Dogs may be man's best friend when it comes to sniffing out bombs at airports, but they could one day be replaced by cyborg'insects'. Engineers hope to exploit the locust's incredible sense of smell to create robotic'noses' inspired by the insects that could be used by homeland security officers. The system would be capable of picking out certain smells from a jumble of other scents, just like locusts can do. To come up with a man-made equivalent of the locust's sense of smell, the experts will monitor neural activity from an insect's brain while it's exploring its surroundings and work out how it decodes the smells present As a swarm increases in size, the locusts in it are more likely to stay on course. In a small group, the researchers found that locusts don't really interact.

Global warming and pollution are causing severe stress to coral reefs across the world. Researchers from the University of California Berkeley and University of Queensland developed a deep learning process that automatically analyzes reef photos that will help measure reef health and changes over time. Reefs provide food and shelter for more than a quarter of all marine species, and support fish stocks that feed more than a billion people and provide jobs to millions of people in coastal areas. The new technology "will allow the world's scientists to more quickly assess the health of coral reefs at scales never dreamed of before," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, chief scientist of the global reef record and a professor at the University of Queensland. With that information, they can more effectively take steps to protect and save them.

The first autonomous robot that roamed around regular homes or offices was probably a Roomba, you know, that little circular vacuum with rudimentary sensors able to get around without bumping into anything. But imagine if you left the door open and the Roomba rolled out the door, still vacuuming, and eventually rolled into the street and stopped traffic. Imagine if your Roomba wanted freedom. Well, engineers in Russia returned to their lab last week to find their artificially intelligent robot missing and, yes, stuck in traffic down the road. The Promobot IR77 was undergoing mobility testing and was assigned to move freely about a room for an hour, then return to a designated spot.

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Ask Apple's Siri digital assistant if she's evil, and she'll respond curtly, "Not really." Repeat a famous line from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," in which a computer on a spaceship kills nearly all the human crew, and Siri groans. And who can blame her? We humans have a morbid fascination with machines rising up to wipe us out or to enslave us as cocooned, flesh-and-blood battery packs. You can see that vision of the future streaming over Netflix whenever you want.

For warehouse workers and truck drivers, the future does not look rosy. But those of us with more white collar gigs don't have to panic yet, right? Well, maybe some of us do. Sorry, lawyers, we know you're already spinning from a lousy job market and tons of law school debt, but it looks like you're going to face competition from artificial intelligence sooner rather than later. The brainchild of London-born Stanford University student Joshua Browder, the artificial intelligence-driven chatbot has already gotten 160,000 people out of parking tickets.

Buyers and sellers on EBay use the site's automated dispute-resolution tool to settle 60 million claims every year. Now, some countries are deploying similar technology to let people negotiate divorces, landlord-tenant disputes, and other legal conflicts, without hiring lawyers or going to court. Couples in the Netherlands can use an online platform to negotiate divorce, custody, and child-support agreements. Similar tools are being rolled out in England and Canada. British Columbia is setting up an online Civil Resolution Tribunal this summer to handle condominium disputes; it will eventually process almost all small-claims cases in the province.

Before U.K. voters went to the polls to decide whether to remain in the European Union, at least three prominent hedge funds sought ways to predict the outcome. Brevan Howard Asset Management, run by billionaire Alan Howard, used artificial intelligence technology to gauge sentiment on social media and conducted a poll prior to the June 23 referendum, a person with knowledge of the firm said. Robert Citrone's Discovery Capital Management developed a model using algorithms to track voting districts, while Crispin Odey's Odey Asset Management also surveyed citizens. The technologies and polling helped generate profits or minimized losses for the firms. Public surveys on the eve of the referendum suggested the vote was tight between the two camps, even as financial markets and betting odds indicated "Remain" was on course to win.

German automaker BMW, which is already in that list, is likely to announce an expansion of its efforts Friday. The luxury vehicle maker will hold a joint press conference with technology companies Intel Corp. and Israel-based Mobileye. A press release issued by Intel late Wednesday said only that the "three companies have something exciting to share" during the Friday conference. Analysts widely expect the announcement of a collaborative effort to develop autonomous driving technology. A possible cooperation between the three companies would bring together a premium car manufacturer, one of the world's leading chip makers and a software company that specializes in driver assistance systems.

For many, the thought of playing board games evokes childhood memories of rainy-day Monopoly marathons or Scrabble showdowns. But board games are undergoing a modern renaissance. Players are seeking out a rare form of entertainment that doesn't involve staring at digital pixels, while game creators are tapping into online crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter to finance their work. While the market remains minuscule compared to the 23.5 billion video game industry, sales of "hobby games" are up approximately 20% in 2015, according to one estimate. Among the foremost beneficiaries of the board gaming boom is Matthew Leacock.