Little robots controlled by magnets may one day be crawling through your body, delivering treatments or taking tissue samples. That's at least one use inventors at MIT envision for the soft, mobile devices they're currently creating to morph on cue. With just a wave of a magnet, the robots can roll, jump, and crawl around in confined spaces. In the future, the MIT team hopes to build a stronger, more intelligent version of this robot that can be used for tasks such as medical procedures or cleaning up radioactive waste. "We want to make the robot powerful, so we're designing new magnetic inks so they can deliver more force," says Xuanhe Zhao, a coauthor on a paper about the robots published today in the journal Nature.

Apps created for the iPhone and other Apple products have helped created hundreds of thousands of jobs, the company says. Across Europe, more than 1.7 million jobs have been created and supported by Apple products. That's according to a new section on Apple's website which claims that it expects all of those numbers to keep growing. Many of those jobs are spread across the continent. That includes 22,000 Apple employees and 170,000 jobs created through suppliers – but also takes in the 1.57 million jobs that a study has shown have been created by the app economy. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Under the unforgiving LA sun, in front of a crowd of thousands, the first ever pro/celebrity Fortnite tournament took place on Tuesday afternoon, and anyone still mystified by the success of this brashly colourful multiplayer shooter would perhaps have been a lot wiser by the end. It was a fun spectacle, put on by the developer, Epic Games, for fans who screamed their support throughout the hour-long contest. Fifty well-known Fortnite players – young adults who play every night for countless fans on YouTube and Twitch – were teamed up with 50 celebrities from the worlds of wrestling, television and music, with each pair taking part in an all-or-nothing match of the world's most popular video game. In Fortnite's famed Battle Royale mode, 100 players land on a giant island and must fight until only one player – or team – is left standing. Usually the prize is simply kudos, but here there was a $3m (£2.2m) pot to aim for, the money to go to charities chosen by the top-finishing duos.

Adidas is inviting all sports enthusiasts to join its product design team, using machine learning to transform the customer experience appropriately enough with speed and agility. "We haven't created a separate digital strategy," said Adidas CIO Michael Vöegele. "Digital technology is the enabler to help us achieve our objective to be the best sports brand in the world. To change people's lives, you need to build direct relationships with your consumers." Vöegele spoke during the keynote on the last day of the SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, sharing his company's vision to co-create a new supply chain with customers.

Microsoft is working on technology that would eliminate the need for cashiers and checkout lines in supermarkets. The company is looking to challenge Amazon, which has already opened a checkout-free store in Seattle, called Amazon Go, according to people familiar with the matter. It is believed Microsoft is developing systems to track what shoppers add to their carts or basket as they move around the supermarket. The Redmond-based software giant has shown sample technology to retailers from around the world and is reportedly in talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration. Microsoft is working on technology that would eliminate cashiers and checkout lines from stores. The tech firm is looking to challenge Amazon's automated grocery shop, according to six people familiar with the matter (stock image) Microsoft's technology aims to help retailers keep pace with Amazon Go, a highly automated store that opened to the public in Seattle in January.

Sony is facing huge backlash over the way it has dealt with the release of Fortnite on the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo announced this week that the hugely popular battle royale game would arrive on the Switch, leading to excitement above fans. That enthusiasm was increased when it became clear that cross-platform play would be allowed, letting Switch players take on their friends on other consoles. But there is now considerable backlash after PlayStation users found that can't play on both the Switch and Sony's console. If they have already played on the PS4, for instance, then they cannot log onto their Fortnite account on the Switch.

JERUSALEM/BERLIN (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that a roughly one-billion-euro ($1.18 billion) drone deal with Germany would strengthen bilateral security relations and give a boost to Israel's defense industry.

The new collaboration was announced by Trudeau and Macron on June 7, 2018, just ahead of the turbulent G7 Summit which took place in Charlevoix, Quebec. The basis of the collaboration will be an independent expert group, who will invite specialists from both governments, together with internationally recognized scientists and representatives from industry. Interested members of social groups will also have an opportunity to take part. The new group will set out to identify the key challenges and opportunities that artificial intelligence promises, especially orientated towards developing social and economic benefits. The group will also outline some best practices, which will be designed to ensure that artificial intelligence fulfills this potential.

Regulators are beginning to teach robots who's the boss. After spending billions of dollars on cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies, Europe's insurers and banks face tougher scrutiny of the tools they use to help root out fraud, check borrowers' creditworthiness and automate claims decisions. European Union rules starting this week will stress human oversight and consumer protection, which may hamper companies trying to build the tools of the future. "Companies developing AI technologies will have to consider and embed the data protection issues into the design process," David Martin, senior legal officer at Brussels-based consumer advocate BEUC, said in an interview. "It's not something where they can just tick a box at the end."

Lidar maker Luminar says its sensors generate the highest-resolution images currently available for autonomous vehicles. Luminar, a maker of laser lidar sensors that self-driving cars need to see their surroundings in 3D, will supply the latest versions of its technology to Sweden's Volvo Cars, which is also investing in the Silicon Valley startup. Led by 23-year-old optics wunderkind Austin Russell, Luminar will provide both its hardware, combining the lidar sensor and cameras, and new perception software that helps the artificial intelligence driving Volvo's vehicles more rapidly interpret copious amounts of sensor data flowing in. The investment in Luminar by Volvo Cars Tech Fund is "significant," according to Russell, though neither he nor the automaker is disclosing the amount. "This is a partnership with Volvo Cars to power their autonomous vehicle development effort with our lidar sensing platform at its core," Russell, who founded Luminar in 2012 while still in high school, told Forbes.