Today, Google announced that Assistant on its Home, Mini and Max products can now speak and understand Spanish. Additionally, consumers in Mexico will be able to find Google Home on store shelves starting today; the product launched in Spain last week. After saying the wake words "Ok, Google," users can use Spanish to speak with Assistant on the Home, Mini and Max. To hear about your schedule and appointments for the day, you can say, "¿Cómo será mi día?" Or to turn down the temperature, simply tell the Assistant, "Sube la temperatura del termostato." These features are available today on the afore mentioned Google Home hardware.

The cantonal government announced that Geneva would take part in a European feasibility study into using drones for personal transportation. Geneva with the ability to innovate was the ideal candidate to represent Switzerland in the European Union-led project. The project which comes under the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) initiative aims to put urban mobility into the third dimension and also aims to assess public interest for the idea of drone taxis. "This project is a first step towards implementing the canton of Geneva drone vision published in November 2017," said cantonal and city government minister Pierre Maudet. "In a region that is growing rapidly and where traffic is becoming more and more saturated, public bodies have the responsibility to explore new ways of addressing the challenges of tomorrow," said Luc Barthassat, the Geneva transport minister.

When the machine learning renaissance started in 2013 – thanks to the development of new graphic processing units accelerating data processing by over 100 times – Frans Cronje and Daniel Schwartzkopff started positioning themselves to fill the gap in the South African market. "Daniel and I met while doing our undergrad studies at the University of Cape Town and collectively came up with the idea to start an artificial intelligence (AI) company," says Frans Cronje, the managing director of DataProphet. "At the time there was hardly any competition in the field and skills were scarce, as you could not even study machine learning here." They initially offered machine learning consultancy services to retail, manufacturing and finance companies and from there catapulted into the products market when they started DataProphet in 2015. "We were relatively new to the game. Working as consultants helped us gain valuable experience and insights into the common challenges faced by these industries, which in turn allowed us to create service solutions for these challenges," says Cronje.

One firm believes the solution could lie in bespoke, semi-automated software that combines artificial intelligence approaches, including semantic searching and machine learning, to sift through tens of millions of documents to identify genes, diseases, devices and many more scientific concepts. The semantic platform developed by Cambridge-based technology company SciBite, which is being piloted in partnership with medical research charity LifeArc, enables researchers to gain early insights and uncover information such as novel technologies, new drug targets/biomarkers and rare disease connections. The two firms say that this will improve the ability for researchers to identify emerging mega trends in medical research, with the ultimate aim of accelerating discoveries in the healthcare space. Neal Dunkinson, head of technical sales from SciBite said: "It's almost impossible to keep ahead of the volumes of data being created second to second by the life science industry. Our technology is designed to reduce the time spent mining data by up to 80%, providing researchers with a subset of scientifically-relevant information filtered from the vast amounts of raw data in a rapid, easy-to-interpret manner, allowing them to focus and accelerate their research. As you can imagine, this is a game-changer in the healthcare space where identifying valid new leads is highly-competitive".

Future citizens of a newly-formed "space kingdom" may need to pass an IQ test to be a part of the self-proclaimed utopian society. At a ceremony in Vienna's Hofburg Palace on Monday, 25 June, hundreds of people gathered for the inauguration of Asgardia – a "global humanitarian project" which hopes to one day set up human colonies on the Moon. Asgardia's first ruler is a Russian billionaire, Igor Ashurbeyli, a computer scientist who has spear-headed the new nation since it was first announced in October 2016. Nasa's canny decision to commission sumptuous vintage-inspired posters by Seattle design firm Invisible Creature has firmly placed space travel back where it belongs: in the imagination of travellers "We were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at Nasa for 30 years," says Clark The artwork harks back to the Jet Age-era posters commissioned by Howard Hughes' Trans World Airlines and its rival United in the 1950s and 1960s, when the work of David Klein (for TWA) and Stan Galli (for United) glamorised and essentially branded this new age of air travel It doesn't matter that Nasa has no plans for a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus Nasa's canny decision to commission sumptuous vintage-inspired posters by Seattle design firm Invisible Creature has firmly placed space travel back where it belongs: in the imagination of travellers "We were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at Nasa for 30 years," says Clark The artwork harks back to the Jet Age-era posters commissioned by Howard Hughes' Trans World Airlines and its rival United in the 1950s and 1960s, when the work of David Klein (for TWA) and Stan Galli (for United) glamorised and essentially branded this new age of air travel It doesn't matter that Nasa has no plans for a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus During his inauguration speech, Mr Ashurbeyli stressed his belief in the significance of his leadership. "This day will certainly be recorded in the annals of the greatest events in the history of humankind," he said.

The autonomous drone logistics platform Matternet has raised $16 million in a Series A funding round led by Boeing Horizon X Ventures, with investments by Swiss Post, Sony Innovation Fund and Levitate Capital. The funding is a vote of confidence in what many already believe will be a standard feature of our lives in the near future. Matternet has launched drone deliveries in the healthcare sector, with a successful program in Lugano, Switzerland, in partnership with Swiss Post and Mercedes-Benz Vans. It has conducted more than 1,700 flights for the Ticino EOC Hospital Group and delivered over 850 patient samples over densely populated areas without incident. This month, Matternet and Swiss Post expanded the operation to test new hospital-to-hospital networks in Bern and Zurich.

Although artificial intelligence (AI) promises greater efficiency and could provide the key to tackling some of society's most pressing issues, not all Europeans are welcoming the technology with open arms. In a newly published thought leadership paper from SAP, "European Prosperity Through Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence," prepared by Andreas Tegge, head Global Public Policy, SAP addresses some anxieties and proposes measures for ensuring AI's rapid assimilation and advancement in Europe. No other technology currently inspires such fascination nor stirs up such heated debate as AI and the branch of AI known as machine learning. Algorithms that are capable of autonomously gaining insight from data without being explicitly programmed are already empowering machines to see, read, listen, and interact. In the intelligent enterprise, machine learning allows better and more efficient processes, which means that enterprises benefit from increased productivity levels and employees have more time to devote to tasks that add greater value.

A new federal association for artificial intelligence is trying to help Germany catch up on tech. The government pays lip service to new digital tools, but critics say it's not enough. If we don't act now, then in 10 years, the German economy will no longer be competitive: That's the message from the country's brand new Federal Association for Artificial Intelligence. The association, which was formed in March this year and has around 50 businesses who work in the sector as members, released a position paper this week with a direct appeal to Chancellor Angela Merkel's government. The paper contains nine points that association members believe are necessary if the country is to keep up to date with modern technology.

Hands are hot items in the world of robots. That's one of the biggest trends out of the Automatica conference, one of the world's premiere showcases of robot technology, which recently wrapped up in Germany. Among this year's dexterous, grippy offerings is a robotic end effector inspired by a gecko's fingers. Also: Robots with soft hands will transform the world. Geckos can scale vertical and inverted surfaces thanks to microscopic flaps on their feet.

Artificial intelligence is set to revolutionise tourism, on all scales -- robotic doormen at hotel entrances, rooms that customise themselves depending on the occupant tastes, virtual visits of touristic sites before going there in real conditions -- despite some impediments. Let's deal with this ongoing revolution! This is mostly how our brain works when we take an umbrella before leaving home as the sky is covered in large grey clouds. The most spectacular application of artificial intelligence is obviously robotics. We imagine even more easily what it could lead to, as we are nourished by'Star Wars', or at least what it already does in the hotel industry -- a robot-doorman to welcome us right after we get out of the cab, catch our luggage and guide us to our room inquiring about our travel vagaries and our schedule for the upcoming days.