Everywhere you turn these days there are more and more automated processes appearing all the time. From automatic vacuum cleaners to self-order counters at restaurants, to cars that automatically park themselves, robots are all around us in one way or another and physics is no different. In using the latest artificial intelligence to do the same tasks as people, we are not only saving time and money but saving on resources too. A recent physics experiment developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW ADFA) was shown to be completed by artificial intelligence (AI) just as a human would. The test was to create a replica of "Laser Beam" experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize and produced an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam (known as Bose-Einstein condensate) and the incredible AI literally taught itself how to do the experiment, from start to finish, in under one hour!

Professor Damith Herath will speak about artificial intelligence and robotics at King O'Malley's Pub on May 25 as part of Canberra's first Pint of Science series. Canberra will raise a glass to a fresh take on politics in the pub this week as the Pint of Science festival debuts in the capital. The national series, funded by the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and the ACT government, brings some of the most brilliant scientists into city pubs to discuss their latest research and field questions about their findings. The action will begin on Monday at King O'Malley's in Civic. For just 5 punters can delve into how we learn and the power of the brain at Beautiful Mind from 7pm. At the same time on Tuesday evening ANU professor of physics Daniel Shaddock and ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt will explain how we listen to and measure things in space at Ever Expanding Gravitational Pull.

Canberra will raise a glass to a fresh take on politics in the pub this week as the Pint of Science festival debuts in the capital. The national series, funded by the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and the ACT government, brings some of the most brilliant scientists into city pubs to discuss their latest research and field questions about their findings. The action will begin on Monday at King O'Malley's in Civic. For just 5 punters can delve into how we learn and the power of the brain at Beautiful Mind from 7pm. At the same time on Tuesday evening ANU professor of physics Daniel Shaddock and ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt will explain how we listen to and measure things in space at Ever Expanding Gravitational Pull. And the finale event, Driven Into Crazy Stupid Love, on Wednesday from 7pm will cover self-driving cars and what the world will be like with increased human-robot interaction.

An early Google employee tests different apps in his recently remodeled San Francisco home. The home's automation system can be accessed by smart phone; the front door has an automated video doorbell. Facebook founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg created the world's largest media owner, with 1.6 billion users, but it does not produce content. DIGITAL technology has quickly knocked some of the world's biggest businesses off their perches and will soon make more radical changes to our everyday lives. Tech experts have been surprised by the speed that consumers have flocked to global online platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, and believe it's only the beginning -- with artificial intelligence and internet-connected homes among the next big growth areas.

Human communication goes beyond words. It is complex, rich in nuances and frequently includes non-verbal signs. Yet despite our technological limitations it is not impossible for some aspects of communication to be emulated by a machine with surprising effect. This has been part of the challenge in developing Harlie (Human and Robot Language Interaction Experiment), a smartphone chatbot app developed by researchers at the CSIRO and University of Queensland. It's primarily aimed at people who may have trouble conversing including those with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia, or even autism.

Human communication goes beyond words. It is complex, rich in nuances and frequently includes non-verbal signs. Yet despite our technological limitations it is not impossible for some aspects of communication to be emulated by a machine with surprising effect. This has been part of the challenge in developing Harlie (Human and Robot Language Interaction Experiment), a smartphone chatbot app developed by researchers at the CSIRO and University of Queensland. It's primarily aimed at people who may have trouble conversing including those with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia, or even autism. The following dialog excerpt took place between a human who has autism, let's call him Chris (pseudonym), and Harlie.

Google's gumdrop-shaped autonomous car looks like something you'd see in a Pixar movie, a cute and cuddly machine that makes the future look fun--until it ambushes you in a crosswalk, traps you like a fly in a web, and whisks you away. That horrific scenario comes to mind reading Google's recently approved patent for what amounts to slathering its cars in glue. To be fair, this has less to do with collecting humans than protecting them. Autonomous vehicles absolutely will reduce collisions and fatalities, but even the most ardent advocates concede one of them eventually will hit a pedestrian. Google engineers believe coating the front of a car with adhesive could prevent someone from bouncing onto the windshield, sliding under the wheels, or flying into the air and landing in the road.

Farmers, put your feet up. Autonomous robots are already being used to inspect crops, count yields and dig up weeds – now they are shepherds too. Sheep and cattle farms in the Australian outback are vast as well as remote. For example, the country's most isolated cattle station, Suplejack Downs in the Northern Territory, extends across 4000 square kilometres and takes 13 hours to reach by car from the nearest major town, Alice Springs. The livestock on these far-flung farms are monitored infrequently – sometimes only once or twice a year – meaning they often fall ill or get into trouble without anyone knowing.

If a giant robotic arm swooped in to destroy your home, you would probably be pretty angry. So it is hardly surprising that an octopus living off the Canadian coast in the Pacific Ocean jumped to the defence of the coil of cable it had been living under when a robot came to take it away. A video captured while the underwater robot tried to carry out maintenance work, shows the cephalopod playing tug of war with the robotic arm. The dispute was filmed by Nautilus Live while engineers were using a submarine's robotic arm to repair a cable which was part of the Ocean Networks Canada underwater observatory. Sadly, the fight was only going to end one way, and despite the octopuses valiant efforts to protect its home by hanging onto cord holding the cable coil together, it ultimately lost.

Unless you've been living under a rock (which will likely be affected by climate change soon, by the way), you know that between forest fires, illegal deforestation, poaching, and other crimes, an enormity of environmental issues puts our ecosystems in danger. According to the National Science Foundation, a century ago, more than 60,000 tigers roamed in the wild. Now, there are as few as 3,000 remaining. While human patrols can directly protect endangered animals, many protection agencies lack the resources necessary to cover the appropriate amount of ground, especially in large national parks where many of these illicit activities might occur. In 2011, Eve McDonald-Madden and her colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia lamented that a lack of money limits the impact that management strategies can have on preventing the extinction of a species.