Just Eat has today laid claim to delivering the first takeaway meal by autonomous robot. The online ordering company has been working with Starship Technologies since July, testing the latter's "last-mile" delivery robots in Greenwich, London. But these tamperproof, pavement-pounding boxes on wheels are now in active service in the area, after the first, apparently unknowing customer successfully received their falafel and lamb cutlets from a local Turkish eatery. While customers are not be able to actively choose robot as their preferred delivery option yet, Just Eat says Greenwich "will increasingly be serviced by the technology," ahead of plans to expand the rollout (no pun intended) to more parts of London next year. We're not sure Just Eat can really claim a world first here, though.

Artificial Intelligence may conjure up images of robots stealing all our jobs, but AI isn't futuristic. AI is as old as technology itself – the original AI systems operated more as search engines, where you inputted information and organised data comes back. It essentially is data-driven, but requires human expertise to apply answers and discoveries to solve problems with it. AI technology has become widely used as elements of larger systems, but the field is rarely credited for these successes. Think of the latest advances in medical diagnosis, aviation, stock trading or robot control, and you're likely thinking of an innovation using AI at its core.

We study the problem of rank aggregation: given a set of ranked lists, we want to form a consensus ranking. Furthermore, we consider the case of extreme lists: i.e., only the rank of the best or worst elements are known. We impute missing ranks by the average value and generalise Spearman's \rho to extreme ranks. Our main contribution is the derivation of a non-parametric estimator for rank aggregation based on multivariate extensions of Spearman's \rho, which measures correlation between a set of ranked lists. Multivariate Spearman's \rho is defined using copulas, and we show that the geometric mean of normalised ranks maximises multivariate correlation. Motivated by this, we propose a weighted geometric mean approach for learning to rank which has a closed form least squares solution. When only the best or worst elements of a ranked list are known, we impute the missing ranks by the average value, allowing us to apply Spearman's \rho. Finally, we demonstrate good performance on the rank aggregation benchmarks MQ2007 and MQ2008.

An online robot lawyer designed to help people represent themselves in court state their case to the sentencing magistrate will be launched by a Melbourne law firm this week. Robot lawyer provides service for people unable to access legal aid Produces a template for people to read out as their statement when they go to court Only works if the person's answers to program's questions are'relatively predictable' Only works if the person's answers to program's questions are'relatively predictable' Bill Doogue, a partner at Doogue O'Brien George, said he had seen too many people -- up to 30 per cent -- going through the court system unrepresented. "You see people constantly come out of court and they're quite distressed, because they haven't told their story, they just haven't been able to," he said. Mr Doogue said while the template produced by the robot lawyer was only a starting point and not the whole process, it would help those people who turn up to court unprepared. "[Some people] are visibly distressed and uncomfortable talking and give monosyllabic answers to the magistrate, when they have a story they should be telling," he said.

Cylance Inc., the company that is revolutionising cybersecurity with the practical application of artificial intelligence to prevent the most advanced cyber threats, today announced that it has selected Arrow Electronics, Inc. as its distributor in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). This year, Cylance announced its initial launch into Australia to service market growth across Asia Pacific. Arrow will support Cylance in expanding its regional footprint and providing customers with cyberattack prevention technology where traditional anti-virus software has failed. According to Andy Solterbeck, vice president of Cylance Asia Pacific, Arrow was selected because of its extensive security experience and credentials in the local region. "We are excited to work with Arrow as a distributor that is recognised for its proven track record of releasing highly disruptive technologies into the Australia and New Zealand markets. We look forward to leveraging Arrow's infrastructure and reseller programs to scale the business and enable our customers to upskill quickly," said Solterbeck.

The X-rated "Sexpo" trade event which took place in Melbourne, Australia, last week featured everything from an imposing 66-foot "Love Rocket" ride and a "Gerbil Sex Train" to live appearances from a variety of adult industry names (who, upstanding citizens that we are, we've naturally never heard of). One of the most bizarre sights, however, was surely a computer-controlled stripper robot constructed out of mannequin parts and boasting a CCTV camera for a head. Created by British artist Giles Walker, it was yet another convergence point between the adult and tech worlds -- and one which cost $3,100 to hire for the event. "I started as a scrap artist building sculptures from what could be found in the scrap yards, and therefore was familiar with the parts available from scrapped cars," Walker told Digital Trends. "In the case of these robots, I used windscreen wiper motors to move the body parts. These motors turn on and off with a simple programmable PCB. The figures consist of a metal armature, clad in plastic body parts cut from old mannequins and resprayed."

