Ford Motor Company is buying San Francisco-based commuter shuttle company Chariot, and partnering with Motivate to grow the number of bikes in the Bay Area. SAN FRANCISCO – Ford Motor Company is buying into the commuter shuttle business, part of an on-going pivot designed to preserve profitability in a world with reduced car ownership. Flanked by the mayors of three Bay Area cities, Ford CEO Mark Fields announced Friday that the Detroit automaker was acquiring startup Chariot for an undisclosed sum. Riders summon Chariot's Ford Transit vans via an app, which helps drivers prioritize busy routes and avoid less traveled ones. The so-called dynamic shuttle service aims to be more efficient than public transportation and less expensive than ride-hailing.

Google's first Chromebook was the kind of laptop you'd design if you didn't give a damn about laptop design. It was thick, heavy, rubbery, boring, and black. Everything about the Cr-48 was designed to communicate that this device was still an experiment. Even the name, a reference to an unstable isotope of the element Chromium, was a hint at the chaos raging inside this black box. "The hardware exists," Sundar Pichai told a crowd of reporters at the Cr-48's launch event in December of 2010, "only to test the software."

AI-enabled messaging programs that respond to text-based requests -- are the latest innovation that startups and corporations are using to serve existing customers and bring in new ones. Companies across a wide variety of industries are building these tools on popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Kik, and Hipchat, as well as on their own websites and apps. Some are even available by text, to help users do things like fight parking tickets, respond to customer service inquiries, and order tacos. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you see we're missing a chatbot that's currently up and running, please share the link with us in the comments section. We'll add new, significant chatbots to the list over time.

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. I don't know why this video of the Yellow Drum Machine popped up in my YouTube feed again, but hey, it's one of my favorite robots of all time: This video was recorded during a lucky run, usually the robot is not able to maintain balance for this long. The shaking is caused by poor state estimation (we only use onboard sensors). I'd love to see IHMC re-run the DRC Finals tasks at some point, just to illustrate how much improvement has been made in Atlas' autonomy and not-falling-over-ness.

Today on In Case You Missed It: Starship Technologies teams up with Mercedes-Benz to use the latter's Sprinter vans as "motherships" for the former's package delivery drones. China announced that it will buy the only existing Antonov An-225 airplane -- the largest and heaviest aircraft to ever fly -- and will finish construction on a second before using both to deliver construction equipment and aid in humanitarian relief efforts. Plus, listen to a hot new EDM track from Korean band Dancing Noodle, performed on honking rubber chickens. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

On the day that marked half a century since the first "Star Trek" episode aired on TV, a NASA space probe boldly took off toward an asteroid called Bennu on Thursday, to dig up and bring back some cosmic dust that could hold clues to the birth of our solar system. It's another example of NASA "turning science fiction into science fact," said NASA's chief scientist Ellen Stofan from the launch location in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where thousands had gathered for the sendoff. A robotic hunter that resembles a bird with solar-panel wings outstretched, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was launched into space before sunset atop an Atlas V rocket on Thursday. The SUV-sized robot is expected to travel for two years to reach its destination: a huge rock that's orbiting the sun at a slightly wider orbit than Earth. Bennu is about a third of a mile wide and taller than the Empire State Building.

The Fifa 17 demo is about to be released, letting lucky players get their first chance to play the game – but just for a few days. The early look at the game will reportedly arrive for download on Tuesday, and probably be available for just a few days. After that, fans will have no way of getting a go at the game until 29 September, when the full game comes out. Some reports had initially suggested that the demo was due to be released today. But it hasn't yet hit the online stores.

Michael Hsieh is the president of Fung Capital USA. Sometimes one must look to the past to define the future. Once upon a time the milkman delivered milk directly to your home. The Avon and Tupperware ladies had private parties in the comfort of a neighbor's house. The Hoover salesperson demonstrated the vacuum cleaner on your living room carpet.

Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson has had a career as varied as it has been successful. A former professor of physics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, he has worked on the unification of the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Richard Feynman, nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, biology, and the application of useful and elegant math problems. One of his ideas, the Dyson Sphere, was featured in a "Star Trek" episode. Today, Dyson frequently writes about science and technology's relationship to ethics and social issues. Business Insider sat down with him and talked about math, war, the human brain, the education system, and the Orion Project. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Elena Holodny: Who has most inspired you in either math or science? Dick Feynman ... he has now become famous, to my great joy, because when I knew him he was completely unknown. But I recognized him as being something special. He was only for a short time at Cornell when I was a student and he was a young professor. So I didn't work with him, but I just sat at his feet, literally, and listened to him talk. He was a clown, of course, and also a genius. It was a good combination.

Robots and drones have already started to quietly transform many aspects of agriculture. And now a new report is predicting the agricultural robotics industry, now serving a 3 billion market, will grow to 10 billion by 2022. The report, by IDTechEx Research in Britain, is called Agricultural Robots and Drones 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, and Players. It analyses how robotic market and technology developments will change agriculture, enabling ultra-precision farming and helping address key global challenges. It describes how robotic technology will enter into different aspects of agriculture, how it will change the way farming is done and transform its value chain, how it becomes the future of agrochemicals business and modifies the way we design agricultural machinery.