Desperate to overcome Japan's growing shortage of labour, mid-sized firms are planning to buy robots to automate a wide range of tasks. According to a Bank of Japan survey, companies are introducing robots in the hopes of boosting investment by 17.5 percent - the highest level on record. Tasks that will given to the robots include manufacturing, earth-moving and even hotel room service. Desperate to overcome Japan's growing shortage of labour, mid-sized firms are planning to buy robots to automate a wide range of tasks Kawasaki Heavy Industries says its two-armed, 170-centimetre tall robot is selling well because it can be adapted to a range of industrial uses by electronics makers, food processors and drug companies. Hitachi Construction Machinery says it is also getting a lot of enquiries for its computer-programmed digging machines.

Desperate to overcome the nation's growing shortage of labor, midsized companies are planning to buy robots and other equipment to automate a wide range of tasks, including manufacturing, earthmoving and hotel room service. According to a Bank of Japan survey, companies with share capital of ¥100 million to ¥1 billion plan to boost investment in the fiscal year that started in April by 17.5 percent, the highest level on record. It is unclear how much of that is being spent on automation but companies selling such equipment say their order books are growing and the government says it sees a larger proportion of investment being dedicated to increasing efficiency. Revenue at many robot-makers also rose in the January-March period for the first time in several quarters. "The share of capital expenditure devoted to becoming more efficient is increasing because of the shortage of workers," said Seiichiro Inoue, a director at the industrial policy bureau of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

The replicants from Blade Runner were very human-like, and one of the reasons they appeared human was because they had skins that didn't just look real but also had the sensation of touch. In fact, the derogatory term used in that particular story for fictional replicants was "skin-job." If new research by engineers at the University of Minnesota advances further, it could result in a "bionic skin" that lets robots have the sense of touch. Not only that, the technology -- 3D printing stretchable electronic sensory devices -- could, in the future, be applied to printing electronics on human skin. The researchers published a study recently, describing their printing approach, in the journal Advanced Materials.

If you haven't used a 3-D printer yet, you may be surprised to learn that it isn't fully automated the way your office's inkjet is. With paper printers, users queue documents from a computer, and each finished sheet drops neatly into a tray, waiting to be collected. With commercial 3-D printers, however, designs are manually programmed into the printer, and each finished part is manually removed before starting a new print, which is very time-consuming. At schools and businesses, a trained expert usually handles all prints, which can be expensive. Now MIT spinout New Valence Robotics (NVBOTS) has brought to market the only fully automated commercial 3-D printer that's equipped with cloud-based queuing and automatic part removal, making print jobs quicker and easier for multiple users, and dropping the cost per part.

The future has already arrived in a small factory in Worcester, according to the man hired by Theresa May to put Britain at the forefront of the next industrial revolution. Juergen Maier, the chief executive of Siemens UK, believes new technologies including robotics, artificial intelligence and additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, can deliver greater productivity and create more highly paid jobs. But failing to crack the next revolution will come at a high price: falling living standards. The work being done in Worcester, and places like it, will be crucial if Britain is to be successful outside the EU, Maier says. The starting gun has been fired in this global race and Britain needs to get ahead.

Layer by metal layer, a complex component began to take shape with the help of an additive manufacturing machine -- known as a 3-D printer to most people -- and a clutch of USC engineering students at the region's newest center devoted to building better stuff and creating jobs. The part was being made for a Southern California company that was trying out an improved design but didn't have the machinery to produce something involving complicated shapes and angles. "We looked at the geometry and said'we should be able to,' and we printed it for them," said Satyandra K. Gupta, a USC professor and director of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing. The collaboration with the company, which had asked Gupta for complete secrecy to avoid tipping off competitors, was one of the first for the Center for Advanced Manufacturing. The facility opened in February as part of a $253-million Defense Department-sponsored consortium of dozens of corporations, schools, nonprofits and local governments around the country.

Today on In Case You Missed It: David Hasselhoff stars in a short film about an AI that takes over people's lives and decides what they should do and say. The kicker is that all of The Hoff's lines were written by -- you guessed it -- an AI. As M. Night Shyamalan would say, what a twist! We also take a look at MIT's newest homebuilding tool, a gigantic tank-treaded 3D printer called the Digital Construction Platform. It's armed with all sorts of appendages, including extruders, welding guns and scoop buckets.

The future of construction just got a little bit more real. Researchers at MIT have created a mobile robot that can 3-D-print an entire building in a matter of hours -- a technology that could be used in disaster zones, on inhospitable planets or even in our proverbial backyards. Though the platform described in the journal Science Robotics is still in early stages, it could offer a revolutionary tool for the construction industry and inspire more architects to rethink the relationship of buildings to people and the environment. Current construction practices typically involve bricklaying, wood framing and concrete casting – technologies that have been around for decades in some cases, and centuries in others. Homes and office buildings are often built in the same boxy, cookie-cutter-like templates, even though the environment from one area to another may change dramatically.

The average single-family home takes roughly seven months to complete, but MIT researchers have developed a cutting-edge system that does the job in less than a day. The team has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building. Equipped with a precision-motion robotic arm and powered by solar panels, the machine sprays an insulation foam mold on the ground and then fills it with concrete – it completed the walls of a 50-foot-diameter, 12-foot-high dome in 14 hours. MIT has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building. MIT's system is a massive robotic arm attached to a track vehicle.

Your next house could be built by a robot. Following the recent success of San Francisco-based startup Apis Cor, a team of MIT researchers have created a mobile autonomous 3D printer of their own. And to prove that the prototype works, the team had it build a 12-foot tall, 50-foot-wide igloo out of quick-setting foam -- the largest such structure made by a robot to date. The team recently published their work in the journal Science Robotics, arguing that automation should help lower construction costs and expedite building times. Their creation, dubbed the Digital Construction Platform, consists of a large hydraulic arm mounted on caterpillar treads. At the tip of its arm, the team installed a one-fingered gripping attachment though it can be swapped out for a number of different tools including foam and thermoplastic extruders, a welder, a water hose or a bucket.