Robots are primed to change the way home shopping services operate, but the most substantive shift will happen in the warehouse, not at your front door. Ocado, a UK-based online grocer that logged $1.5 billion USD in revenue in 2014 and turned its first profit after 15 years this February, recently announced that it's developing autonomous humanoid robots to augment and assist its human workforce. The SecondHands project, as it is known internally, is being carried out in partnership with a consortium of research universities and is part of the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, an ambitious bid to position the EU as a technology hotbed, particularly in the field of robotics. AI might be a hot topic but you'll still need to justify those projects. "The ultimate aim is for humans to end up relying on collaborative robots because they have become an active participant in their daily tasks," says Dr Graham Deacon, Robotics Research Team Leader at Ocado Technology.

Google announced today it has acquired machine learning startup Moodstocks in an effort to bolster its work around smartphone image and item recognition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. See how the cloud is disrupting traditional operating models for IT departments and entire organizations. Moodstocks began developing image recognition technology in 2012 and more recently shifted into object recognition technology. The Paris-based startup said on its website that its "dream has been to give eyes to machines by turning cameras into smart sensors able to make sense of their surroundings."

Think Portugal's maritime mastery is a thing of the past? A team of researchers from the Institute of Telecommunications at University Institute of Lisbon and from University of Lisbon in Portugal are the first to demonstrate a swarm of intelligent aquatic surface robots in a real-world environment. A video describing the team's work has been nominated for "Best Robot Video Award" at the prestigious Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) video competition: "Swarm robotics is a paradigm shift," says Dr. Anders Christensen, the principal investigator on the project. "We rely on many small, simple and inexpensive robots, instead of a single or a few large, complex and expensive robots." Swarms have the potential to scale to hundreds or thousands of robots and cover large areas, making them ideal for tasks such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and maritime surveillance.

Politics Trump and Abe hit the fairways -- largely out of public view -- at a Trump golf club in Florida Post Politics John Wagner and Philip Rucker'Saturday Night Live' is the newest, hottest place to punk -- and persuade -- President Trump The Fix Callum Borchers Are the countries that Americans think are friendly to the U.S. actually friendly to the U.S.? The Monkey Cage Erik Voeten Of course Oregon hipsters are cultivating a craft cannabis industry GovBeat Kathryn Boyd-Batstone, News21 and Nick Swyter and News21 Are actions of a dozen officials in various agencies void because court says they are ineligible for office? The Federal Eye Joe Davidson Trump insists he can bring the cost of $21.6 billion border wall'way down' PowerPost Philip Rucker Opinions Local Sports National Republican green-card holder who voted illegally in Texas gets 8 years in prison Post Nation Amy B Wang Yale renames Calhoun College because of historic ties to white supremacy and slavery Grade Point Monica ...

An insider's guide to the business and future of connected technology". Then on BioTech Nation, how much do we know about the clinical trials behind drugs approved by the FDA? JENNIFER MILLER, the Founder and President of Bioethics, International and a professor at NYU Medical School, talks about the Good Pharma Scorecard.

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Research Park has a new company: a spin-off of the UAB and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). MusicStrands uses artificial intelligence techniques to provide people with music recommendations. This initiative is the first and only one to use tags applied to music; tags are labels that people can attach on the music they like for easy retrieval later. Tags also make it easy to discover playlists by keying on interesting tags supplied by other users; in addition, tags can help anyone organize playlists by common features. Users of the MusicStrands website have access to a directory of 3.9 million songs.

Gordon Bell will never forget what I look like. He'll never forget what I sound like, either. Actually, he'll never forget a single detail about me. That's because when I first met the affable 72-year-old computer scientist at the offices of Microsoft Research Labs, in Redmond, Washington, he was carefully recording my every move. He had a tiny bug-eyed camera around his neck, and a small audio recorder at his elbow. As we chatted about various topics--Australian jazz musicians, his futuristic cell phone, the Seattle area's gorgeous weather--Bell's gear quietly logged my every gesture and all my blathering small talk, snapping a picture every 60 seconds. Back at his office, his computer had carefully archived every document related to me: all the email I'd sent him, copies of my articles he'd read, pages he'd surfed on my blog. "Oh, I've got everything," Bell said cheerily. And when I saw him the next day, down in his cramped personal office in San Francisco, he offered to give me a glimpse of the memories he'd collected. He plunked down in front of his computer, pulled up a browser, typed in "Clive Fast Company," and there they were: Hundreds of pictures of the meeting scrolled by on his screen, and the sound of our day-old conversation filled the room. It was a deeply strange feeling. My random chitchat is being preserved? He nodded, pointing to a mundane Dell computer parked beneath his desk. Because I'm not the only thing Gordon Bell will never forget. His goal is never to forget anything.

Oroville - For the first time since it was completed in 1968, California's rain-swollen Oroville Dam overtopped its emergency spillway on Saturday, sending sheets of water down a forested hillside, adding mud and debris to the churning Feather River below. Turmoil grows over White House correspondents' dinner Washington - It is supposed to be a light-hearted gathering of journalists, celebrities and the president, where differences are put aside for good-natured jibes. Review: Tenor Mario Frangoulis charms on'Send Me An Angel' Special International tenor Mario Frangoulis delivers on his live performance of "Send Me An Angel," which was filmed in Greece. Germany to elect'anti-Trump' Steinmeier as new president Berlin - Billed as Germany's "anti-Trump", centre-left former foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is set to be elected Sunday as the new ceremonial head of state. Konjic - Bosnia's fisheries watchdog gazes over an expanse of sand and mud, a space once occupied by a large thriving lake but recently emptied in the race for electricity production.

The British Navy has fired its first torpedo using a radical new'brain' fitted to a nuclear submarine. The Royal Navy's latest and most advanced Astute class submarine, Artful, used the Common Combat System for the first time. It is the first to use this new technology which is now being retrofitted to earlier Astute class submarines. The new system, provided by VMware, Dell and Aish, processes information from submarine sensors to enable crew members to make important command decisions. It was used during the test to interpret sonar readings and then attack a moving target with a practice weapon.

They are the ultimate symbol of military might, capable of providing a dominant presence in almost any region of the world where there is a nearby ocean. But as technology has advanced, the hulking weaponry and armour of warships that have ruled the waves are having to change and adapt to these high-tech times. From drones to unmanned boats and laser weapons, experts at How It Works Magazine have revealed what fleets of the future will look like. From drones to unmanned boats and laser weapons, experts at How It Works Magazine have revealed what fleets of the future will look like. This artist's impression shows a selection of some of the features that could make their way onto warships over the next decade The Royal Navy in the UK has been challenging young British scientists and engineers to design the fleet of the future.