The cutest robo-smartphone ever made is hitting shelves in Japan next month - but is it cute enough to drop almost 1,300? RoBoHoN (which translates roughly as "heart moving phone") is an adorable tiny robot, which doubles up as a smartphone. Or is it a smartphone that doubles up as a robot? Either way, the happy little bot is a surprisingly powerful piece of technology in its own right. Created by Japanese electronics firm Sharp, RoBoHoN is a 20cm tall robot phone. It'll read out phone messages, announce phone calls and even shout at you when it's time to wake up.

BRUSSELS--The European Union could require Internet search engines, such as Alphabet Inc.'s Google, to provide more transparency about advertising systems and conditions of use as part of new rules to regulate Web platforms. European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip said on Friday that the EU wouldn't create one set of rules for all Internet companies operating in Europe, but would try to target specific problems, such as a...

Now that drones have become a standard tool in our military arsenal, the next job is to make them more efficient and capable than ever before. DARPA's newest invention is the Gremlin: a drone that be deployed from a bomber while in flight, execute its mission, and then return to an extraction point where a cargo plane yanks it out of the sky and brings it safely home. The drones are capable of flying unmanned, but being able to retrieve them makes them reusable, which is both cost-effective and convenient. But drone retrieval also protects U.S. military technology and secrets. Sending fleets of tiny Gremlins on intelligence-gathering missions is one thing, but being able to recapture them instead of leaving them in the hands of hostiles is a huge boon to the military.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

The idea that humans are on the verge of developing an artificial intelligence whose abilities far outstrip our own is ridiculous, said Chris Bishop, Microsoft's director of research at Cambridge, highlighting the many limitations of AI systems today. "This is a good moment for a little reality check," he told a public discussion hosted by The Royal Society in London this week. While recent breakthroughs in machine learning have allowed computers to become as adept as the average person at recognising faces and objects and to make huge strides in areas such as voice recognition, Bishop cautioned against assuming that machines are outstripping human performance across the board. "Yes, deep learning has achieved human-level performance in object recognition but what does that mean? It means the machine makes about the same number of errors as the human. "The reason the machine is as good as the human at this is because it can distinguish between 157 varieties of mushroom, whereas it makes all kinds of stupid mistakes that humans wouldn't make." Even some of the most celebrated examples of machine intelligence, such as a Google DeepMind system beating a world champion in the notoriously complex game of Go, need to be understood in context of the time and effort that went into building the system, he said. In 2015, GE inaugurated a new, Multi-Modal manufacturing facility in Chakan, India. If the company's ambitions for the space are realized, it could drive a massive change in global manufacturing. "[Take] the Go example, where the machine has just about crept ahead of the best human.

For the consumer & retail and banking industries, standard features can be configured into customer interaction templates for use in attending to customers or for marketing activities. In addition, Pepper can store information from interacting with customers on the cloud for future analysis, and the data can then be visualized, providing an integrated streamflow through to customer support. Pepper also has sensors to detect anyone approaching it, which enables interaction with that individual. Following the interaction, the new customer information can be reviewed through Interactive Analytics. "We need to know more about Pepper. In ten years, Pepper will be used in ways we never imagined. Accenture is working together with Softbank Robotics to take it to another level, thinking about how it can help solve our client's challenges and how it can be used to provide better customer services."

In more than 30 years in the BBC I have never had a personal assistant, or anyone to help fix my busy schedule (extraordinary, I know). But this week I took on a PA with a specific brief to organise my meetings. She's called Amy Ingram, and I regret to say her work so far leaves a little to be desired. But then again she is a virtual assistant, or bot. Amy is the product of two years of work by a New York based artificial intelligence start-up called x.ai. Its co-founder and chief executive Dennis Mortensen tells Tech Tent in an interview for this afternoon's programme that the idea was to prove that artificial intelligence could now handle a single useful task.

GWEN IFILL: Now we continue our series about artificial intelligence, A.I., where computers are able to make intelligent decisions without human input. As computing power gets stronger and people continue to generate massive amounts of data, A.I. is making its way into the marketplace and into your doctor's examination room. Hari Sreenivasan has the latest in series on breakthroughs in invention and innovation. HARI SREENIVASAN: Advances in artificial intelligence continue to push the boundaries between science fiction and reality, like this brain-controlled device at the University of Minnesota. It enables users to fly a model helicopter with only their thoughts.

Saqib Shaikh is a software developer from London, England who is currently working for Microsoft on the firm's Bing search engine. Shaikh lost his sight when he was seven years old. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has strived to be a leader in the artificial intelligence arena, developing advanced AI theories and applications that permit machines to learn, evolve and make independent decisions. Microsoft's AI research team is building … Microsoft certainly hasn't been scared off doing further experiments with artificial intelligence after the whole racist bot debacle. The tech firm is back with an AI powered API that can identify (or at least try) what's in a picture.

This panel gives attendees an opportunity to see and hear how Intelligent Assistants evolve into resources – ranging from personal avatars to robots – that use natural language understanding and machine learning to improve aspects of our daily lives. Speakers: Shawn Edmunds, VP, North America, ValidSoft Alex Lebrun, Co-Founder, Wit.ai, Facebook Wally Brill, Principal Consultant, 21contact Doc Searls, Author, "The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge" From Intelligent Assistants Conference 2015 (Oct.