It has taken 16 years but James Dyson has achieved one of his dreams: to build a robotic vacuum cleaner. As befits a device of the modern age, it can be controlled remotely via a smartphone app – and reports on where it has been. Announced on Thursday, the Dyson 360 Eye relies on two breakthroughs: a machine vision system that takes in a whole room from a single camera lens and a powerful lightweight digital motor that enhances battery life. Sir James Dyson says that the machine vision system for the device – which was introduced in Japan and is due to go on sale in the UK in summer 2015 – will have applications beyond household appliances. "We think vision is a technology of the future," Dyson told the Guardian.

Imagine waking up in the morning, stretching, and asking your sleeping smartphone, "Ahoy, Google, what's the weather like?" to get the local forecast. A new feature unveiled this week by mobile chip maker Qualcomm could soon make this a reality. Called Snapdragon Voice Activation, it will wake up gadgets that include the company's Snapdragon 800 processors--intended for things like high-end smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs--from standby or airplane mode once you've uttered a special voice command that phonemakers like HTC and Samsung can determine. The feature then starts up the phone's own voice-recognition software, such as Android's Google Now voice search. Such "persistent listening" technology may pick up steam as growing hordes of smartphone owners become acquainted with voice-activated search and virtual personal assistants like Google Now and Siri, and as Qualcomm and others begin adding it to chips.

Persona is one of the latest fashion magazines in Tokyo. It's printed on heavy stock paper and is full of photos of models and clothing. The only thing missing is text. An app recognizes the images, queries a cloud database and then downloads related information such as pricing and availability of dresses. Other photos feature images of tomatoes and wine, triggering a related vegetable delivery service and wine retailer, as well as online coupons.

Oliver G. Selfridge, an innovator in early computer science and artificial intelligence, died on Wednesday in Boston. The cause was injuries suffered in a fall on Sunday at his home in nearby Belmont, Mass., said his companion, Edwina L. Rissland. Credited with coining the term "intelligent agents," for software programs capable of observing and responding to changes in their environment, Mr. Selfridge theorized about far more, including devices that would not only automate certain tasks but also learn through practice how to perform them better, faster and more cheaply. Eventually, he said, machines would be able to analyze operator instructions to discern not just what users requested but what they actually wanted to occur, not always the same thing. His 1958 paper "Pandemonium: A Paradigm for Learning," which proposed a collection of small components dubbed "demons" that together would allow machines to recognize patterns, was a landmark contribution to the emerging science of machine learning.

SoftBank Corp. said Wednesday its Pepper humanoid robots will staff a cellphone store in Tokyo for a week this spring. The firm said the static, talking machines will run the store from March 28 to April 3 in the city's upscale Omotesando shopping district. SoftBank already operates a separate store in the neighborhood. "I don't know how this will turn out, but it should be a quite interesting experiment," said SoftBank CEO Ken Miyauchi during a two-day exhibition called Pepper World. The telecoms giant said it will deploy five to six Peppers at the shop.

SoftBank Group is promising new services for its Pepper robot that will appeal to business users and help bring the humanoid to storefronts and reception areas. The company is developing a customer support package and a service that allows businesses to manage a fleet of Peppers, Fumihide Tomizawa, chief executive officer of SoftBank Robotics, said in an interview in Tokyo on Monday. The wireless carrier and Internet company investor will reveal more details of the service at the SoftBank World event July 30 and 31, he said. When Pepper went on sale to Japanese consumers on June 20, all 1,000 units sold out within one minute. SoftBank is targeting businesses to increase the robot's installed base which Tomizawa estimates would have to be in the hundreds of thousands to support a community of developers and an application store modeled on Apple Inc.'s.

Franz Inc. is an early innovator in Artificial Intelligence and leading supplier of Semantic Graph Database technology with expert knowledge in developing and deploying Cognitive Computing solutions. AllegroGraph is an ultra scalable, high-performance, and transactional Semantic Graph Database which turns complex data into actionable business insights. Allegro CL provides an ideal Lisp programming environment to create complex, mission-critical applications that solve real world problems. Franz Inc. is committed to market-driven product development, the highest levels of product quality and responsive customer support and service. Franz customers include dozens of Fortune 500 companies that span healthcare, intelligence agencies, life sciences, telecommunications, and visionary researcher organizations looking to solve complex problems.

Computers are about to enter an age where they can perceive, act and even think for themselves, using a network similar to the human brain. The likes of Google and Facebook are already using the principles of neuroscience to develop artificial brains that they hope will be able to solve their data issues. Now, San Diego-based Qualcomm is planning to launch the first ever commercial chip inspired by the human brain. San Diego-based Qualcomm is planning to launch the first ever commercial chip inspired by the human brain. The chip, which the New York Times has reported will be launched later this year, will be able to automate tasks that currently require painstaking programming.

Samsung on Thursday unveiled a larger Galaxy S III smartphone in London, and said the phone would be sold in the U.S. this summer after launching in Europe on May 29. Samsung didn't name a U.S. wireless carrier or the price for the smartphone, but said the U.S. version will run over LTE and HSPA, an indication it could run on AT&T's or T-Mobile's network. A white version of the Galaxy S III was unveiled by Samsung's president of mobile communications, J.K. Shin, at a crowded London media event that featured a live orchestra and was also webcast. The Galaxy S III, will run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and will have a 4.8-in. It includes an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera.

A cooing, gesturing humanoid on wheels that can decipher emotions has been unveiled in Japan by billionaire Masayoshi Son who says robots should be tender and make people smile. Son's mobile phone company Softbank said Thursday that the robot it has dubbed Pepper will go on sale in Japan in February for 198,000 yen ($2,100). Overseas sales plans are under consideration but undecided. The machine, which has no legs, but has gently gesticulating hands appeared on a stage in a Tokyo suburb, cooing and humming. It dramatically touched hands with Son in a Genesis or "E.T." moment.