Amazon's acquisition of the robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012 has helped the retail giant efficiently ship almost any product on earth to just about anyone. But those robots are pretty good stagehands as well.

TROISDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's Deutsche Post is testing robots that could help postal workers cope with increasing numbers of parcels on their delivery rounds, a company manager said on Thursday. The volume of parcels being delivered by Deutsche Post in Germany is rising steadily as more and more Germans buy goods online from retailers such as Amazon.com That is making up for declining letter volumes, but posing problems due to the larger size of items involved. "Robots could be used in deliveries in three to five years' time," Clemens Beckmann, head of innovation at the group's parcel and letter division, said in an interview with Reuters. The robots, which look like a table on wheels on which goods can be placed, would follow delivery workers, helping them to transport and carry heavy parcels. If the postie stops walking, the robot stops too, and it only starts again when they move on.

If its first quarter is anything to go by, 2016 may be shaping up historically as the 1491 of space discovery. The month preceding Valentine's Day alone provided what would once have been a year's worth of cosmic news. Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, took one giant leap toward a new Age of Discovery by relaunching and landing a rocket that had already made a round-trip journey through the stratosphere – a revolutionary moment in private space exploration. A pair of researchers kicked off a frenzied planet hunt by demonstrating that a massive, heretofore undetected planet could be lurking on the outer edge of our solar system. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking suggested that unforeseen effects of rapid scientific progress might, paradoxically, cause the extinction of life on Earth in the next thousand years or so, adding, "By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." And scientists announced they'd detected gravitational waves, evidence of a billion-year-old collision between black holes, thus confirming the final and most obscure principle of Einstein's theory of relativity – and opening a window that may soon offer a glimpse of the universe's very creation.

Amazon.com Inc. acquired artificial-intelligence startup Orbeus Inc. last fall, sources told Bloomberg, though neither company has announced the deal and wouldn't comment. Orbeus offers artificial intelligence-powered photo-recognition technology called ReKognition that automatically identifies and categorizes photo content. Other companies are making similar moves to acquire AI startups: Apple acquired facial-recognition company Emotient Inc. in January and Salesforce Monday said it had acquired image-recognition startup MetaMind. Amazon's Web Services (AWS) cloud-computing unit is widely seen as supporting its retail profits, which have lagged behind costs. Amazon's net sales grew 21.7% to 35.75 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to sales from AWS that increased 69.4% to 2.41 billion.

Amazon.com Inc., the largest internet retailer in the world, has acquired Artificial Intelligence-based deep learning startup Orbeus Inc. The acquisition underlines the effort made by Amazon to dig deeper into the world of smart software for its businesses in the cloud computing and connected devices spheres. This development was revealed by an Amazon insider who chose to remain anonymous as the company is yet make an official statement about the acquisition. Amazon's CEO Yi Li and other representatives of the company have not commented on the matter either. However, online search has disclosed that the domain name of Orbeus, Orbe.us, is registered in the name of Amazon Hostmaster, which is a part of Amazon technologies Inc., an Amazon subsidiary.

Messaging app Kik has launched an online store for chatbots, to allow brands to talk to users via bots. Chatbots - computer programs designed to simulate conversation with humans - are increasingly being seen as a key way to engage customers.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) completed a discrete acquisition, last fall, when it took over Sunnyvale California-based artificial-intelligence (AI) startup Orbeus Inc. Bloomberg cites sources that claim that Amazon has absorbed almost all of Orbeus' workforce in its own teams though the financial terms of the acquisition deal remain undisclosed. Orbeus is known for applying machine-learning tools on image processing. Prior to its takeover by Amazon, Orbeus had an AI tool under development that could use neural networks to identify, and categorize the content in various images. Its customers were mostly developers, who could purchase its image-processing application programming interface (API) called, ReKognition. The startup also designed an Android and iOS app called, PhotoTime which helps tag photos instantly.

Messaging app Kik has launched an online store for chatbots, to allow brands to talk to users via bots. Chatbots - computer programs designed to simulate conversation with humans - are increasingly being seen as a key way to engage customers. Kik, which has 275 million users, has signed up 16 partners including make-up store Sephora and The Weather Channel. Microsoft opened a chatbot store last week and Facebook is expected to follow suit. In Kik's store, users will be able to download bots for entertainment, customer service and shopping.

Were you able to attend this year's South by Southwest (SXSW)? As always, the annual convergence of anything relevant and compelling has ignited some amazing conversation. THE FUTURE OF BIG DATA AND AI, by far one of our favorite panels, brought to light persuasive commentary on the applications of AI and how data has renewed these functions. Being the retail aficionados that we are, we couldn't help but tie those topics right back to retail and eCommerce. Amongst the four panelist, Dr. Doug Lenant, CEO of Cycorp, affirmed that deep learning technology has been around for about 30 years.

Amazon.com Inc. acquired artificial-intelligence startup Orbeus Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter, part of a broader push by the world's largest Internet retailer into smart software for its cloud-computing and connected-device businesses. The acquisition took place in the fall of 2015, said the person who asked not to be identified because Amazon hasn't announced the deal. An Amazon spokeswoman and representatives at Sunnyvale, California-based Orbeus, including Chief Executive Officer Yi Li, did not respond to requests for comment. An online search shows that the startup's domain name, Orbe.us, is owned by registrant Amazon Hostmaster, part of an Amazon subsidiary called Amazon Technologies Inc. Orbeus developed photo-recognition technology based on a powerful type of AI called neural networks and made this available as a consumer application, as well as a service for other companies and developers called ReKognition. It automatically categorized and identified the contents of photos. Orbeus's app, PhotoTime, came out before Google launched its successful AI-based Photos app.