A motorized camera slider is a commonly used tool in filmmaking, but Toronto-based company Axibo Media wanted to take it to a new level. They made a motorized slider more (artificially) intelligent than any other. That's right, the Axibo slider uses artificial intelligence to pan, tilt, and slide your camera, to track objects, even take photos. As far as we know, it's the world's first AI-powered camera slider in the market, and it's meant to be "your personal camera assistant." The Axibo slider comes with a built-in camera which it uses to track any object in the frame.

This week on Off the Shelf, Booz Allen Hamilton's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Team, vice president Jeff Kimmons and directors Graham Gilmer, Kathleen Featheringham, and Justin Betof, discuss how to operationalize AI and machine learning (ML) to support the Department of Defense mission. The Booze Allen Hamilton (BAH) AI team highlight how the federal government is engaging and evolving with AI and the unique challenges and opportunities that entails. Among the changes is a focused organizational structure and key champions supporting AI development and deployment across the Department of Defense, including the Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Tea, (aka Project Maven) and the Joint AI Center (the JAIC). The group also highlights and outlines a holistic approach to AI development that delivers mission centric AI services. Everyone can build AI in a lab--the challenging it getting it to work in real-world environments--and the BAH AI team outlines key strategies necessary to getting it done.

Royal Dutch Shell is heavily investing in research and development of artificial intelligence (AI), which it hopes will provide solutions to some of its most pressing challenges. From meeting the demands of a transitioning energy market, urgently in need of cleaner and more efficient power, to improving safety on the forecourts of its service stations, AI is at the top of the agenda. I have been working with Shell over the past months to help create a data strategy, which gave me a thorough insight into Shell's AI priorities and initiatives. Current initiatives include deploying reinforcement learning in its exploration and drilling program, to reduce the cost of extracting the gas that still drives a significant proportion of its revenues. Elsewhere across its global business, Shell is rolling out AI at its public electric car charging stations, to manage the shifting demand for power throughout a day.

Satellite imagery holds a wealth of information that could be useful for industries, science and humanitarian causes, but one big and persistent challenge with it has been a lack of effective ways to tap that disparate data for specific ends. That's created a demand for better analytics, and now, one of the startups that has been building solutions to do just that is announcing a round of funding as it gears up for expansion. Descartes Labs, a geospatial imagery analytics startup out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is today announcing that it has closed a $20 million round of funding, money that CEO and founder Mark Johnson described to me as a bridge round ahead of the startup closing and announcing a larger growth round. The funding is being led by Union Grove Venture Partners, with Ajax Strategies, Crosslink Capital, and March Capital Partners (which led its previous round) also participating. It brings the total raised by Descartes Labs to $60 million, and while Johnson said the startup would not be disclosing its valuation, PitchBook notes that it is $220 million ($200 million pre-money in this round).

The Trillium Automobile Dealers Association recently hosted its annual Innovation Series conferences for auto dealers, managers, auto students, suppliers and marketing experts. A representative from Microsoft spoke about how artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting the auto industry and suggested it could be one of the world's most fundamental pieces of technology in the years ahead. I would agree with that assessment. Already AI has found many useful applications in automobiles, including driving features, cloud services, auto manufacturing and insurance, and driver monitoring. Vehicles today have on-board sensors that alert drivers to potentially dangerous situations.

As a proof of concept, engineers used these new actuators to build a soft, battery-powered robot that can walk untethered on flat surfaces and move objects. They also built a soft gripper that can grasp and pick up small objects. The team, led by UC San Diego mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Shengqiang Cai, published the work Oct. 11 in Science Advances. A problem with most soft actuators is that they come with bulky setups. That's because their movements are controlled by pumping either air or fluids through chambers inside.

Enterprises adopt artificial intelligence in an effort to positively impact their business performance. But the power of AI goes beyond business and can even change human experiences. This 21st century technology is serving as a driver and even impacting consumer services across a variety of industries, from retail, finance and beyond. The following client experiences serve as a gateway to better understand AI, which not only helps create a reaction, the technology can also help us act proactively in advance. Imagine a young couple who just became first-time parents and want the peace of mind that if anything happens, their new family member is protected.

Electronic skin that will allow robots to feel heat, cold and pain could be "life changing" for people with prostheses and paralysis, its creator has claimed. Professor Gordon Cheng led a project at the Technical University of Munich to cover a robot with 1,260 small hexagonal plates, giving it an electronic skin. Individual sensor cells placed in a honeycomb arrangement on the upper body, arms, legs and soles of the feet of the robot meant it could measure proximity, pressure, temperature and acceleration. This same technology could allow people with prosthetic limbs or paralysis recover feeling and use their sense of touch more easily, Prof Cheng claimed. He said: "We adapted it in the same...

Across industries and in nearly every vertical, AI is driving digital transformation. In sales, for example, 70% of US-based professionals are now using some form of AI at work. In marketing, platforms like IBM's Watson Marketing, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Pega's Unified DMP are bringing brands closer than ever before to their customers. Project scheduling optimizers for engineering, telecommunications AI that recognize early signs of churn, and personalized gaming experiences based on in-game data are just a few of the ways AI is disrupting major industries today. AI is no longer the exclusive domain of massive enterprise with equally outsized R&D budgets, either. Intelligent automation is now accessible to even the smallest of businesses; call it entry-level AI, if you will.

For all the talk about how artificial intelligence could transform what happens in the classroom, AI hasn't yet lived up to the hype. AI involves creating computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. It's already being experimented with to help automate grading, tailor lessons to students' individual needs and assist English language learners. We heard about a few promising ideas at a conference I attended last week on artificial intelligence hosted by Teachers College, Columbia University. Shipeng Li, corporate vice president of iFLYTEK, talked about how the Chinese company is working to increase teachers' efficiency by individualizing homework assignments.