Last week, Microsoft took the unusual step of placing its Cortana and Bing product teams inside the same organization as Microsoft Research. The new Microsoft AI and Research Group will be led by computer vision pioneer and executive vice president Harry Shum, whose 20-year Microsoft career involves leading Bing's search efforts from 2007 through 2013 and helping launch Microsoft Research China. We asked Shum how this new organization will benefit Microsoft's digital assistant in the following interview, which has been edited for length and clarity. The language of the blog post announcing the formation of Microsoft's new AI division, together with how Satya Nadella has characterized it, suggests that Microsoft thinks it's in a space race of sorts when it comes to artificial intelligence. I just feel that the timing's right to go big on AI.

The startup-within-a-big-company is a narrative that's becoming increasingly popular, but Sohel I S, CEO of the property portal HDFC RED, feels that six years on, the mindset genuinely applies to his organisation, where the average age of the team is still 28. "We're able to make decisions quickly and don't have to go through so much hierarchy and we've had to be very fiscally responsible," Sohel tells Gadgets 360. This also helped the company have a relatively narrow focus from the beginning, something he says helped a lot. While many of the best known companies in the property space in India got their start in the rental market, HDFC RED stayed out of that segment, focused instead on the buying and selling of private homes from the beginning. Last year, Housing.com announced layoffs and shut down its rentals; visit most of the other popular sites and the first option you now see is "Buy".

Meet Promobot IR77, an artificial intelligence (AI) designed to have face-to-face interactions with humans. It looks cute, but this Russian-made robot had recently been "arrested," after making rounds in a political rally, recording voters' opinions about a candidate's team. It sounds fairly harmless, but Promobot seemed to have made enough trouble to make the local authorities ask policemen to apprehend and detain the robot. "Police asked to remove the robot away from the crowded area, and even tried to handcuff him," the Promobot spokesperson said. This isn't the first time that Promobot got itself in a fair amount of mischief--it's run away from its home laboratory before, twice. The mad run for freedom ended with a battery-drained robot blocking thickening traffic in the street; the programmers were left scratching their heads.

SAN FRANCISCO: Major technology firms are racing to infuse smartphones and other internet-linked devices with software smarts that help them think like people. The effort is seen as an evolution in computing that allows users to interact with machines in natural conversation style, telling devices to tend to tasks such as ordering goods, checking traffic, making restaurant reservations or searching for information. The artificial intelligence (AI) component in these programmes aims to make create a world in which everyone can have a virtual aide that gets to know them better with each interaction. Google is making a high-profile push into AI, with the internet titan's chief referring to it as a force for change as powerful as powerful as smartphones. Google Assistant software is being built into new Pixel handsets - aiming to outdo Apple's Siri - enabling users to organise and use information on the devices and in the cloud - to check emails, stay up to date on calendar appointments, news or ask for traffic and weather data.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. "Current and previous single-legged hopping robots are energetically tethered and lack portability. Here, we present the design and control of an untethered, energetically autonomous single-legged hopping robot. The thrust-producing mechanism of the robot's leg is an actuated prismatic joint, called a linear elastic actuator in parallel (LEAP). The LEAP mechanism comprises a voice coil actuator in parallel with two compression springs, which gives our robot passive compliance. An actuated gimbal hip joint is realized by two standard servomotors. To control the robot, we adapt Raibert's hopping controller, and find we can maintain balance roughly in-place for up to approx. If you have a robot that runs ROS and makes maps, you've likely been using GMapping, which gives you very GMapping-y results. Google has just released its own open source ROS-based real-time 2D/3D SLAM library called Cartographer, and it already has support for PR2, TurtleBot, Revo LDS (aka Neato's lidar), and even TRI's HSR: POW! For more details, read this 2016 ICRA paper. "Toyota Motor Corporation plans to launch sales of its compact and cuddlesome'Kirobo Mini' communication partner through Toyota vehicle dealers across Japan in 2017.

When it comes to stitching together complex garments, dexterous human hands are still far superior to rigid robot arms. Much of the garment production process is already automated, from picking cotton to spinning yarn to cutting clothes. Some specialist machines can even sew buttons or pockets. However, no commercial robot had been able to piece together all the different materials to create an entire item of clothing, like a pair of jeans or a t-shirt. But last month, Jonathan Zornow, founder and sole employee of Seattle-based startup Sewbo, claimed a breakthrough: He says he overcame a common hurdle to clothing automation--the challenge of working with weak, flexible fabrics--and successfully used an industrial robot to sew together a t-shirt.

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occurs involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.[2] Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep--when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.[3] The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[3] People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[5] Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[6] In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware.[7]

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occurs involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.[2] Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep--when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.[3] The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[3] People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[5] Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[6] In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware.[7]

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occurs involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.[2] Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep--when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.[3] The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[3] People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[5] Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[6] In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware.[7]

Self-driving cars might fill the roads a lot sooner if carmakers can put aside their rivalries and share the data that would teach computers how to drive safely. MobileEye, an Israeli company that supplies advanced computer hardware and software to many carmakers to enable cars to spot objects on the road, is now developing ways to train cars to drive themselves. The effort involves feeding computers huge quantities of driving behavior into a vast, highly realistic simulation, so that they can learn how to drive for themselves. And MobileEye aims to have different customers contribute the data that their vehicles collect. "If you want to leverage many, many cars, you need to leverage as many carmakers as possible," says Amnon Shashua, cofounder and CTO of MobileEye.