Applicants, who should be skilled in computing and mathematics, may be asked to play a chess grandmaster as part of the entrance procedure. "I am not saying they would have to defeat Kasparov, but when I analyse this game I must see potential," said Professor Vas. He says Kasparov's agent is optimistic the ex-world champion will agree to give lectures. "It's about strategy and tactics, and how you can get a chess computer that can gradually learn by itself to become the strongest intelligent machine in the world," said Professor Vas. He said the idea was to design the computers using techniques from the study of artificial intelligence.

I would welcome robots in my home to do my chores, as long as they were correctly set up and not too expensive. If they were extremely expensive then I would not want to use them in case they were damaged! I can't really think of anything a domestic robot could realistically do other than floor-related things (grass cutting, vacuuming) or fetching me things. Maybe a security robot would be good, but if it hurt someone trying to get into your house you would probably be locked up for it nowadays! It's right to get robots to do our dirty work as they cannot feel and are completely emotionless so they can carry out tasks more effectively and efficiently than humans.

Scientists at Aalborg University in Denmark have devised a smart pool table. An overhead camera and laser placed above the interactive table watch the ball play, with a laser beam drawing shapes on the table pointing out the best shots. A virtual coach called James, connected to the table via a computer, will help you improve your play with a series of exercises. "People do not speak to pool tables so we came up with this personalised system and people are happy to talk to him," explained Mr Larsen. The technology behind James, who looks like a professional pool player, is the same Microsoft uses for its paperclip office assistant.

Games are set to look much more realistic, computer-controlled characters will be more convincing and keen players will need to spend more to pursue their hobby, said a panel of experts gathered at a game makers conference in London. Some of experts believe that the improved look of games will raise players' expectations which will prove a burden for almost all game designers. Game makers will have to develop new skills and techniques to make the most of the opportunities offered by the new technologies. The problems and potential of the technology changes expected over the next five years was debated by game industry experts and veterans during the Game Designers Europe Conference. Jez San, head of Argonaut Games who started his own company when only 16, said the amount of polygons that a console could display per second improved roughly 100-fold every five years.

Early 16th Century Hans Bullmann creates the first androids - simulated people that can play musical instruments for the delight of paying customers. While training as a Jesuit, Jacques Vaucanson creates flying angels which cause him to be thrown out of the order. Five years later, funding is cancelled when the shortcomings of the machine become apparent. Academics start to concentrate on small, smart useful robots rather than simulated people. Genghis, one of the first walking robots created by the mobile robots lab at MIT, makes its debut.

Do you think Twitter elected Donald Trump?" a high profile tech exec asked me moments after Trump won. Of course, Twitter didn't cast a vote -- people all around the country chose to elect Trump -- but it's impossible to look at this election without analyzing the internet's role in shaping it. There were fake news stories trending on Facebook; Twitter bots that trolled users by the thousands; and Wikileaks emails that showed how hackers can influence the election. Tech platforms took on a different shape and wielded a new power. There has never been a more important time for tech leaders to own their platforms, understand the implications of algorithms, and engage in the challenging conversations about exactly what their roles are. Justin Kan, Y Combinator partner and Twitch founder, acknowledged an insular mindset in Silicon Valley, one that has made it harder for tech leaders to understand or relate to those who feel disenfranchised. New technologies like self-driving cars will have a huge impact on people who worked as cabbies or truck drivers -- and Silicon Valley wasn't prepared to offer solutions. "Are those people going to lose their jobs?

On a recent morning Natanel Dukan walked into the Paris offices of the French robot maker Aldebaran and noticed one of the company's humanoid NAO robots sitting on a chair. Mr. Dukan, an electrical engineer, could not resist. In response the NAO tilted its head, touched his cheek and let out an audible smack. It is certainly a very French application for a robot, but the intimate gesture by the $16,000, two-foot robot, now being used in academic research labs and robotic soccer leagues, also reflects a significant shift. Until recently, most robots were carefully separated from humans. They have largely been used in factories to perform repetitive tasks that required speed, precision and force.

Touchscreen devices will never catch up to the speed of typing on keyboards, but speech recognition technology can help such devices bridge that gap. "I definitely think voice will be the primary form of input into these mobile devices," Dreyer told MobiHealthNews recently. Nuance first entered the apps market two years ago with the launch of its Dragon Mobile Medical Search and Dragon Medical Recorder, free applications that were complementary to its desktop products for healthcare. In February, it launched the Nuance Mobile Healthcare Development Platform, a cloud-based service that allows third parties -- software developers at vendor companies as well as hospital providers (internal IT labs at hospitals or provider facilities) -- to rapidly integrate speech recognition into their mobile device or web client. Next year, the service will expand to Europe with 23 additional supported languages.

The earliest instances of robotics all seem to have been created for artistic reasons, and were usually in the form of automatons, generally for theatrical and musical use. The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time…As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was.

The beginning of logic programming can be attributed to Kowalski and Colmerauer. Kowalski formulated the procedural interpretation of Horn clause logic and showed that the axiom A if B can be read as a procedure of a recursive programming language, where A is the procedure head and B is its body. At the same time, early 1970's, Colmerauer and his group at the University of Marseille-Aix developed a specialized theorem prover, which they used to implement natural processing systems. The theorem prover, they called it PROLOG (for Programation et Logique or Programming in Logic), embodied Kowalski's procedural interpretation.