Category D's legged robots provided some of the most interesting Overcoming Obstacle 2016 entries. The three finalists included two "Da Gou" quadruped robots from Shandong University and NORINCO, and the Iron Horse, a'crab walker' from Beijing Jiaotong University, which had pivot-jointed Klann linkage legs to provide greater stability and simplicity. It bears some resemblance to Chinese research on a many-legged, auto-cannon-armed design disclosed in 2014.

The threats to the streaming TV company might not be Amazon or other streaming services, but instead "pharmacological" ways of entertaining people, Reed Hastings has said. And just as films and TV shows are a supposedly improved version of other entertainments, those same things might eventually become defunct, he said. In the same way that the cinema and TV screen made "the opera and the novel" much smaller, something else might be on the way to do the same thing, the Netflix boss said at a Wall Street Journal event. Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight. Aurora Flight Sciences' technicians work on an Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automantion System (ALIAS) device in the firm's Centaur aircraft at Manassas Airport in Manassas, Va.

Microsoft has staked its future on a new version of Paint, everyone's favourite drawing application. The company has released an entirely redesigned of the app, named Paint 3D. And as the name suggests, it is built around three dimensional worlds – allowing people to draw things that take up virtual space. It works by letting take a picture of an object and then having their device construct that as a 3D image, for instance. Or it will let people doodle in 2D and then have that automatically changed into a 3D image.

The nascent additive construction industry is slowly starting to take shape as an increasing number of start-ups appear on the scene with techniques for 3D printing large-scale structures. The latest is a London-based company called Ai Build, which aims to make additive construction smarter and more accessible through the use of artificial intelligence and affordable materials. As with many additive construction endeavors, Ai Build's entry into the field begins with a 3D-printed pavilion. As an ornamental building, a pavilion is the perfect large, yet nonfunctional structure for demonstrating the possibilities of 3D-printed architecture, as there is no need to meet critical requirements for a building that might be used by people, as with an office or a home. Unveiled at the GPU Technology Conference in Amsterdam at the end of September, the Daedalus Pavilion is a structure made from 48 different pieces 3Dprinted from Formfutura PLA filament over the course of three weeks.

Apple has posted its first decline in annual revenue and profit since 2001, as the company looks for a way to offset falling sales of its flaghship iPhone. The tech giant has never posted a decline in annual revenues since the release of the iPod - until this week, when Apple revealed an 8 per cent drop in sales to $215 billion (£176 million) for 2016. The decline in sales dragged the company's profits down by 14 per cent to $45.7billion. The drop in sales was mostly down to declining sales of the iPhone, which accounts for two-thirds of Apple sales. Apple sold 45.5 million iPhones in the quarter, which while better than expected, compares to 48 million sold this time last year.

Widespread adoption of cognitive systems and artificial intelligence across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8.0 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. According to the Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide from IDC, the market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate of 55.1% over the 2016-2020 forecast period. "Software developers and end user organisations have already begun the process of embedding and deploying cognitive/artificial intelligence into almost every kind of enterprise application or process," said David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics at IDC. "Recent announcements by several large technology vendors and the booming venture capital market for AI startups illustrate the need for "Recent announcements by several large technology vendors and the booming venture capital market for AI startups illustrate the need for organisations to be planning and undertaking strategies that incorporate these wide-ranging technologies. Identifying, understanding, and acting on the use cases, technologies, and growth opportunities for cognitive/AI systems will be a differentiating factor for most enterprises and the digital disruption caused by these technologies will be significant." The ability to recognise and respond to data flows using algorithms and rule-based logic enables cognitive/AI systems to automate a broad range of functions across many industries. The use cases that are attracting the most investment in 2016 are automated customer service agents, quality management investigation and recommendation systems, diagnosis and treatment systems, and fraud analysis and investigation. The use cases that will experience the fastest revenue growth over the next five years are public safety and emergency response, pharmaceutical research and discovery, diagnosis and treatment systems, supply and logistics, quality management investigation and recommendation systems, and fleet management. The use cases that are attracting the most investment in 2016 are automated customer service agents, quality management investigation and recommendation systems, diagnosis and treatment systems, and fraud analysis and investigation. The use cases that will experience the fastest revenue growth over the next five years are public safety and emergency response, pharmaceutical research and discovery, diagnosis and treatment systems, supply and logistics, quality management investigation and recommendation systems, and fleet management. "Near-term opportunities for cognitive systems are in industries such as banking, securities and investments, and manufacturing," said Jessica Goepfert, program director, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC. "In these segments, we find a wealth of unstructured data, a desire to harness insights from this information, and an openness to innovative technologies.

Apple has accidentally revealed what appear to be the headline features of its brand new MacBook Pro. The company is holding an event this week where the new computer is expected to be revealed, potentially alongside some other new Mac products. But it might have accidentally shown its hand too early, accidentally unveiling the new computer in hidden screenshots in the new version of macOS. Buried within the files of the updated operating system are a set of photos that appear to be intended to serve as part of the guide of using the computer. Scavengers have already found their way into those resource files and found information about the new computer. Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.

In an effort to a facilitate faster, more efficient flow of information between doctors and patients, Chinese search engine Baidu is introducing Melody, an AI-powered conversational bot. Melody gathers information, responds to patients about medical conditions and gives feedback to the real-life doctors. The service is available immediately in China. Melody builds on the Baidu Doctor app, which launched in China in 2015. Essentially, she is the chatbot equivalent of the app coming to life – patients can open the app and ask a question, and Melody will respond with context-relevant questions to clarify information such as symptom frequency or duration.

The era of big data has witnessed a paradigm shift into analytics. Today, it's no longer sufficient to simply gather data from social media, IoT, and wearable devices, and be unable to manage or filter it. It is more about delivering the right data to the right person, at the right time. This trend is growing crucial as data is multiplying every day and pouring in from various devices and smart machines including wearables, electronic gadgets, and other devices. Such factors call for the treatment of vast pools of structured and unstructured data with care and precision. This is precisely where invisible analytics come in.

Microsoft just released the open-source licensed beta release of the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit on Github. This announcement represents a shift in Microsoft's customer focus from research to implementation. It is an update to the Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK). The toolkit is a supervised machine learning system in the same category of other open-source projects such as Tensorflow, Caffe and Torch. Microsoft is one of the leading investors in and contributors to the open machine learning software and research community.