A framework for translating the write-ups of experiments into a format that can be processed by computers has been developed by academics. The new tool could revolutionise the way scientific papers are written and help scientists make creative leaps, researchers say. Computers already help scientists by performing complex calculations and making information easier to analyse. But they are less suited to analysing and comparing experimental results. "Computers are not very good with natural language, they need to have things as formalised as possible," says Ross King, a researcher at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who developed the framework with colleague Larisa Soldatova.

The ancient game of checkers (or draughts) has been pronounced dead. The game was killed by the publication of a mathematical proof showing that draughts always results in a draw when neither player makes a mistake. For computer-game aficionados, the game is now "solved". Draughts is merely the latest in a steady stream of games to have been solved using computers, following games such as Connect Four, which was solved more than 10 years ago. The computer proof took Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer-games expert at the University of Alberta in Canada, 18 years to complete and is one of the longest running computations in history.

Moths are renowned for their ability to pick up a faint whiff of pheromones from faraway mates. Robots may soon match this feat with the help of a new mathematical method developed to help guide them toward a scent. In tests, the algorithm made virtual scent-hunter bots move just like moths do, snaking and spiralling toward their goal. Finding the source of a strong smell is pretty straightforward. As you move, simply check whether a scent is getting stronger or weaker and head in the direction in which it is strongest.

ONE morning this month, David Pardoe earned himself $4.7 million without lifting a finger. All the hard work was done by a robot. True, it was a robot without a body – a software robot, in fact – but almost a century after the word "robot" was coined, the vision of automaton slaves is at last becoming reality. Software robots – also known as bots or software agents – can earn hard cash in the real world. They can even outperform people in some tasks, so it makes sense to let them do all the hard work. In Pardoe's case, the bots bringing home the bacon were taking part in an agent trading competition being held in the UK at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Edinburgh, a contest in which Pardoe and his team from the University of Texas, Austin, beat 25 other programs.

JUST after midnight, the last subway car slips into its sidings in Hong Kong and an army of engineers goes to work. In a typical week, 10,000 people carry out 2600 engineering works across the system – from grinding rough rails smooth and replacing tracks to checking for damage. People might do the work, but they don't choose what needs doing. Instead, each task is scheduled and managed by artificial intelligence. Hong Kong has one of the world's best subway systems.

A DEVICE that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed. One of the problems facing people with autism is an inability to pick up on social cues. Failure to notice that they are boring or confusing their listeners can be particularly damaging, says Rana El Kaliouby of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's sad because people then avoid having conversations with them."

SWIMMERS can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says that on average 15 people drown in British pools each year, but many more suffer major injury after getting into difficulties. Now a French company has developed an artificial intelligence system called Poseidon that sounds the alarm when it sees someone in danger of drowning. When a swimmer sinks towards the bottom of the pool, the new system sends an alarm signal to a poolside monitoring station and a lifeguard's pager. In trials at a pool in Ancenis, near Nantes, it saved a life within just a few months, says Alistair McQuade, a spokesman for its maker, Poseidon Technologies.

Autonomous model cars will race against one another in a contest designed to test different software approaches. The contest is being organised by researchers at the University of Essex in the UK, who are creating an affordable and standardised autonomous vehicle kit to encourage others to get involved. The kit will include a high-end commercial model car, a laptop, a GPS receiver, a USB controller and a camera. The aim is to encourage different research teams to develop autonomous racers using the same equipment, which will then race against one another at the 2008 World Congress on Computational Intelligence in Hong Kong. Simon Lucas of Essex University says the competition will be similar to the DARPA Grand Challenge (see Desert racers – drivers not included), which involves full-sized vehicles, but will be far less prohibitive.

THERE's been a minor car crunch on a city street in Brazil, and the two drivers are screaming and gesticulating, arguing angrily over who's to blame and who should pay for the damage. Instant justice has arrived, cyber-style. The laptop runs an artificial-intelligence program called the Electronic Judge, and its job is to help the human judge on the team swiftly and methodically dispense justice according to witness reports and forensic evidence at the scene of an incident. It can issue on-the-spot fines, order damages to be paid and even recommend jail sentences. The software is being tested by three judges in the state of Espirito Santo.

How do you tell just how smart your robot is? Give it a universal IQ test, researchers suggest. Traditional measures of human intelligence would often be inappropriate for systems that have senses, environments, and cognitive capacities very different from our own. So Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter at the Swiss Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Manno-Lugano, have drafted an idea for an alternative test which will allow the intelligence of vision systems, robots, natural-language processing programs or trading agents to be compared and contrasted despite their broad and disparate functions. Although there is no consensus on exactly what human intelligence is, most views cluster around the idea that it hinges on a general ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments, says Legg. The same concept can be applied to an AI system, by measuring its ability to carry out complex tasks within its particular environment and then comparing the complexity of its environment with those of a wide range of other AI systems. "But there is a problem," he says.