In 2011, the National Institute of Informatics initiated a project that would enable a robot with artificial intelligence to gain entry at the University of Tokyo. Like most students, in order to study in the school, all applicants must go through the mandatory entrance exam. University of Tokyo, or Todai, wanted to create an artificial intelligence program that is smart enough to do it. They hoped to have this goal fulfilled in March 2022. However, the team decided that it is abandoning that program when its latest AI robot failed to gain admission at Todai.

Populism is sweeping the nation, but it's likely just getting started. Donald Trump's win is a wake-up call that voters are angry with a system that's made middle-class jobs tougher to come by, and increased inequality. As pronounced as the trend already is, it's only just the beginning, experts say. Looming technological advances will wipe out more jobs, broadening the base of disenfranchised, unemployable and frustrated citizens. Meanwhile, elites with the skills to flourish in the digital economy will get richer.

Deaf-mute communities around the world experience a need in effective human-robot interaction system that would act as an interpreter in public places such as banks, hospitals, or police stations. The focus of this work is to address the challenges presented to hearing-impaired people by developing an interpreting robotic system required for effective communication in public places. To this end, we utilize a previously developed neural network-based learning architecture to recognize Cyrillic manual alphabet, which is used for finger spelling in Kazakhstan. In order to train and test the performance of the recognition system, we collected a depth data set of ten people and applied it to a learning-based method for gesture recognition by modeling motion data. We report our results that show an average accuracy of 77.2% for a complete alphabet recognition consisting of 33 letters.

As Hyperloop One continues its attempt at building the future of public transportation, it's moving on without the baggage of a messy lawsuit. The company announced today that it has reached a settlement with former employees, including co-founder and former CTO Brogan BamBrogan. No terms were disclosed, however, the lawsuit contained allegations of financial mismanagement, harassment and threats, which Hyperloop One had responded to with a $250 million suit of its own, claiming the exec had tried to lead a coup within the company. In a memo to current employees, CEO Rob Lloyd looked forward, citing the company's opening of a fabrication facility, acquiring $50 million in financing and new partnerships. Now the company can focus on more standard issues, like delivering on its vision of self-driving vehicles that turn into high-speed train cars.

It's been more than a decade since Jurassic Park hit theaters, but fans of the film have not yet given up hope that such a park could one day exist. Now, a Japanese firm is one step closer to making this a reality with an animatronic dinosaur park called Dino-A-Live where visitors see realistic replicas first hand. The theme park would contain full-sized dinosaur robots, and the firm set some of them lose in a Tokyo hotel to announce the park - to the horror of those in attendance. A Japanese firm announced an animatronic dinosaur park called Dino-A-Live where visitors see realistic replicas first hand. This fictitious Jurassic Park is the brainchild of Kazuya Kanemaru, who is the CEO of ON-ART Corp. Kanemaru and his team unveiled fully-painted man-operated robotic models of raptors, an allosaurus and a tyrannosaurus rex, in a performance at a hotel hall in Tokyo.

Onalytica analyzed tweets over the last 6 months mentioning the keywords M2M OR "Machine to Machine." They then identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter. Machine to Machine (M2M) refers to direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless. The M2M market is undergoing a fast transformation as enterprises are increasingly realizing the value of connecting geographically dispersed people, devices, sensors and machines to corporate networks. It is for precisely this reason that the Global M2M market is expected to grow to 27 billion devices, generating $1.6 trillion in revenue in 2024.

Last June, BMW and Baidu announced they would work together on self-driving car technology. Reuters reports that the automaker and Chinese tech company are now ending the joint research project. Baidu had been using BMW 3 sedans to perform on-road tests in China and had plans to so the same in the US. The announcement leaves Baidu searching for a global partner to help meet its lofty goal of making self-driving cars a reality for consumers by 2018. The tech company explained to Reuters that it's using Ford vehicles for testing now.

Passengers making their way through airport customs could soon be greeted by a fleet of pint-sized robots. Looking more robo-penguin than Robocop, the Chinese-built Sanbot is being trialled in a number of industries, but will be used at airports to process travellers. Designed and built by Shenzhen-based Qihan, Sanbot is designed to interact with people in a range of environments. It can answer programmed questions in 28 languages, and transfer people to a human operator. In place of arms, the robot has a pair of flippers and moves around on a set of wheels. Sanbot uses a Microsoft Kinect-style tracking system and HD camera.

On a Friday morning nine (!) years ago, I published a post with just one video and one line of text on BotJunkie.com, That was the beginning of Video Friday. As more and more robot video content started showing up over the years, Video Friday turned into a way to keep you updated on everything that happened all week in one efficient (and hopefully entertaining) post. At one point Video Friday grew to include something like 30 videos (if we've crashed your browser, we're very sorry!). We've now toned it down to around 20 videos by being slightly more selective.

Britain may be about to spend just over £800 million ($1 billion) on 26 Predator drones. The deadly drone, with a 79 feet (24 metres) wingspan, can fly for 40 hours at a time, carrying two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or other munitions. If the deal goes through, 26 Predator unmanned aircraft will be built as early as 2018. Britain is looking to spend £803.92 million (1 billion US dollars) on American Predator drones (pictured), equipment and training. The Predator was first conceived in the early 1990s as an aerial reconnaissance vehicle, and carries cameras and other sensors.