UK astronaut Tim Peake will get to drive a rover on Mars shortly. Or, at least, that is the scenario he is facing in a challenging experiment. In reality, the Briton, currently on the International Space Station, will command a robot to roll around a giant sandpit in Stevenage that simulates the surface of the Red Planet. It is part of a European Space Agency project that aims to learn how astronauts can control remote systems on other worlds. Known as Meteron (Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network), the programme has already seen Danish ISS crewman Andreas Mogensen get a robot on Earth to put pegs in a series of holes.

French officials have unveiled a humanoid diving robot that they hope will give a big artificial hand to the practice of underwater archaeology. It is intended to help researchers explore underwater archaeological sites that are too deep to be explored by human divers. According to Stanford, the concept for Ocean One was born from the need to study coral reefs deep in the Red Sea, far below the comfortable range of human divers. No existing robotic submarine can dive with the skill and care of a human diver, so OceanOne was conceived and built from the ground up as "a successful marriage of robotics, artificial intelligence and haptic feedback systems."

French officials have unveiled a humanoid diving robot that they hope will give a big artificial hand to the practice of underwater archaeology. Ocean One, which looks like something out of a scuba-diving sequel to "Transformers," is the work of a team of roboticists, including Oussama Khatib of Stanford University. It is intended to help researchers explore underwater archaeological sites that are too deep to be explored by human divers. It was unveiled by culture officials Thursday in the French city of Marseille after a trial sifting through the wreckage of "The Moon," a 17th century warship, where it had managed to collect a delicate ceramic pot and bring it back to the surface. According to Stanford, the concept for Ocean One was born from the need to study coral reefs deep in the Red Sea, far below the comfortable range of human divers.

Intelligent technology is having a significant impact on the way customers interact with the public sector. In this article the experts at Agilisys offer an opinion on the shape of citizen interactions to come. In its recent report, The Future of Jobs, the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggested that automation, software and robots are not just changing skills requirements but replacing certain jobs altogether. While this may be worrying for those with manual, repetitive or labour-intensive jobs, it's important to focus on the 2.1 million new jobs that will be created in more specialised areas. Too often shrouded in mystery and fear, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intelligent automation could actually revitalise innovation and revolutionise working practices.

The robotic skull of a T-600 cyborg used in the movie Terminator 3. Eduardo Parra/Getty Images hide caption The robotic skull of a T-600 cyborg used in the movie Terminator 3. In his lab at George Mason University in Virginia, Sean Luke has all kinds of robots: big ones with wheels, medium ones that look like humans, and then he has a couple of dozen that look like small, metal boxes. He and his team at the Autonomous Robotics Lab are training those little ones to work together without the help of a human. In the future, Luke and his team hope those little robots can work like ants -- in teams of hundreds, for example, to build houses, or help search for survivors after a disaster. "These things are changing very rapidly and they're changing much faster than we sort of expected them to be changing recently," Luke says. New algorithms and huge new databases are allowing robots to navigate complex spaces, and artificial intelligence just achieved a victory few thought would ever happen: A computer made by Google beat a professional human in a match of Go.

This exercise represents an intended worst-case scenario for machine learning, as my aim was to test the results on a scarce dataset (n 52). In the Catalan linguistic area in Spain there is no census data about native speakers. Indeed, there is no real useful data about Catalan language from a data science perspective. I focus my attention in this case because until 1950, virtually 100% of the population of the Catalan linguistic area was Catalan native speaker, but from 1950 until now, population has doubled by immigration, that in addition to demographic and political reasons, resulted in Catalan as a minority language in most of its former linguistic area. Currently, we don't have extensive quantitative data to know the real situation or evolution of Catalan language in its territory.

Google's self-driving car just got a boost from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal auto safety and standards regulators should set rules governing self-driving cars -- not state agencies that may not have the technological know-how to assess the rapidly evolving technology. That was the message delivered to federal administrators Wednesday by Chris Urmson, the chief architect of Google's seven-year-old autonomous car program. Urmson was one of a variety of auto experts speaking at a Stanford University forum organized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is soliciting comments as it aims to establish guidelines later this summer for companies developing autonomous cars. The event took place the day after Google announced it was part of the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a lobbying group of autonomous-car focused companies that also includes Ford, Lyft, Uber and Volvo.

French officials have unveiled a humanoid diving robot that they hope will give a big artificial hand to the practice of underwater archaeology. Ocean One, which looks like something out of a scuba-diving sequel to "Transformers," is the work of a team of roboticists, including Oussama Khatib of Stanford University. It is intended to help researchers explore underwater archaeological sites that are too deep to be explored by human divers. It was unveiled by culture officials on Thursday in the French city of Marseille following a trial sifting through the wreckage of "The Moon," a 17th century warship, where it had managed to collect a delicate ceramic pot and bring it back to the surface. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

DEVELOPING: A contractor who threatened to set off a bomb at the headquarters of Fox 45 Baltimore Thursday afternoon, forcing police to evacuate the building, walked outside before a sniper shot him as cameras rolled. The suspect, a man in his 20s, was still alive but refused to cooperate with officers, police spokesman T.J. Smith said. Reporters said they saw him kick off some of his clothing. When he walked out of the building, he was wearing a white panda suit, a surgical mask and sunglasses. Robot trying to get suspect to show his hands.

The phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy" is linked to the Fourth Amendment in the same way the phrase "I'll be back" is linked to the Terminator franchise. In essence, it dictates the applicability of the law guaranteeing "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects." Given that the Supreme Court has always treated American homes as more or less sacrosanct, it seems likely that there's nothing to fear from the government (unless you give law enforcement probable cause). For civilians, privacy laws have traditionally done a pretty good job of protecting Americans from invasive or inappropriate photography or recordings. That does not mean, however, that recordings don't go public.