The audience at this year's IoT World Conference (Santa Clara Convention Center, May 10-12) was estimated to be 10,000. It grew rapidly from 750 in 2014 and 5,800 in 2015, according to IoT World founder Gavin Whitechurch. Ushered in by the fast-paced beat of La Roux's "Bulletproof," Gavin Whitechurch, founder of IoT World, stepped up to the stage to deliver his welcome address. The audience -- a stream of IoT believers, investors, and developers -- packed the ballroom. "It's been an amazing journey over 3 years," said Whitechurch. "We started three years ago on a street in Palo Alto.

Google is expected to dive deeper into virtual reality and artificial intelligence Wednesday during an annual conference that serves as a launching pad for its latest products and innovations. Although Google keeps its plans under wraps until the big event, the conference agenda makes it clear that virtual reality and artificial intelligence, or "machine learning," will be among the focal points. That has spurred speculation that Google is getting ready to release a virtual-reality device to compete with Facebook's new Oculus Rift headset, as well as the Samsung's Gear VR and the Vive from HTC and Valve. Reporters and bloggers from around the world will attend, ensuring that whatever the company unveils will also be featured in stories, pictures and video delivered to a vast audience of consumers. The three-day showcase also attracts thousands of computer programmers, giving Google an opportunity to convince them why they should design applications and other services that work with its gadgets and an array of software that includes the Chrome Web browser and Android operating system for mobile devices.

Dozens of companies who fancy their technologies as a great fit for the automotive market are on the hunt for alliances. For example, Kyocera and FotoNation announced Tuesday (May 17) a partnership agreement to develop intelligent automotive camera technology -- deemed critical in the coming era of semi- and fully autonomous cars. Kyocera has already dabbled in the auto sector with its rearview camera modules. FotoNation, with the lion's share of computational imaging solutions for mobile phones, entered the driver monitoring system market last year. "The two companies' interests are aligned," Sumat Mehra, senior vice president of marketing and business development at FotoNation, told EE Times, "to expand each company's presence in the automotive market" -- well beyond what they offer today.

Need a translation app for your vacation but don't want to get slammed with a big data bill? New updates to Google Translate, including the addition of another major language and a pop-up translation feature, can help. Google said today that its translation app -- which can translate in a number of ways including hearing someone speak or by reading what they write -- can now be used in offline mode with no data or Wi-Fi connection on both iOS and Android (it previously wasn't available on iOS), potentially eliminating the high price of data for travelers with iPhones. Some 52 languages, including French, German, Russian and, most recently, Filipino, can be translated offline. A complete list is here.

If you weren't certain about Google's plans to introduce an Amazon Echo competitor, a new report may help you feel a bit more sure about what'll happen at Google I/O tomorrow. According to The NewYork Times, Google will introduce it's standalone connected home device at I/O, and will name it'Home.' A previous report noted it was going by the codename of'Chirp.' Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May. The latest report pegs Google Home as a device that "answers simple questions and carries out basic tasks."

Google relies heavily on AI to help with its search functions as well as features like Google Now. However it looks like Google could soon be thinking of applying their AI to other features, such as chatbots and potentially integrate them into their other services like Google Hangouts, a messaging platform for Google users. The idea of chatbots aren't new, although recently they seem to have undergone a resurgence in popularity and are being used by the likes of Facebook and Microsoft. This is according to a report from The Information (paywall; via USA Today) in which it reads, "Essentially, Google wants to get into the bot-making business more broadly than people realized, and in a way that's similar to Microsoft's strategy, and relying on its strengths in artificial intelligence to convince developers to use its tools." Last year there were reports that Google was planning something similar and that by integrating it into messenger services like Hangouts, users could pose questions to the bot and have it answered for them without having to leave the app itself.

Sony Corp. said Wednesday it has invested in U.S. artificial intelligence startup Cogitai, aiming to develop new AI technologies and release products using them within the next three years. Sony is believed to have obtained a roughly 20 percent stake in the company, founded in September by three AI researchers, in a move that could lead to the Japanese electronics giant's return to the robot business. Sony was an AI pioneer, known for producing robotic dog AIBO and humanoid QRIO featuring AI technologies. But it withdrew from the robot business in 2006 to improve profitability and restructure its consumer electronics business. The company has continued AI research itself, however, and its technologies, including face and speech recognitions, have been applied to other Sony products, such as digital cameras and smartphones.

"I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Physics and Engineering in a statement. "A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the universe to run through all the combinations and work this out," he added. Scientists wanted to recreate an experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, which involved extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The condensates "are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero (-273.15 The experiment involved trapping 40 million atoms at the intersection between two laser beams. The team used magnetic fields to cool the atoms down to about five millionths of a degree above absolute zero. Scientists then used the AI algorithm to control the lasers during cooling, carefully tuning the power of the two lasers to allow the most energetic atoms to escape without losing hold of the coldest ones. The AI algorithm was able to do this ten times faster than a regular non-AI program. "It is cheaper than taking a physicist everywhere with you.

Self-driving cars are very much a part of the future of tech, with Google, Uber, Apple and plenty of other top names working to develop autonomous vehicles. That's where Otto, a startup that has come out of stealth, is aiming to shape the future. Founded by former Googlers Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron, Don Burnette, and Claire Delaunay, Otto wants to "rethink" the commercial trucking industry. In a Medium post, Levandowski, who lead Google's self-driving car efforts, and Ron, formerly with Google Maps and Motorola, explained that not only do trucks account for an oversized slice of pollution in the U.S. -- 28 percent of road pollution despite making up just one percent of all traffic, they claim -- but they cause a large number of fatalities, are inefficient and, to top it off, there's an increasing shortage of drivers. That creates the perfect storm for a tech-based solution, Otto's founders believe.

Chinese and U.S. producers say they plan to make an 80 million live-action sci-fi thriller based on the popular 1980s building block computer game Tetris. The movie will begin shooting next year. It is the first project from the newly formed Threshold Global Studios, a joint venture between Chinese entertainment investor Bruno Wu's Seven Star Works and producer Larry Kasanoff's California-based Threshold Entertainment Group. The pair said in a statement Tuesday that the joint venture "will make cross-cultural movies for the global market." Kasanoff added that the 32-year-old video game Tetris "is a perfect first project for this strategy."