The Pacific Rim International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) was initiated in Japan in 1990, to create an artificial intelligence (AI) conference which would promote collaborative exploitation of AI in the Pacific Rim nations. The conference has grown, both in participation and scope, and now includes participation from all major Pacific Rim nations.

The great bulk of the economic commentary you read in the papers is focused on the short run: the effects of the "fiscal cliff" on U.S. recovery, the stresses on the euro, Japan's latest attempt to break out of deflation. This focus is understandable, since one global depression can ruin your whole day. But our current travails will eventually end. What do we know about the prospects for long-run prosperity? The long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades.

Though the earthquake that struck Japan's eastern coast earlier today has left the country with massive destruction and hundreds of deaths, modern technology (and Japan's impressive level of readiness) are helping the country track survivors and dampen the damage as much as possible. In the future, our ability to cope with natural disasters will only increase, due in large part to the particular talent earthquake-vulnerable areas--especially Japan (and to a lesser extent, California)--have for robotics. Predicting earthquakes is still a remarkably fruitless effort--seismologists are not reliably able to predict even a particular month in which an earthquake will occur, let alone a day. So the work done to mitigate the damage done by earthquakes is often in post-quake search-and-rescue tactics. Interestingly, two of the most earthquake-prone places in the world are also two of the world's hotbeds of robotics engineering.

When the Navy's X-47B drone screamed skyward off the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in May, those of us standing on the flight deck knew we were witnessing history: a robot flying itself--no pilot in the cockpit or on the ground, guiding the aircraft with a joystick. It was the first time an autonomous war plane had completed a catapult launch from a carrier deck. And it was just the latest milestone for the X-47B. Here are some of the others: It's the first tailless, "batwing"-style airframe (it's technically known as a "cranked kite" design) to takeoff and land on a carrier. It's the first jet-powered drone to operate from a carrier as well as the first unmanned combat fighter jet analog to come this far in its development.

The strangely named Dalu Rebot Restaurant, in the northeastern Chinese city of Jinan, is a 100-seat hotpot restaurant with a very peculiar staffing choice: It features two robot receptionists and six robot waiters who wheel around drinks and food on large indoor pedal-driven carts. The restaurant, which opened earlier this week, has a circular seating design with a track placed around the perimeter of the seating area. Even though the robot waiters have a built-in security system so they don't run over people standing in front of them, the track seems like a smart way to avoid marauding cycle-bots crashing into steaming-hot hotpots while trying to deliver drinks. Hotpot, too, is probably a smart move, since there's not a whole lot for a waiter to do besides bring drinks and accoutrements. The Shandong Dalu Science and Technology Company is behind the robotic waiter initiative, ultimately hoping to have a staff of 40 robots.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are using frog eggs to enhance what might seem like an unlikely element of robotics: olfactory sensing. By injecting the eggs with the DNA from various insects known for expressing keen senses of smell, the team was able to create a robotic nose that can detect molecules at levels as low as a few parts per billion. Eggs from the African Clawed Frog have been used in research before to express olfactory receptors, but they had not been integrated into an electronic sniffing system like this. By injecting the eggs with DNA from fruit flies, silk moths, and diamond back moths, the bioengineers were able to coax the immature eggs into producing the olfactory sensors of those insects, which are known for their ability to detect specific gases and pheromones. The eggs were then fitted between two electrodes, creating a sensor system that measured the current generated when certain molecules came in contact with the detector.

Japanese researchers, never at a loss for concepts mashing up domestic and medical care with the best in robotics, has developed a robotic wheelchair that automatically follows a human companion. Born of Saitama University's Human-Robot Interaction Center, the wheelchair employs a distance sensor that tracks the position of a companion person, keeping the wheelchair always at the person's left. It also tracks the position of the companion's shoulders, anticipating where that person is moving next. Even if the companion stand in place and simply rotates, the chair will circle around to remain abreast of the companion. Unless, that is, the corridor narrows or other foot traffic is approaching or there is an obstacle or a narrow corridor.

Manufacturers often bring celebrities from motor sports to auto shows to glam up the booth and offer photo ops. Yamaha brought a racer to the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show this fall, one who had the audacity to challenge one of the winningest motorcycle racers in the world, Valentino Rossi. "I was created to surpass you," said this cheeky racer in a video. The thing is, the racer is a blue plastic humanoid robot with actuators instead of muscles and tendons. Yamaha engineers want to first get Motobot, as they call the rider, to hit 100 km/h (62 mph) in a straight line on a regular motorcycle--throttle, clutch, and all.

Two rhinos at the Kuzikus Nature Reserve in Namibia, photographed by drone. When the U.S. military needed to identify mines in a dangerous valley in Afghanistan, aerial-imagery specialist Tudor Thomas helped build a plane-based system to map it. Back in 2013, similar systems cost the military and its contractors one to five million dollars, Thomas says--and that didn't even include the cost of the plane. "It's hard to comprehend how much was getting spent just to make a simple aerial image," he says. The experience sparked an idea for a business: mapping by drone.

The Mercedes-Benz Vision Tokyo's electric hybrid system can drive 118 miles on batteries and more than 490 miles on electricity produced by its fuel cells. The impending arrival of autonomous vehicles has a lot of engineers wondering: What will the interior of a smart car look like without the steering wheel, pedals, and gauges? And what will we do with ourselves if we're not driving? Mercedes-Benz has a feeling we'll hang out like we're on a futuristic party bus. The company's Vision Tokyo concept car, unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show, is aimed at drivers who love their digital toys.