Thousands have flooded into Austin, Texas to experience the 31st Annual South by Southwest Convention and Festivals. Check out some of the sights and sounds from the first day. Transportation options in Austin, Texas, include fleets of rental bikes position around town. AUSTIN -- The cruise to autonomous transportation is alive, but first we've got to get past some roadblocks. That's the takeaway from SXSW Interactive, the tech portion of the Texas confab that wrapped Tuesday and once again drew engineers, executives and lawmakers focused on steering society through a mobility revolution.

After years of banning Japan's fish and agriculture, many countries might be willing to give the nation a second chance and import its goods. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 and the resulting radiation in the region caused 54 countries and regions to implement restrictions on certain Japanese goods. That number has shrunken to 33, with more nations likely to follow suit and lift the ban, the Japan Times reported Wednesday. Read: 'Unimaginable' Radiation At Fukushima So Destructive, Not Even Robots Can Survive "We are looking forward to the lifting of the South Korean import ban," Masao Atsumi, a sea-squirt farmer in Miyagi prefecture, told the Japan Times. An aerial view shows the Fukushima power plant in Fukushima, Japan, Feb. 26, 2012.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the Netherlands, voters head to the polls tomorrow, in Europe's first big and closely watched election of the year. An ardent nationalist, running on an anti-immigrant agenda, is bidding for the prime minister's office, hoping to lead the way for similar candidates in France and Germany. The election also comes amid an escalating war of words between the Dutch government and Turkey over a referendum next month that could give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vast new powers. Just today, Erdogan accused Dutch troops of complicity in the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. That's a charge which a Dutch court had previously cleared.

Google has announced a new update to Chrome, which promises to lower the web browser's impact on your computer's battery life. The company has been working to make Chrome less power-hungry for some time, with old rival Microsoft insistent that its own browser Edge is the more power-efficient of the two. Google says that Chrome 57 will throttle individual background tabs "by limiting the timer fire rate for background tabs using excessive power". The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Security experts have discovered a vulnerability in WhatsApp, that could have allowed hackers to take over "hundreds of millions" of users' accounts and access everything in them. The flaw was discovered by Check Point and reported to WhatsApp on 7 March. The company has since taken steps to fix the issue. It affected WhatsApp's online platform, WhatsApp Web, which allows users to chat with their friends from a computer instead of their phone. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Eating a robot might not sound very appealing, but edible machines could be crawling their way down your intestinal tract in the near future. Scientists have created the first part of these digestible bots that could deliver medicine to people in need. The team is working with a hospitality school to see if they could even make them taste nice. The part they have created is just 90mm (3.5in) in length, 20mm (0.8in) wide and 17mm (0.7in) in thickness. This is the first part of an edible robot, which will be biodegradable and have very low levels of toxicity. Experts could train them to walk to humans who are in need of food.

If you take humans out of the driving seat, could traffic jams, accidents and high fuel bills become a thing of the past? As cars become more automated and connected, attention is turning to how to best choreograph the interaction between the tens or hundreds of automated vehicles that will one day share the same segment of Europe's road network. It is one of the most keenly studied fields in transport – how to make sure that automated cars get to their destinations safely and efficiently. But the prospect of having a multitude of vehicles taking decisions while interacting on Europe's roads is leading researchers to design new traffic management systems suitable for an era of connected transport. The idea is to ensure that traffic flows as smoothly and efficiently as possible, potentially avoiding the jams and delays caused by human behaviour.

A front cover of the New York Post in December offered an unflattering view of Amazon Go, a test convenience store that does away with cashiers. The cover included Robby the Robot modified with Amazon branding and standing beside the giant headline: "THE END OF JOBS." Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president of global innovation, sees things a little differently. "We've not seen a slowdown in our hiring at all because of increased automation," Misener, an Amazon veteran of over 15 years, said in a phone interview Monday while he was visiting SXSW. We continue to deploy automation and we continue to hire people.

LONDON: Sixty-eight per cent of organisations use artificial intelligence (AI) for IT functions, but 70 per cent believe AIs greatest impact by 2020 will be in marketing, customer service, finance and HR, a new study said on Wednesday. According to global IT consulting firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), organisations with the greatest financial improvements from AI investments expect three times as many new AI-related roles by 2020 as compared to companies with smallest improvements. "Given the increasing digital disruption across every industry and the public sector, AI should become a key and integrated component of an organisation's strategy," said K Ananth Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer of TCS, in a statement. Eighty-four per cent of companies see the use of AI as "essential" to competitiveness, with a further 50 per cent seeing the technology as "transformative". Financial investments in AI are set to rise, as seven per cent of companies each earmarked at least $250 million toward AI in 2016 and two per cent already plan to invest more than $1 billion by 2020, likely looking to gain a competitive advantage as early adopters, the findings showed.

Uber has appointed a chief scientist to fill a new position at the San Francisco-based company. Zoubin Ghahramani will oversee Uber's AI Labs and lead its broader AI and machine learning strategy, according to a statement. "Zoubin joined Uber through the acquisition of Geometric Intelligence, and it has become clear that Zoubin is a natural for the chief scientist role," said Jeff Holden, Uber's chief product officer. Ghahramani joined Uber when a stealth startup he cofounded, Geometric Intelligence, was acquired by the ride-hailing company in December. At the time, the acquisition was seen largely as an "acqui-hire" to obtain top scientific talent.