A Chinese factory near Shanghai is relying on a new breed of workers to maintain its competitive advantage in assembling electronics devices: small robots designed in Germany. Suzhou Victory Precision Manufacture Co.'s chairman, Yugen Gao, said the days when the company drew its strength from China's cheap and hardworking employees are gone. "We've been losing that edge in the past three years," said Mr. Gao in his office, overlooking rows of buildings where a battalion of robots was cranking out computer keyboards. China's appetite for European-made industrial robots is rapidly growing, as rising wages, a shrinking workforce and cultural changes drive more Chinese businesses to automation. The types of robots favored by Chinese manufacturers are also changing, as automation spreads from heavy industries such as auto manufacturing to those that require more precise, flexible robots capable of handling and assembling smaller products, including consumer electronics and apparel. At stake is whether China can retain its dominance in manufacturing.

Panasonic Corp. will begin selling on a trial basis in about 2019 tomato-harvesting robots, a product prompted by a shortage of farmers and an aging agricultural population in Japan, a company official said Tuesday. The equipment is being developed under a government-sponsored national project to use technology to make Japanese farm products competitive in cost with overseas produce after tariffs on most imported goods are removed under the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal. The robot will determine if a tomato is ripe enough to pick by analyzing its color via an advanced camera and sensor equipment. Utilizing information technology, Panasonic also plans to develop a system that can automatically control the temperature and humidity in a greenhouse depending on the state of vegetables growing there. It also plans to develop a device to check the quality of tomatoes for shipment.

The journal has a broad scope and publishes high quality papers on all aspects of computational intelligence and artificial intelligence related to games. TCIAIG has been accepted into the Thomson Reuters Web of Science and will, by mid-2012, have an Impact Factor listed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR). The journal is co-sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, the IEEE Computer Society, the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society and the IEEE Sensors Council. It is technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and the IEEE Communications Society.

So are Apple, IBM, and Amazon. In fact, every major technology company is investing in machine intelligence to improve their existing products or to develop entirely new ones. This transformative technology is poised to affect just about every industry out there. VB Profiles partnered with Shivon Zilis to better understand its impact and to present the Machine Intelligence 2.0 landscape. Above: This chart is part of VB Profiles Machine Intelligence Series.

Ford intends to have a fully driverless vehicle -- no steering wheel, no pedals -- on the road within five years. The cars will initially be used for commercial ride-hailing or ride-sharing services; sales to consumers will come later. Ford CEO Mark Fields announced the new goal Tuesday at the company's Silicon Valley campus in Palo Alto, California, sparking rumours it could sell the cars to Uber - which is already testing its self driving systems using the firm's vehicles in Pittsburgh. The car will initially be used for commercial ride-hailing or ride-sharing services; sales to consumers will come later, Ford CEO Mark Fields announced. However, he declined to say whether Ford plans to partner with Uber or Lyft in the ride sharing venture, saying'all options are open and on the table.' 'This is a transformational moment in our industry and it is a transformational moment for our company,' Fields said.

A Tesla electric car caught fire during a promotional tour in southwest France, and those aboard escaped unharmed. Tesla said in a statement that it is'working with the authorities to establish the facts' about Monday's fire in Bayonne. The driver was quoted in local newspaper Sud Ouest as saying he answered a Facebook ad offering test drives of the Model S sedan. The fire was captured by a passing motoring journalist. The driver was quoted in local newspaper Sud Ouest as saying he answered a Facebook ad offering test drives of the Model S sedan.

Ford Motor Co. intends to have a fully driverless vehicle -- no steering wheel, no pedals -- on the road within five years. The car will initially be used for commercial ride-hailing or ride-sharing services; sales to consumers will come later. Ford CEO Mark Fields announced the new goal Tuesday at the company's Silicon Valley campus in Palo Alto, California. "This is a transformational moment in our industry and it is a transformational moment for our company," Fields said. Ford's approach to the autonomous car breaks from many other companies, like Mercedes-Benz and Tesla Motors, which plan to gradually add self-driving capability to traditional cars.

Ford Motor Co. became the world's first automaker to announce hard plans to deliver driverless cars. "We'll have mass-produced, fully autonomous cars on the road in five years," said Raj Nair, head of global product development, at an event Tuesday in Palo Alto, Calif. Ford said the cars would be first used for ride hailing and ride sharing, but no companies were named. A few years after that, the company plans to roll out driverless cars to consumers. All the carmakers, plus Google and maybe Apple, are working on driverless cars, but none has announced firm dates.

At an artificial intelligence conference in New York City last week, Professor Alexi Samsonovich from the Moscow-based National Research Nuclear University (MEPhl) Cybernetics Department told Sputnik News, "We are on the verge of a major breakthrough" in AI. In the past six months, we've seen AI master the board game Go, write a short film script, and infiltrate Snapchat filters. Each of these achievements is impressive in its own right. Together, they show just how quickly AI is advancing. But what was this breakthrough Samsonovich hinted at in NYC? Digital Trends reached out to him to find out.

Hexaware Technologies Limited, a leading global provider of IT, Business Process and Consulting Services, and WorkFusion, the leading Smart Process Automation (SPA) provider, today announced a partnership to help enterprise operations leverage smart automation software to realize higher productivity, drive agility in generating new products and reduce operational cost. The combination of Hexaware's industry and process expertise, and WorkFusion's best-in-class automation software will provide customers the ability to rapidly deploy and scale transformational technology to achieve business goals. Hexaware has constantly strived to provide business value to its clients through significant cost savings and creating opportunities for revenue generation. This partnership aligns with Hexaware's'Shrink IT Grow Digital' strategy that has radically revolutionized digital transformation journeys of their customers. This strategy helps global firms dramatically reduce commodity operations and IT costs, while enabling realization of value from digital initiatives through solutions across industries such as Telecom, Banking & Financial Services, Healthcare & Insurance, Travel & Logistics, and Manufacturing & Consumer.