When the robot found the shipwreck, the humans controlling it must have been elated. The SS Central America, a paddle wheel steamboat, had gone down in a hurricane in 1857, loaded with gold from the California Gold Rush. For more than a century treasure seekers searched in vain. But in 1988, a robotic submersible operated by an outfit called the Columbus-America Discovery Group finally found the wreck roughly 200 miles off the Georgia coast. Lawsuits soon challenged Columbus-America's claim to the gold.

Uber and other sharing services are growing in popularity with business travelers, according to a new report from expense management firm Certify. SAN FRANCISCO - Uber allegedly has placed an order for a number of 100,000 Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans, fueling speculation about the ride-sharing company's plans to ultimately field a fleet of self-driving automobiles. The German automaker's technology showpiece at present does not feature fully autonomous driving capabilities. Rather, it offers driver-assistance features such as lane-keeping and blind-spot monitoring. But apparently "(Uber) wanted autonomous cars," a source told Germany's Manager Magazin Friday citing officials at both companies.

Looking up a presidential hopeful's campaign finance information is now just a Google away. If you look up a candidate's name using the search engine, it now pulls up a quick summary of how much the candidate's campaign has raised -- and a breakdown of what percentage of funds comes from super PACs and other groups versus individual donations. All of this is located in the sidebar. Making the search a little more specific by looking for something like "clinton campaign finance" will put the same summary at the top of your search results. A tab at the bottom of the summary will let you expand to get more details -- like how many donations came from people in what industry, and where the candidate stacks up against the competition in fundraising terms.

President Barack Obama speaks at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) on March 11 in Austin, Texas. AUSTIN -- SXSW is all about FOMO. Between the festival's events being scattered across the city and a designed-for-dismay schedule that can schedule dozens panels on top of each other, this annual gathering is guaranteed to inflict Fear Of Missing Out. I'd like to think that I've learned how to manage this chaos--I've attended SXSW's tech-oriented Interactive conference every year since 2012--but instead, I kept hearing about fascinating things I'd missed via comments like "great emoji panel" (yes, actual event) or "they had drones delivering piñatas" (apparently that happened too). The only sane response is to accept that you don't run your SXSW schedule--your current location does.

Columnist Marc Saltzman shows you five great gadgets featured during South by Southwest Interactive. Fusing the arts with emerging technology, the 23rd annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival has just wrapped up in Austin, Texas. Featuring multiple panels, seminars, exhibitors and meet-ups over five days, topics ranged from high-tech movie making and coding games to robotics and artificial intelligence to more practical themes such as how start-ups can secure funding, "MedTech" and "FinTech" (financial technology) solutions. And, yes, I took advantage of silly photo ops, too, such as posing with Grumpy Cat, a woman riding a unicorn or an enormous TIE Fighter spacecraft from Star Wars. The following are five technologies, products and services that caught my eye at SXSW Interactive.

Lightroom users who sync their photos to the app's Web module can now test out a new and improved way to locate specific images: Search. As part of a new Lightroom Technology Preview series debuting today, Adobe is making the search feature available to Creative Cloud Photography Plan subscribers to test and offer feedback before finalizing it. As described in a blog post Friday morning, Search lets you type in a keyword to enable Lightroom to display all related images it finds in your library, even images you never tagged or labeled. Macworld got to test out the new feature early, and it worked quite nicely. Just log in to your account, and click on the Lr logo at the top left to access the menu. There, you'll find the new Technology Previews feature.

If data science can be used to craft a brand-new beer, why shouldn't an autonomous robot deliver the accompanying pizza? That, in fact, is exactly the premise behind a new initiative from Domino's. Australia-based Domino's Pizza Enterprises has created an autonomous delivery vehicle named Domino's Robotic Unit, or DRU, and begun limited testing on restricted streets in Queensland. The device, announced Thursday, is a four-wheeled vehicle with compartments built to keep the customer's food hot and drinks cold. A "friendly persona" aims to help customers identify and interact with it. DRU can now navigate from a starting point to its destination, selecting the best path of travel.

The pilot of a Lufthansa passenger jumbo jet has reported that a drone aircraft nearly collided with his airliner on its landing approach to Los Angeles, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The close encounter between the wide-body, four-engine Airbus A380 and the drone occurred at about 1.30pm at an altitude of 5,000ft (152 metres) as the unmanned aircraft passed about 200ft (61 meters) over the Lufthansa flight 14 miles (22.5 km) east of the city's international airport, the FAA said. No evasive action was taken by the airline crew, and the plane, Lufthansa Flight 456, safely made its landing minutes later without further incident, according to FAA spokesman Ian Gregor. The FAA immediately alerted the Los Angeles police department's air support division. The number of passengers and crew aboard the plane was not reported by authorities, nor was the flight's origin.

Everything you do changes your brain. Right now, wherever you are, looking at these words is shaping and modifying the connections between neurons inside your head. It seems like a scary thought, but this process – known as neuroplasticity – is fundamental to our ability to learn new skills, keep hold of old ones, and form new memories. Imagine, then, if we could take control of that process. If we could target specific types of skills and cognitive processes, then we could teach our brains to be better at, well, anything.

At San Francisco's first fully automated restaurant, meals appear in little glass cubbies, just 90 seconds after customers order and pay on wall-mounted iPads. It's a human-less experience – no waitstaff, no cashier, no one to get your order wrong and no one to tip. The moment before the meal appears, the see-through display screen that fronts the cubbies goes black for the few seconds when you might catch sight of the hand that feeds you. Related: Would you bet against sex robots? AI'could leave half of world unemployed' Eatsa has not yet achieved total automation.