The Calgary Police Service became the first force in Canada to start using facial recognition software to match suspects against a mug shot database this week, but it likely won't be the last. The use of facial recognition technology is growing not just in law enforcement and security fields but also in commerce. "One of the reasons face [recognition] is so popular is that face images exist of almost everybody," said Kevin Bowyer, an expert on biometrics and computer vision and chair of the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Some cellphone apps use face recognition instead of passwords to give users access to devices. "You've got your driver's licence photos, you've got your identity badges wherever you work, so you've got this legacy of images that are easily accessible for everyone."

A cooing, gesturing humanoid on wheels that can decipher emotions has been unveiled in Japan by billionaire Masayoshi Son who says robots should be tender and make people smile. Son's mobile phone company Softbank said Thursday that the robot it has dubbed Pepper will go on sale in Japan in February for 198,000 yen ($2,100). Overseas sales plans are under consideration but undecided. The machine, which has no legs, but has gently gesticulating hands appeared on a stage in a Tokyo suburb, cooing and humming. It dramatically touched hands with Son in a Genesis or "E.T." moment.

Apple just bought itself a 3D sensor company, a move that has some intriguing possibilities. This past weekend, Apple confirmed its acquisition of PrimeSense, an Israel-based company best known for its work on the original Microsoft Kinect, a gaming accessory that lets you control on-screen action by moving your body. "I think it's very big news," says David Fleet, a computer science professor at the University of Toronto. Fleet studies machine vision systems and cites the success of the Kinect as a "big win," adding "I think many more applications are on the horizon." PrimeSense's 3D sensing system uses an infrared emitter to shoot out beams of invisible infrared light.

Between the global economic downturn and stubborn unemployment, the last few years have not been kind to the workforce. At just five feet tall and 86 pounds, the HRP-4 may be the office grunt of tomorrow. The humanoid robot, developed by Tokyo-based Kawada Industries and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology, is programmed to deliver mail, pour coffee, and recognize its co-workers' faces. On Jan. 28, Kawada will begin selling it to research institutions and universities around the world for about $350,000. While that price may seem steep, consider that the HRP-4 doesn't goof around on Facebook, spend hours tweaking its fantasy football roster, or require a lunch break. Noriyuki Kanehira, the robotic systems manager at Kawada, believes the HRP-4 could easily take on a "secretarial role...in the near future."

It organizes an annual conference, the first of which was held in 1996 in Hong Kong. Since then, 20 conferences have been held in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The next conference, in 2015, will be held in Kyungpook National UniversityDaegu, Korea. The conferences provide an opportunity for teachers, students, researchers, and practitioners to meet each other and learn about the latest research in the field. The proceedings of the conferences are available both on line and in research libraries around the world.

Big defense budgets during the aughts financed the deployment of thousands of robots, including unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon's fascination with robots hasn't slackened even in these more austere times. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is funding Boston Dynamics' development of a prototype robot called the Cheetah. On March 5, the company announced that the cat-like bot managed to gallop 18 mph on a treadmill, setting a new land speed record for legged robots. Boston Dynamics, a 1992 spinoff from MIT that's headed by Marc Raibert, has also developed a quadrupedal pack robot called the Legged Squad Support System (LS3).

Stan Abrams is a Beijing-based IP/IT lawyer and law professor. Whether you're interested in Chinese or the effects of technology, this is a fun topic: Students from South-Central University for Nationalities in Wuhan, Hubei Province, recently conducted a survey of college students' abilities to write Chinese characters by hand. Of the 143 college students who participated, only 12 could write all 10 characters in the test correctly. I should point out that the test involved characters that are commonly written incorrectly, so the results may make the problem appear somewhat larger than it really is. Of course, there is a problem, and not a new one; moreover, it may be getting worse.

"Tell me, what would you do if you had 1,000 times more data?" I still remember reading this profound question on December 24, 2007 in BusinessWeek's cover article on Google and cloud computing like it was yesterday. It was an interview question, posed by then senior Google engineer Christophe Bisciglia (later founder of red-hot cloud software company, Cloudera and more recently WibiData) to job applicants. For the first time, I began to think through the practical implications of what the advent of the information explosion (now commonly referred to as "Big Data") really meant to both individuals and corporations. How would this onslaught of information effect decision-making across a range of industries, what were the practical implications to businesses and executives, and what were the resulting investment opportunities?

Sargur N. Srihari, director of the University at Buffalo's Center of Excellence in Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR) and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, has won the 2011 International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) Outstanding Achievements award. He is being honored with the award for his outstanding and continued contributions to research and education in handwriting recognition and document analysis, and for his service to the community. Srihari recently traveled to Beijing to accept the award and serve as a keynote speaker at the conference, held bi-annually by the International Association for Pattern Recognition. His speech, entitled "Probabilistic Graphical Models in Machine Learning," focused on the design of computer programs that learn and are able to modify their behavior in an environment of constantly changing information. Without machine learning, many computers that deal with rapidly changing data would require constant reprogramming.

Go is one of the world's great strategy board games and originated over 3,000 years ago in China. It is part of popular culture today in Japan, China and Korea, and known as Igo, Weiqi or Baduk respectively in these countries. Go is a game for two players with just a few simple rules that is fun for all ages. You start with an empty board and then place pieces alternately, vying to map out more territory. However, if you overstretch, your pieces can be captured and taken off the board.