted with lethal weapons such as explosive, chemical, biological, or radiological payloads--or modified to jam military radio signals, Sciarretta says.

A burger-flipping robot that doesn't require a paycheck or benefits -- and can grill 150 burgers per hour -- is now a cook at CaliBurger. The robot, or more specifically, a specialized industrial six-axis robotic arm bolted to the kitchen floor, works lunchtime shifts at the international burger chain's Pasadena, Calif., location. It takes burger orders through a digital ticketing system, then flips the burger patties and removes them from the grill. It uses thermal and regular vision, as well as cameras, to detect when the raw meat is placed on the grill, then monitors each burger throughout its cooking process. But those worried about a robot takeover of food-industry jobs can find comfort in knowing that Flippy still needs a human guide to place the patties on the grill.