Apple has developed a new tool that deconstructs iPhones after they are returned. The robotic cutting tool, called Liam, removes the valuable materials from iPhone parts so they can be repurposed into other products. Apple shared some details about the tool during a press event Monday. Some of the materials removed include cobalt, gold, silver, platinum and tungsten. For example, Tungsten is repurposed in precision cutting tools.

A new material being researched could make shape-shifting robots real, but let's hope they aren't as violent as the Transformers from the movies. Researchers have developed a flexible material that can stretch when heated and will allow robots to change shapes. The material, which can also be rigid, is a mix of elastomer foam with a soft metal alloy. With the material, robots could become more versatile. Most robots are rigid, much like human skeletons, but by morphing into new shapes, they could be used for new tasks.

The Supreme Court is staying out of a dispute between game maker Electronic Arts Inc. and former National Football League players who accuse the company of using their likenesses in the popular Madden NFL video game series without approval. The justices on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the company's use of the player's likenesses was not protected as "incidental use" under the First Amendment. The former players sued Electronic Arts in 2010 over the company's use of "historic teams" and players in Madden NFL games from 2001 to 2009. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2012 that the player lawsuit could proceed. Electronic Arts previously settled a similar case brought by college football and basketball players for 40 million.

Apple product events typically spark anticipation among tech bloggers and the company's hard-core fans. Monday's event, though, is drawing less excitement than some previous product launches. Apple is expected to announce a smaller, 4-inch iPhone and a smaller version of the iPad Pro tablet. But there's been no hint of any blockbuster developments, such as last year's highly anticipated Apple Watch debut. Despite speculation that Apple is working on a self-driving car or some new virtual-reality device, those are likely years away.

Domino's latest "deliveryman" stands three feet tall and doesn't need to be tipped. It has ferried pizzas in Brisbane at a top speed of 12 mph, and the company's Australian master franchise said it's excited for what could come next. "We have a relentless passion to push the boundaries of what's possible with pizza delivery," said Michael Gillespie, chief digital officer for Domino's in Australia. "As we get further, it's not hard to believe that we might have a store with a couple of [robots] that are doing deliveries." Domino's has started using a robotic cart named DRU, which stands for Domino's Robotic Unit, to deliver its offerings.

China has been the power engine of global economic growth since the Chinese Communist Party embraced free market economics some 30 years ago. What leveraged China's momentous success has been its people, or - to be more precise - the enormous number of cheap labour that migrated from the rural areas to the cities, some of which had to be built from scratch in order to accommodate millions of new residents. Low wages, foreign investment and open markets made China the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. But things have changed since those halcyon days of easy growth. Labour supply in China has become increasingly scarcer, a fact reflected in the almost exponential rise of wages since the beginning of the 2000s.

Before turning to the expected round of product announcements at today's Apple event, held at the company's campus in Cupertino, Calif., Apple introduced a technical development that won't be a product anytime soon: Liam, the recycling robot. Apple's vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson, said that though Apple's track record of reusing iPhones that are exchanged for upgrades is good, the company recognized that eventually, these things can't be reused. Therefore, she indicated, Apple decided to up its recycling game. The company's engineers in Silicon Valley developed a recycling robot, named Liam, that recognizes all the key parts on an iPhone, takes the phone apart, and pulls out the most valuable materials, including cobalt, lithium, gold, copper, silver, platinum, and tungsten. With a team of Liams available to mine phones for precious metals, Jackson announced a free recycling program for iPhones; customers can drop the phones at Apple stores, or print a prepaid mailing label at home. She urged customers to recycle devices in a way that is "safe for data and safe for the planet," and will keep a little Liam and his friends busy.

Drone images accumulate much faster than they can be analyzed. Researchers have developed a new approach that combines crowdsourcing and machine learning to speed up the process. Who would win in a real-life game of "Where's Waldo," humans or computers? A recent study suggests that when speed and accuracy are critical, an approach combing both human and machine intelligence would take the prize. With drones being used to monitor everything natural disaster sites, pollution, or wildlife populations, analyzing drone images in real-time has become a critically important big data challenge. Publishing in the journal Big Data, researchers, including Stéphane Joost from EPFL, present a new approach to rapidly interpret aerial images taken by camera drones that combines human crowdsourcing and machine learning.

Computers are getting pretty good at predicting the future. In many cases they do it better than people. That's why Amazon uses them to figure out what you're likely to buy, how Netflix knows what you might want to watch, the way meteorologists come up with accurate 10-day forecasts. Now a team of scientists has demonstrated that a computer can outperform human judges in predicting who will commit a violent crime. In a paper published last month, they described how they built a system that started with people already arrested for domestic violence, then figured out which of them would be most likely to commit the same crime again.

Deep in the heart of Imperial College, London, a computer is learning how to play Pac-Man. Like many humans, it struggles to get the hang of the classic 1980s video game at first. With time though, experience helps it decide which manoeuvres will allow it to evade the clutches of a relentless gang of animated ghosts. This is just one of dozens of artificial intelligence (AI) projects slowly transforming the UK into the global hub for a technology that elicits fascination and fear in equal measure. The point of teaching a computer to master Pac-Man is to help it "think" and learn like a human.