When Ubisoft announced last year that the Assassin's Creed series would take a year off, retool, and return in 2017, I anticipated huge sweeping differences. The series needs huge sweeping differences--with a grueling yearly release schedule, Assassin's Creed has suffered from consumer and critical malaise more than perhaps any Ubisoft property. But after playing Assassin's Creed: Origins for 20 or so minutes during E3, I don't think we're getting huge sweeping differences. Assassin's Creed: Origins has been tweaked in places, and its Cleopatra-era Egypt setting is certainly the most creative we've seen in years, but it doesn't feel like a true rebirth or a reimagining. First and foremost, the usual disclaimer applies: We played 20 minutes of an hours-long experience, so maybe the seeds of Assassin's Creed's redemption come later in the game.

WeRobotics Global has become a premier forum for social good robotics. The feedback featured below was unsolicited. On June 1, 2017, we convened our first, annual global event, bringing together 34 organizations to New York City (full list below) to shape the global agenda and future use of robotics in the social good sector. WeRobotics Global was kindly hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation, the first donor to support our efforts. They opened the event with welcome remarks and turned it over to Patrick Meier from WeRobotics who provided an overview of WeRobotics and the big picture context for social sector robotics.

Powers planned by the Government aiming to pave the way for commercial space flights in Britain will be included in the Queen's Speech alongside a raft of investments in transport infrastructure. The legislation, according to Department for Transport (DfT), will allow the launch of satellites from the UK for the first time, horizontal flights to the edge of space for scientific experiments and the establishment of spaceports in regions across Britain. The Queen's Speech, which has been delayed by two days due to the current instability in British politics, will also include measures to improve conditions for the 100,000 drivers of plug-in vehicles by "removing barriers that are preventing more drivers switching to electric". "As things stand, those wanting to use publicly-accessible charging points may need to register with several different companies that run them," the Department for Transport added. "The planned legislation will include measures to ensure drivers need register only once to make full use of the existing infrastructure."

Innovation in the business world is accelerating exponentially, with new, disruptive technologies and trends emerging that are fundamentally changing how businesses and the global economy operate. To adapt, thrive, and innovate, we all need to be aware of these evolutionary technologies and trends and understand the opportunities or threats they might present to our organizations, our careers, and society on a whole. With this in mind, I recently had the opportunity to compile 99 Facts on the Future of Business in the Digital Economy. This presentation includes facts, predictions, and research findings on some of the most impactful technologies and trends that are driving the future of business in the digital economy. To make it easier to find facts for specific topics, I have grouped the facts into six subsets; in this post I'll share the second subset.

By now you probably know that the people who make our clothes, chocolate, and diamond rings often suffer in the process. With growing consumer consciousness and stricter regulations putting pressure on companies to clean up their act, one company has devised a machine learning system it says will sift through data and locate forced labor in the manufacturing process. SAP Ariba, a for-profit software and IT company based in California, works with millions of large and small-scale companies to streamline their supply chain, the system through which their products are sourced, made or delivered. It works with companies that deal with fashion and food, but also technology. "The fact that every country in the world has made forced labor illegal, the acknowledgement alone has made companies realize they cannot take this lightly," said Padmini Ranganathan, the vice president of products and innovation at Ariba.

The ability to recognise faces was thought to be too complex for a fish, but a new study suggests that this might not be the case. Scientists have found that the tiny striped Masked Julie, which lives among the rocks of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, can distinguish a friend from a foe. The species detects patterns around the eyes to distinguish individual faces, a skill thought to be limited to mammals and birds. Scientists have found that the tiny striped Masked Julie (pictured) can distinguish a friend from a foe by detecting unfamiliar patterns around the eyes. Eight adult male Masked Julie fish were placed them in a tank by researchers at Osaka City University.

Machine learning is fuelling the current artificial intelligence boom and, to allow computer systems to process the vast amounts of data required, a new breed of computer chips is being created. UK chip designer ARM has revealed its latest line of CPUs and GPUs specifically designed for these AI devices. Called Cortex-A75, Cortex-A55, and Mali-G72, the processors use the firm's DynamIQ technology. It's claimed the A75 allows for a "massive single-thread compute uplift," Nandan Nayampally, the firm's vice president and general manager for compute products said, while the A55 is designed for a greater processing efficiency, and the G72 GPU was created for VR, gaming, and machine learning processes. DynamIQ technology is claimed to create "energy-efficient CPUs" and increases what the processors are capable of.

Jobs are disappearing, incomes retreating, the precariat growing. Thousands of people risk their lives in stormy seas to flee wars, moribund economies and climate change on a daily basis. Traditional politicians continue to avoid publicly addressing the tsunami of unemployment, apparently baffled as to how to react to a historic transition: the automation of critical masses of labour once performed by humans. Five acronyms - AI, AR, VR, BC and UBI - promise to shape the developed world's future and solve the problems of the present. In the process, however, these innovations risk transforming the world around us, and upsetting humanity's very definition of itself.

Sweden's answer to the F-35 has taken its maiden flight, maker Saab has revealed. During the 40-minute flight over the eastern parts of Östergötland, the latest Gripen executed a series of maneuvers to test its systems, including extending and retracting its landing gear. The Gripen E'Smart Fighter' is aimed at markets not yet cleared to buy the troubled Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The latest version of the Gripen fighter jet has been unveiled by Swedish aircraft maker, Saab. The Gripen E 39-8 prototype has a 15.2 metre (50ft) long body and a wingspan of 8.6 metres (28ft).

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. I suppose you could decide that this project from MIT's Tangible Media Group isn't really a robot, but I think it's arguably robotic enough (and definitely cool enough) that we can let it slide for this week: We present AnimaStage: a hands-on animated craft platform based on an actuated stage. Utilizing a pin-based shape display, users can animate their crafts made from various materials.