Pieter Abbeel is an associate professor in UC Berkeley's EECS department, where he works in machine learning and robotics--in particular his research is on making robots learn from people (apprenticeship learning) and how to make robots learn through their own trial and error (reinforcement learning). Pieter's robots have learned advanced helicopter aerobatics, knot tying, basic assembly, and organizing laundry. He has won various awards, including best paper awards at ICML and ICRA, the Sloan Fellowship, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (AFOSR-YIP) Award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (ONR-YIP) Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award (DARPA-YFA), the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program Award (NSF-CAREER), the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award, the MIT TR35, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Early Career Award, and the Dick Volz Best US PhD Thesis in Robotics and Automation Award.

Maybe it's just FOMO, but it seems like every internet company wants to be in the car business these days, and Japan's DeNA is no exception. The app maker's automotive wing had a special event in Tokyo today (via Reuters) to reveal its first self-driving vehicle, a 12-person bus which will begin operating in Japan's Chiba prefecture at a shopping center next month. DeNA is probably a familiar name for TechCrunch readers, but the company's highlight moment to date might be its selection as Nintendo's partner in bringing its iconic gaming characters and brands to mobile devices. DeNA has had an automotive business for a while now, though, and now it's launching its first production vehicle in partnership with French driverless tech company EasyMile, which makes the EZ10 Robot Shuttle currently being trialled in a number of global projects. The EasyMile EZ10 can hit a max of 40km or around 25 miles per hour, and employs a variety of sensors, cameras, GP and other systems in order to operate. It's not a full-featured city dweller, though; EasyMile's vehicles are designed specifically for use in private environments, where they don't have to contend with the added complexity of human traffic.

Flying a drone is tricky business. The prosumer models are powerful, fast and can get into trouble in a hurry if you don't know what you're doing. That's why smart, logical design and intuitive controls are so important in the drone game. SEE ALSO: The FAA's new rules for drones are bad news for Amazon Don't get me wrong, the 1,299, six-rotor drone is expertly designed. It has a third more rotors than, say, the DJI Phantom 4 and, unlike virtually every other drone I've tested, folds up for relatively easy transport: the rotor arms fold down to the body when not in flight.

In a project that sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, defense specialist BAE Systems plans to chemically'grow' drones in large vats. The U.K.-based defense company is working with the University of Glasgow on the concept, which aims to'grow' Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in large-scale labs using chemistry. The project could help create specially-designed aircraft in weeks, rather than years. At the heart of the initiative is a "Chemputer" machine that would use advanced chemical processes to grow aircraft and some of their electronic systems. Very much a future project, scant details are available on how the Chemputer will work, although BAE systems says the machine could conceivably "grow" the drones from a molecular level.

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

For anyone who cares about Internet security and encryption, the advent of practical quantum computing looms like the Y2K bug in the 1990s, a countdown to an unpredictable event that might just break everything. The concern: hackers and intelligence agencies could use advanced quantum attacks to crack current encryption techniques and learn, well, anything they want. Now Google is starting the slow, hard work of preparing for that future, beginning with a web browser designed to keep your secrets even when they're attacked by a quantum computer more powerful than any the world has seen. The search giant today revealed that it's been rolling out a new form of encryption in its Chrome browser that's designed to resist not just existing crypto-cracking methods, but also attacks that might take advantage of a future quantum computer that accelerates codebreaking techniques untold gajillions of times over. For now, it's only testing that new so-called "post-quantum" crypto in some single digit percentage of Chrome desktop installations, which will be updated so that they use the new encryption protocol when they connect to some Google services.

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know," famously explained former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know." Thanks to a technology innovation known as swarm AI the unknown unknown variables in politics and business may be evaporating.

DeNA Co., best known as a mobile video game maker, said on Thursday it will launch a driverless bus service at a park in Chiba Prefecture from next month. The Tokyo-based firm said it has partnered with EasyMile S.A., a French startup that manufactures self-driving buses. There are not many firms that can provide "completely driverless vehicles that can be used for actual services," said Hiroshi Nakajima, who heads DeNA's automotive business, explaining why his company chose to partner with EasyMile. DeNA's new service will employ the company's EZ10 bus, an electric vehicle that can accommodate 12 people. The limited-time service, dubbed Robot Shuttle, will begin on a yet-to-be-determined date in August inside the 21,000 sq.-meter Toyosuna Park in Chiba's Makuhari district, adjacent to vast Aeon shopping complex.

If you've been following the news recently, you've probably heard a few of the breaking stories about robots beating humans in fairly complex tasks. It started with game show contestants, evolved into outperforming human instinct, and now computers are even outperforming fighter pilots in tactical simulations. What does this all mean for you? Although Hollywood loves to depict artificial intelligence as robots out to destroy humans, that's far from the case in the real world. Chances are you've been using artificial intelligence for awhile and haven't even noticed.