If its first quarter is anything to go by, 2016 may be shaping up historically as the 1491 of space discovery. The month preceding Valentine's Day alone provided what would once have been a year's worth of cosmic news. Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, took one giant leap toward a new Age of Discovery by relaunching and landing a rocket that had already made a round-trip journey through the stratosphere – a revolutionary moment in private space exploration. A pair of researchers kicked off a frenzied planet hunt by demonstrating that a massive, heretofore undetected planet could be lurking on the outer edge of our solar system. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking suggested that unforeseen effects of rapid scientific progress might, paradoxically, cause the extinction of life on Earth in the next thousand years or so, adding, "By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." And scientists announced they'd detected gravitational waves, evidence of a billion-year-old collision between black holes, thus confirming the final and most obscure principle of Einstein's theory of relativity – and opening a window that may soon offer a glimpse of the universe's very creation.

Last week, 42-year-old Ricky Ma made headlines for his creation of a life- sized robot he called Mark 1, which he modeled after Scarlett Johansson. The robot, which the Hong Kong designer dedicated 18 months of his life to completing, was an easy sell to the viral internet. The story was titillating enough: a grown man fulfilling his childhood dream, an inventor spending thousands of dollars and teaching himself how to use 3D printing software to essentially create a bot that smiles when you tell it that it's beautiful. And the robotic re-creation of Johansson is uncanny and compelling; doll-like, it approaches the look of a flesh-and-blood woman, yet its empty eyes and blank synthetic face are an insistent remind that Mark 1 is not. Mark 1 is ostensibly for recreational use.

A new eGames international gaming tournament will make its debut in Rio during this summer's Olympic Games. The event, launched as part of this week's London Games Festival, offers medals and national pride rather than cash prizes for the winners. The competition, backed by the UK government, will be run by the new International eGames Committee (IEGC). Britain, Canada, Brazil and the USA are the only confirmed entrants so far with more expected to follow. In Olympic years, both summer and winter, the eGames will take place in the host cities - with future tournaments planned for Pyeongchang in 2018 and Tokyo in 2020.

Swedish carmaker Volvo has said it plans to launch a self-driving experiment in China involving up to 100 cars. Local drivers will test cars on public roads in "everyday conditions", according to a company press release. The move was announced at an event in Beijing on 7 April, though details of a start date were not provided. One analyst said he thought China was at the forefront of the development of autonomous cars. Volvo is owned by a Chinese firm, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.

Artificial intelligence can master the world's most complicated board game, beating South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-dol in the process. But can it predict the winner of a reality TV singing contest? That is the challenge facing "Ai", an artificial intelligence programme developed by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China's e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba. This Friday, Ai will attempt to prove that it can perceive something as subjective as the aesthetic beauty of musical notes by predicting the winner of Hunan TV's "I'm a Singer". The broadcaster is named after the southern Chinese province in which it is based.

Artificial intelligence and robots are hot topics right now, but will we ever get to the stage we saw 50 years ago on "The Jetsons," where your typical household could have a robotic maid named Rosie? Robotics pioneer David Hanson says yes, and he thinks it'll take less than 50 more years. That's the prediction he delivered on Wednesday during a Skype-enabled panel presentation on the future of AI and robotics in Seattle, sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest. A veteran of Disney's imagineering operation, Hanson has produced custom-made robot heads that are capable of eerily humanlike expressions. Now Hanson has relocated to Hong Kong, where he's gearing up to unveil a line of production-model robots that take advantage of recent AI advances as well as the toymaking prowess of the Pearl River Delta.

The latest in the drumbeat of news about artificial intelligence advances came from Seoul, where machine learning algorithms recently beat the world champion in a game of "Go." A Scientific American article explains why this is so impressive, but the implications run far deeper than a match of wits between man and machine. Soon, our workplaces will be transformed by artificial intelligence, with a wide range of processes and roles becoming redefined as some of the tasks comprising them are taken over by machines. Travelers are seeing early signs of this phenomenon. For example, in many US airports these days, instead of standing in a long line to have an immigration officer eyeball us, we scan our passport at a self-service kiosk, answer a few questions, get photographed, and then hand our photo receipt and passport to an agent who quickly verifies that everything checks out.

Search engines on large e-commerce sites often spit up a lot of results, which is great if you want to browse, but otherwise annoying. Twiggle thinks it has the solution. Internet conglomerate Naspers agrees, because it has led the Tel Aviv-based startup's 12.5 million Series A. Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures (a returning investor), and Sir Ronald Cohen also participated in the round. Twiggle, which has raised 14.7 million so far, will launch on several e-commerce sites in August. It hasn't revealed who its clients are yet, but they will include other Naspers portfolio companies.

Ever wished you could order Taco Bell for everyone in the office using a simple chat bot? No? Well, you'll soon be able to it anyway. Taco Bell has blessed the world with TacoBot, a chatbot for the popular workplace chat app Slack. Tell TacoBot what you want, and it keeps a running tally of your order, just like that screen at the drive-thru. When you're done, pay through TacoBot and pick up your order at the Nearest Participating Taco Bell.

Volvo Group announced Thursday it plans to launch an experiment involving a fleet of 100 self-driving cars in China, as part of its commitment to make its cars "death proof" by 2020. The experiment will see local customers test the cars on public roads in everyday conditions. The Swedish carmaker, wholly owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., said in a statement it would start the project in the coming months based on talks with various Chinese cities to gauge interest and to "see which is able to provide the necessary permissions, regulations and infrastructure to allow the experiment to go ahead." Volvo called the project "China's most advanced autonomous driving experiment." The experiment will be conducted in a fashion similar to its testing program in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, scheduled to start in 2017.