A microsatellite carrying model robots from the popular science fiction anime "Mobile Suit Gundam" was successfully launched to promote the Olympics, organizers said Saturday. The so-called G-Satellite, which contains two figurines from the animated series, hitched a ride to the International Space Station on Friday aboard a SpaceX/Dragon cargo flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will reach the ISS on Monday at 8 p.m. Japan time. The satellite will be released into orbit in the latter part of April and will circle Earth during the Olympics and Paralympics, marking the first time a satellite is used to celebrate the games. According to organizers, the satellite, which has an electronic bulletin board and seven small cameras, will send back images of the robots and messages displayed in English, French and Japanese. The initiative is part of the Tokyo 2020 One Team Project launched in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The University of Konstanz has been successful in the German Excellence Initiative and Excellence Strategy since 2007. The position is funded in the context of the joint programme for the promotion of early career researchers by the German federal and state-governments. The professorship serves to establish a working group focusing on methods and theoretical principles of machine learning. Successful applicants are internationally recognized in at least one current field of research in this field and are open to interdisciplinary questions. The professorship is part of the cluster of excellence "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour" at the Department of Computer and Information Science.

City court officials in Austin used to spend a lot of time answering rote questions related to parking tickets, court dates and other issues. Then about two years ago, the city began using a chatbot to field these requests. The move made life easier not only for workers in the court system, but also residents. "They had a challenge with individuals coming down, asking questions about paying tickets," explained Austin CIO Stephen Elkins during a panel discussion last week at the Smart Cities Connect Conference in Denver. "And so, what the court basically was finding was that they had a long line of individuals -- some folks had questions about tickets, some had other questions. By pulling out the ticketing questions, they shortened the queue. There was a better experience with the residents as well as the employees," Elkins added.

Gristedes billionaire John Catsimatidis found a creepy use for the facial recognition software that helps fight shoplifters at his New York City grocery stores: snooping on his daughter Andrea's dates. "Daddies are always looking after their daughters," Catsimatidis explained to The Post. The doting dad was dining at Cipriani in SoHo when he noticed his daughter Andrea, 29, was there too -- on a date. Fearing that some no good "charlatan" could be insinuating his way into the life of his beautiful, jet-setting, heiress daughter, Catsimatidis had a waiter take and send him a cellphone photo of the mystery man. He uploaded the photo into Clearview AI, and "We retrieved a picture of him in 20 seconds," he said of the October 2018 secret spy mission. The verdict? "He was an OK person," Catsimatidis told The Post.

In order to help with an array of challenges facing the digitization of the energy industry, companies, governments and regulatory agencies are looking at ways to make our energy consumption more efficient. One of the key sustainable and reliable solutions is the introduction of the smart grid, which uses a variety of operation and energy measures including smart meters, smart appliances, renewable energy resources and energy efficient resources to provide more data for energy operators, powering better decision-making and resource usage. The vast amount of data captured from operations, whether that be asset performance data, customer data, advanced metering data or geographic information, only continues to grow. Smart grids continuously collect and synthesize huge amounts of data from millions of smart sensors to make timely decisions on how best to allocate energy resources. AI in the energy sector is helping to empower the smart power grid, providing more effective and more profitable power trading and better regulation of power consumption.

This industry research presents the Global Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems Market size, historical breakdown data (2014 – 2019) and forecast (2020 – 2025). This report provides the estimation of market size and volume. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to estimate and validate the market size of Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems market. For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.

"Alexa, which trains are going from Vienna Central Station to Linz Central Station tomorrow morning?" "Tomorrow, the train Westbahn WB 906 is departing from Vienna Central Station at 8:42 – arrival at Linz Central Station is at 9:56. Or the train Railjet RJX 262 at 8:30 from Vienna Central Station – arrival at Linz Central Station is at 9:44." Alexa, set my alarm for tomorrow at 7:30 am, and Alexa, order me an Uber for tomorrow morning at 8 am from home to Vienna Central Station." Train and taxi bookings could be done like this or similar in Austria (and all over the world) very soon. Because in a few years, voice assistants and the Internet of Voice will have changed all our lives. Although we can only try to predict what the next years are going to bring, one thing is clear: many people and companies underestimate the far-reaching changes effected by voice assistants.

Sarah Dai, based in Beijing, covers technology and capital flows in the world of start-ups in Greater China. Previously, she worked as financial correspondent for Caixin Media in Hong Kong for over two years and wrote for China Daily in Beijing and London.

Sarah Dai, based in Beijing, covers technology and capital flows in the world of start-ups in Greater China. Previously, she worked as financial correspondent for Caixin Media in Hong Kong for over two years and wrote for China Daily in Beijing and London.