Cabinet minister Hiroshige Seko said the government will host a World Robot Summit in 2020 with the aim of promoting competition in speed, accuracy and quality of robot performance in the manufacturing and service sectors. The international convention is expected to offer the robot industry an opportunity to accelerate research and development. "We would like to gather robots using cutting edge technology and ideas from across the world," Seko, head of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said Tuesday. Last year, the government drew up a strategy to utilize robot technology in fields such as nursing care, medical treatment and agriculture and fisheries in the face of the aging population and infrastructure issues. METI as started soliciting candidate municipalities to host the event.

Andre van Rüschen has no memory of the day he lost all feeling in his legs. After a car accident in Germany, he had a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. When he woke up from a coma in a hospital in Hamburg, the doctors told him he would never walk again. But now, thirteen years later, van Rüschen is back on his feet, and he is training to compete as a pilot in the Powered Exoskeleton race at the Cybathlon in Zurich this month. In a high-rise office building on Leipziger Platz in Berlin, he slides out of his wheelchair onto a black leather pouf where a ReWalk exoskeleton sits folded.

Instead of catching a ride into the upper atmosphere like SpaceShipTwo, its predecessor SpaceShipOne, or NASA's X-15 rocket place, China's space plane as intended will launch vertically from the ground, like the retired Space Shuttle and Buran, its Soviet clone. Two other spaceplanes, the Air Force's mysterious unmanned X-37B robot and the unmanned version of Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser both are designed to ride to space on the top of rockets, jettisoning the booster stages as they clear gravity. Unlike the Shuttle or the X037B, the smaller version of China's space plane will carry all its fuel internally, and the concept seems to lack booster rockets. The larger space plane will use a single booster add-on, carrying it farther into space. The most successful spaceplane currently flying is a military robot.

Remember that endangered anteater-esque ball of scales from Favreau's recent film, The Jungle Book? Over one million pangolins have likely been poached and illegally traded in the last decade, especially because of their importance in Chinese medicine and food. And the internet hasn't exactly helped its plight. As wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC reports, their researchers investigated 39 Chinese e-commerce websites over June and July 2016; a single survey in the first month alone detected 153 ads for pangolin scales and meat and live specimen from 94 traders across six sites. Virtual wildlife trafficking poses a serious threat to not just the pangolin.

A Japanese inventor is hoping a robot that still needs humans will win over Asia's largest tech fair, offering a counterpoint to major technology firms pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI). Katsumori Sakakibara was showing off his little droid called Caiba at the Cutting-Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC), which kicked off on Tuesday near Tokyo. Waist-high Caiba – whose name means hippocampus, a key area of the brain, in Japanese – is controlled by a human wearing a virtual reality handset and mechanical arms. If the person waves their arms, the little robot follows suit. But whatever Caiba does, it depends on a human to control it.

Japan s Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd s latest concept robots, the Murata Cheerleaders, demonstrate how they balance on balls and synchronise as a team by utilising sensing and communication technology, at CEATEC JAPAN 2016 at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. CHIBA, JAPAN: A Japanese inventor is hoping a robot that still needs humans will win over Asia's largest tech fair, offering a counterpoint to major technology firms pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI). Katsumori Sakakibara was showing off his little droid called Caiba at the Cutting-Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC), which kicked off Tuesday near Tokyo. Waist-high Caiba -- whose name means hippocampus, a key area of the brain, in Japanese -- is controlled by a human wearing a virtual reality handset and mechanical arms. If the person waves their arms, the little robot follows suit.

In its quest to maintain a United States military advantage, the Pentagon is aggressively turning to Silicon Valley's hottest technology -- artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter made his fourth trip to the tech industry's heartland since being named to his post last year. Before that, it had been 20 years since a defense secretary had visited the area, he noted in a speech at a Defense Department research facility near Google's headquarters. The Pentagon's intense interest in A.I. -- and by connection the Silicon Valley companies specializing in that technology -- has grown out of the "Third Offset" strategy articulated by Mr. Carter last fall. Concerned about the re-emergence of China and Russia as military competitors, he stated that computer-based, high-tech weapons would give the American military an edge in the future. Third Offset is a reference to two earlier eras when Pentagon planners turned to technology to compensate for a smaller military.

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A Japanese inventor is hoping a robot that still needs humans will win over Asia's largest tech fair, offering a counterpoint to major technology firms pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI). Katsumori Sakakibara was showing off his little droid called Caiba at the Cutting-Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC), which kicked off Tuesday near Tokyo. Waist-high Caiba--whose name means hippocampus, a key area of the brain, in Japanese--is controlled by a human wearing a virtual reality handset and mechanical arms. If the person waves their arms, the little robot follows suit. But whatever Caiba does, it depends on a human to control it.

Japan's biggest IT-electronics trade show is at a crossroads. The annual Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or CEATEC, kicked off Tuesday in the city of Chiba. Though it earned fame as a major exhibition of consumer electronics such as TVs and home appliances such as washing machines, it now seems to be leaving that image behind. The show's organizer is shifting the focus to the so-called internet of things and related technologies including artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, while also aiming to facilitate business tie-ups between companies in different fields to foster innovation. "When you think of value in our society now, there is not so much value in just releasing some new products," said Hisato Nagao, president of Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, one of the organizers of CEATEC, which runs through Friday.