Psoroptes cuniculi mites are non-burrowing parasites that chew the skin in the ear canal of rabbits. Kitchen sponges can accumulate food and microbes when used for long periods of time and are not thoroughly cleaned. Millions of dust mites inhabit the home, feeding on dead human skin that are common in house dust. Pseudoscorpions are generally beneficial to humans since they prey on moth larvae, carpet beetle larvae, booklice and mites. Watch video Raging bull destroys car with horns at Spanish festival Watch video Wes Anderson gets festive for H&M 2016 Christmas collection Watch video Meet Reagan and Little Buddy whose friendship inspired a book Watch video Three pen tricks explained in this amazing magic tutorial Watch video Angry Trump supporter goes on wild'racist' rant inside store Watch video Hilarious moment baby boy joins in with twerking girls Watch video Shanghai Jiao Tong researchers test facial recognition software Watch video Man films the moment after woman jumps out the plane by the gate Watch video Moment Dolphins and 49ers fans start massive brawl in the stands Watch video LOVE Magazine's Hype Williams advent teaser for Christmas 2016 Watch video Aleexandra is'selling her virginity' to the highest bidder Watch video Road rage attack shows driver smashing lorry window with spade Watch video Angry Trump supporter goes on wild'racist' rant inside store Watch video Hilarious moment baby boy joins in with twerking girls Watch video Shanghai Jiao Tong researchers test facial recognition software Watch video Man films the moment after woman jumps out the plane by the gate Watch video Angry Trump supporter goes on wild'racist' rant inside store Watch video Hilarious moment baby boy joins in with twerking girls Watch video Shanghai Jiao Tong researchers test facial recognition software Watch video Man films the moment after woman jumps out the plane by the gate Watch video Angry Trump supporter goes on wild'racist' rant inside store Angry Trump supporter goes on wild'racist' rant inside store Watch video Moment Dolphins and 49ers fans start massive brawl in the stands Watch video LOVE Magazine's Hype Williams advent teaser for Christmas 2016 Watch video Aleexandra is'selling her virginity' to the highest bidder Watch video Road rage attack shows driver smashing lorry window with spade Watch video Moment Dolphins and 49ers fans start massive brawl in the stands Watch video LOVE Magazine's Hype Williams advent teaser for Christmas 2016 Watch video Aleexandra is'selling her virginity' to the highest bidder Watch video Road rage attack shows driver smashing lorry window with spade Watch video Aleexandra is'selling her virginity' to the highest bidder Aleexandra is'selling her virginity' to the highest bidder The scans were taken by scientists Steve Gschmeissner, who is one of the world's leading scanning electron microscopists in the world and award winning photo-micrographer Dennis Kunkel.

Machine learning has a lot of potential to accelerate innovation and ease burdens on workers in finance and other industries. Despite a dark side for those same workers, this form of artificial intelligence (AI) -- in which software uses data to program and improve itself -- could also help organizations manage crippling new demands. "There has been a dramatic increase in work in the last five or six years, coming from the exponential data explosion and an increase in audit regulation bureaucracy," Neil Kinson, chief of staff at enterprise process automation provider (and long-time SAP partner) Redwood Software, said in ZDNet last week. "The automation is being created to solve that problem, rather than to cut costs, [and] a lot of organizations are applying automation just to cope." And we may have only spotted the tip of this iceberg.

The hottest ticket in tech is an invitation to a banal South Florida business park, indistinguishable on the outside from countless other office buildings that dot America's suburban landscape. Humanoid robots walk down the halls, and green reptilian monsters hang out in the lounge. Cartoon fairies turn the lights on and off. Even the office equipment does the impossible. The high-definition television hanging on the wall seems perfectly normal. Incredibly, it is now levitating in midair. Get as close as you'd like, check it out from different angles.

Would you trust an AI to do your Christmas shopping? Ebo box uses deep learning algorithms to match a person's personality with the perfect gift'Smart gifting' could be the long-awaited answer for shoppers looking to buy the right presents for notoriously difficult recipients. Ebo box finds gifts that combine personal preferences with data from the general market. Combining this information with the market data, ebo box can match the recipient with the'perfect' gift. Apple's spaceship is almost ready for takeoff: Latest drone... Australia's Great Barrier Reef in crisis as scientists... Meet Tim, the rolling robot that keeps CERN running:... Apple's spaceship is almost ready for takeoff: Latest drone... Australia's Great Barrier Reef in crisis as scientists... Meet Tim, the rolling robot that keeps CERN running:...