Sysomos rolled out a unified social media marketing and analytics platform yesterday that it says enables marketers to access all the paid, owned and earned data they need to create strategic campaigns, take action in real time and measure the actions through one interface. In effect, it unifies the range of tools Sysomos has developed or acquired over the years into one platform. Individual users, however, can focus on the aspects that matter most to them, whether it's identifying trending topics, measuring impact or using the refined data to tell relevant stories. The platform also incorporates artificial intelligence to "uncover correlations, anomalies and associations by using machine learning to process trillions of data points every second," as a release puts it, and that's the aspect I'm going to focus on. While viewing a couple of short previews of the new platform that Sysomos CEO Peter Heffring sent over last week, I was struck in particular by its ability to detect patterns not only in the words of a social campaign but also in posted images.

A prototype of a smart electric scooter is taking shape at the Gurugram-based Twenty Two Motors complete with GPRS, GPS and devices such as gyroscope and accelerometer. The startup, founded in August 2016 by automobile-loving engineer Parveen Kharb and Vijay Chandrawat, a software engineer with a career spanning startup roles, raised Rs 10 crore last week from a clutch of high-net-worth individuals in auto industry and plans to launch their innovative scooter at the next Auto Expo in February 2018. "The smart scooter is powered by artificial intelligence and all information is accessible on our server through a cloud system," said chief executive Kharb. The rider is always connected to the scooter via the mobile application that allows remote control and access. The cloud system allows for troubleshooting automatically.

It has been more than six years in the making, but a German startup will finally have the chance to test its 18-rotor commercial drone in public airways. Designed by e-Volo, the Volocopter 2X has received approval as an ultralight aircraft and should receive'multicopter' type certification in 2018 – letting it be used as flying taxis in pilot projects. The 2X is a revamped version of the Volocopter VC200, which now boasts a sportier look, a lithium battery pack and can top speeds of 62 mph – making it more suitable for everyday use. It has been more than six years in the making, but a German startup will finally have the chance to test its 18-rotor commercial drone in commercial airways. Designed by e-Volo, the Volocopter 2X has received approval as an ultralight aircraft and should receive'multicopter' type certification in 2018 – letting it be used as flying taxis in pilot projects Volocopter 2X has a lithium battery pack that lets users easily switch out and charge it - the battery can be charged in 120 minutes using a regular power outlet.

OITA – With forestry workers growing older, Oita Prefecture has embarked on a "smart forestry" initiative to reduce workloads, partly through the use of drones. Forests cover 72 percent of the prefecture, with most of them cultivated plantations. Despite the use of mechanization for cutting down trees, planting still involves hard physical work, including climbing mountain slopes while carrying nursery trees weighing up to 30 kg. Forestry association workers are currently the local industry's main workforce, but 44 percent of them are 60 or older. Young people are reluctant to join their ranks, due partly to the physical labor.

Three months into 2017 and we continue to encounter stories and predictions about how artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally change a variety of industries on an almost day-to-day basis. While it's receiving significant attention, the challenge is explaining what this type of technology could do to improve certain functions and jobs. Implementing systems to make dynamic and complex decisions as a way to displace humans is way off from mainstream adoption and the lack of articulating that concept effectively is typical of any hype cycle. As we continue into the year, we will start to see the hype wear off and broader adoption of AI-based solutions within organisations, particularly in data analysis and deriving insight from that data. Let's look at the trends we can expect over the coming months.

A soft-bodied robot that swims like a manta ray has been engineered to spy on underwater creatures without disturbing them. The mostly transparent robot has no motor or other rigid machinery and is much faster than other soft robotic fish. The goal is to use the robot to explore underwater areas, says Tiefeng Li at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. It could be used to investigate a submerged ship or plane wreck, or survey coral reefs. "The soft body will make it easy for the robot to sneak through reefs without damaging them," he says.

Willis Towers Watson has appointed Thorsten Querfurt as the companys new Global Industry Leader for Natural Resources. Querfurt will be responsible for leading the companys growth efforts in Natural Resources, which comprises three principal sectors: oil, gas and chemicals, metals and mining, and power and utilities (including renewable energy and nuclear). Querfurt joins from Oliver Wyman, where he spent four years as a partner in its Energy Practice, leading global client accounts, Energy Practice, developing new business, advising clients in the areas of operational risk and safety and managing global teams. Prior to that he spent ten years as a Director with Corven Consulting, a privately owned management consultancy, focused on business transformation in the energy sector. While at Corven he helped grow the practice for acquisition and led a series of consultancy initiatives for Oil & Gas, Manufacturing and Electricity clients.

There are around 55 million visually impaired people in India, up to 80% of whom could be helped by everyday procedures like Lasik. Medical and surgical resources, however, are limited. In April 2015, nonprofit L V Prasad Eye Institute, in Hyderabad, India, teamed up with Microsoft India to create Connected Eyes, a cloud-based machine-learning research project that uses data from tens of thousands of eye patients to identify the likelihood of success for new surgery, plus a probable regression rate, so that doctors can deploy those resources most effectively. Last December, Connected Eyes linked up with institutions in Brazil, Australia, and the United States to create the Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare, which will build a universally available service that offers eye doctors immediate predictions for their patients. "This will be a global pool of knowledge that everyone can benefit from," says Anil Bhansali, managing director of Microsoft India R&D.

Check out Fundamentals of Deep Learning by Nikhil Buduma to learn about key concepts in this complex and exciting field. Deep learning is enjoying unprecedented success in a wide variety of commercial applications. Around 10 years ago, very few practitioners could have predicted that deep learning-powered systems would surpass human-level performance in computer vision and speech recognition tasks. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we are confronted with some of the most challenging data analytics problems in science. While there are similarities between commercial and scientific applications in terms of the overall analytics tasks (classification, clustering, anomaly detection, etc.), a priori, there is no reason to believe that the underlying complexity of scientific data sets would be comparable to ImageNet. Are deep learning methods powerful enough to produce state-of-the-art performance for scientific analytics tasks?

Daedelus consists of six kerosene-powered microjets strapped to his limbs, which doesn't sound dangerous at all. While that might sound like a bad idea, the system "flies" at a walking pace, and the wearer only hovers about six to ten feet off the ground. For his part, Browning's convinced the jets are safe, stating that he uses small amounts of kerosene and has a dead-man's switch to kill the set-up when not pressed. For now, Browning is mostly shopping the device around at exhibitions, but he hopes it will one day be used by rescue or military personnel. Meanwhile, at the other end of the rocket science spectrum, NASA's jet propulsion laboratory is working on robots that can withstand roving throughout frozen planets and moons. While scientists would love to be able to explore Europa, or Titan, or subsurface oceans the technology to prepare robotic systems for cryogenic temperatures and rugged terrains doesn't technically exist yet.