A town in the Netherlands is trialling special pavement lights designed to help smartphone users cross the road safely. The LED strips have been embedded into the ground at a pedestrian crossing in Bodegraven, close to three schools. The hope is that they'll catch the eye of pedestrians who are too distracted by their smartphones to bother looking at the road, telling them when to cross and when not to cross by either glowing green or red, depending on the traffic light signals. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Baidu is furthering its push into artificial intelligence after it announced the acquisition of Raven Tech, a Chinese startup that developed an AI voice assistant platform. Baidu confirmed it has bought the startup's tech, product and staff of 60. The deal comes a month after Baidu hired noted AI expert Qi Lu, formerly with Microsoft, as its COO and Group President. Baidu didn't reveal how much it is paying for Raven Tech, which is an alumnus of the Microsoft Venture Accelerator and Y Combinator and has raised $18 million from investors like DCM Ventures and Zhenfund. Raven Tech's Flow product was likened to a Chinese version of Siri, but it has failed to take off.

IN A recent blog post, Gulliver expressed his exasperation at having to interact with other humans when he stayed at hotels. After all, in the age of mobile check-in and automated bartenders, it must be possible to swerve most of these pointless encounters (and avoid having to hand over tips for the most mundane services, such as pouring a beer or being shown to your room). One solution that didn't occur to him was robot butlers. The M Social Singapore hotel is introducing a droid that can deliver room service to guests. It navigates using 3D cameras and can negotiate lifts and manoeuvre around people wandering down the corridors.

Today on In Case You Missed It: Why get stuck in traffic when you can simply fly over it? The UAE's largest city announced its intent to unleash swarms of EHang 184 "Personal Flying Vehicles" -- the same ones that wowed crowds at last year's CES show -- to ferry citizens around town starting as early as this July. We also take a look at Microsoft's new open-source UAV simulator, the Aerial Informatics and Robotics Platform. With it, drone designers will be able to program and test their flying creations for autonomous operation without having to worry about their precious prototypes crashing and burning. Or getting attacked by wildlife.

Eric Schmidt on Wednesday shared some of his top concerns regarding the future of the internet -- namely, preserving its interconnectedness and ensuring that artificial intelligence isn't used to militarize it. "Machine learning capabilities... need to be done in the open and not in military research labs," the Alphabet executive chairman said on stage at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco. Had the internet developed within the confines of military research labs, "We'd spend all day worrying if they were in our networks, the internet would begin being shut down," he said. "One of the questions the industry should be asking is can we come up with a way where countries can agree not to use machine learning technologies in a way that militarizes the internet." He noted that at the end of the Obama administration, President Obama and President Xi of China inked a deal to bring down the number of cyberattacks against each other.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be understood as a science, engineering and deployment of machines, which perform tasks with intelligence as similar to humans. Since its inception 60 years ago, AI has observed significant growth in recent years. Initially, AI was considered as topic for academicians, though in recent years with development of various technologies, AI has turned into reality and is influencing many lives and businesses. Additionally, evolution of various other supplementary technologies such as cloud computing, machine learning and cognitive computing are collectively paving the growth of the market for AI. According to Mr. Sachin Garg - Associate Director at MarketsandMarkets who tracks the global semiconductor market, the global artificial intelligence chipset market is expected to be worth USD 16.06 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 62.9% between 2016 and 2022.

On Monday at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Elon Musk suggested that humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age. Musk said, "Over time, I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. In an age when AI threatens to become widespread, humans would be useless, so there's a need to merge with machines," according to Musk. He described his concern of "deep AI" which reaches far beyond driverless cars in what he called "artificial general intelligence". This is when AI becomes "smarter than the smartest human on earth" and he called it a "dangerous situation".

A new report from the UN's International Labour Organization (ILO) has found that working remotely can lead to insomnia and increased stress levels. The study, titled Working anytime, anywhere: The effects on the world of work, analysed the working habits of people from the UK, Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan and the US. It made distinctions between three groups of workers: those who work from home regularly, 'highly mobile' employees who work in various locations away from the office and those who split their time between the office and home. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Apple has announced when it will hold its Worldwide Developers Conference, the annual meeting where it reveals the future of its products. The major event will be begin on 5 June and run for four days, the company said. The first day is when Apple traditionally holds its major keynote, introducing the future of its software – with the rest of the days taken up with sessions for developers to learn how to use it. The company is almost certain to reveal iOS 11 and a new version of Mac OS, as well as new software for its other hardware like the Apple Watch and TV. Apple has sometimes used the event to show off new products and services, too.

A renewed attempt to survey reactor 2 at the damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant failed Thursday when the latest robot probe became obstructed. The robot was inserted into the primary containment vessel at around 7:50 a.m. to approach the metal grating directly underneath the pressure vessel, where a black mass has been found. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. had hoped to take a closer look at what could be melted nuclear fuel, but it was forced to abandon the operation shortly after 3 p.m. The robot didn't reach its objective, Tepco said, and the utility eventually severed its controller cable. Having detected an extraordinarily high radiation level --estimated at 650 sieverts per hour -- in a preparatory survey, Tepco had hoped to obtain more precise readings, images and data needed to remove fuel and other debris to decommission the plant.