There was a time when doctors made house calls. That time is coming again, except now your doctor will be able to make 100 at once, while performing surgery at the same time. Dr. Leslie Saxon's USC Center for Body Computing and USC's Virtual Care Clinic leverage commercial tech innovations to advance medical care and delivery. "First thing we have to do is take your picture," says Dr. Leslie Saxon, Founder and Director of USC's Center for Body Computing, as she enthusiastically greets me at the Playa Vista campus location of the recently opened Virtual Care Clinic. I'm here to learn about the still nascent yet rapidly expanding field of digital medicine, and Dr. Saxon wants to show me what the face of the medical future that she envisions will look like--it turns out, just like an actual face, in fact.

The major theme of the report is the ever-closing gap between virtual and physical reality. Gartner said technology will become more human-centric to the point it will "introduce transparency between people, businesses and things", as technology becomes adaptive, contextual and fluid in the workplace and home. It listed the connected home, gesture control, 4D printing, brain computer interfaces (BCI), and human augmentation among other technologies that will blur the lines between physical and virtual worlds. Augmented reality and virtual reality, which remain a part of this group, are in Gartner's'trough of disillusionment' and the'slope of enlightenment' – the twin phases after the'peak hype' has passed. Virtual reality remains a niche sector, despite Nokia expanding distribution and slashing prices for its professional virtual reality kit, and Intel proclaiming a new era of'merged reality'.

We've all got bills to pay, fiscal responsibilities to meet, retirements to save for -- and we need help. As tens of thousands of chatbots proliferate across Slack, Facebook, and other platforms, you hear naysayers claim that bots might be useful someday but that today they're little more than a gimmick. It's hard to feel that way after you learn about a handful of chatbots that have saved people more than 10 million. Next time you hear someone make that argument, point them to this list, because perhaps nothing is more useful than putting (or keeping) money in your pocket. After its first month, about 100,000 people have interacted with PennyCat, according to maker Leo Kangin.

Drones are already capable of capturing stunning aerial images and videos that wouldn't be possible with grounded cameras. But combining the abilities of these airborne vehicles with 360-degree cameras produces new perspectives that are even more immersive and breathtaking. SkyPixel recently held a competition to calling for artists to submit their most impressive 360-degree aerial images. It honored six standout candidates, which includes three main winners and three recipients of its "Brilliant" prize. Photographer Stanislav Sedov's panorama of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which is shown above, was named the third place winner.

The city of Helsinki, in Finland, is currently testing a pair of self-driving buses "in the wild," if you will -- that is, on active city streets. "This is actually a really big deal right now," the project's leader, Harri Santamala, told Finnish news outlet Uutiset. The tests are among the first in the world, according to Uutiset, because Finnish law doesn't mandate that a vehicle on the streets have a driver. The buses, which will be on the road till mid-September, could one day supplement existing public transit by shuttling riders to major lines. They're not exactly speed demons though.

Just this week, American fast food chain Taco Bell announced the TacoBot, which you can text via the Slack messaging app. You can use the bot to order food for yourself or a group of friends or co-workers, ask for recommendations and pay for it through Slack. As an executive said at the launch: "TacoBot is the next best thing to having your own Taco Bell butler…and who wouldn't want that?" You can order Domino's pizza through Amazon's AI assistant Echo (which hasn't made its way to the UK yet), and multinationals like Unilever and BMW use a simple Q&A bot that can answer any question a customer services employee would. The Henn-na hotel, which opened in Nagasaki, Japan last summer, is the world's first hotel to be fully staffed by robots – from check-in staff, to porters and the concierge.

Volvo Car Corp. and ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. have signed a 300 million agreement to co-develop autonomous sport-utility vehicles that will either be used as self-driving taxis or sold to consumers. The two companies will announce the joint project Thursday, saying the Swedish auto maker will conduct much of the initial engineering on a platform for an XC90 SUV that is capable of piloting itself. At some point, Uber will take that technology and use it as the foundation to develop its own self-driving vehicle technology. Volvo will do the same. Under the agreement, Uber will buy XC90 SUVs manufactured by Volvo.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

This fall, an unusual vessel will begin sea trials off the coast of California. The 51-foot-long Boeing Echo Voyager will have no crew. It will glide underwater for days or weeks, quietly collecting data from the ocean floor to send back to crews on ships or on land. Ever since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. military has relied more and more on flying drones to take on dangerous air missions. But increasingly, drones are taking to the sea as well.