Getting lost in an international airport is never fun -- but if you're lost in Japan's Haneda this month, you'll at least be able get help from an adorable talking robot. From now until the 14th, Hitachi is testing its EMIEW3 humanoid robot in the airport's passenger terminal. Over the course of two weeks, EMIEW3 will direct visitors to an information display and answer questions in both English and Japanese. It's a modest test, but it's ramping up to something much more impressive: In December, the robot is scheduled to return to the airport as a guide. Visitors will be able to ask for directions to say, the currency exchange counter, and EMIEW3 will physically lead them there.

Google shouldn't enter the fashion business any time soon, if the partnership between Berlin-based Zalando and Google is any indication. Project Muze, a machine learning-based endeavor that utilizes Google's Tensor Flow system, is essentially a virtual fashion designer. Drawing from a neural network trained on various design preferences like color, style and texture of over 600 fashion trendsetters and Google Fashion Trend Report information, Project Muze can create various fashion ensembles simply by asking users a few questions about their interests. Tapping into users' music interests, moods, favorite art style and gender allows Project Muze to draft some rather, shall we say, unique fashions that are generated in real-time. To be frank, they're less-than-stellar.

Whitney says the device has greater torque per weight (torque density) than highly geared servos or brushless motors coupled with harmonic drives. And more significant: To build an autonomous robot, you'd need a set of motors and a control system capable of replacing the human puppeteer who's manually driving the fluid actuators [below]. John P. Whitney: The original motivation was the same as for the MIT WAM arm and other impedance-based systems designed for human interaction: Using a lightweight high-performance transmission allows placing the drive motors in the body, instead of suffering the cascading inertia if they were placed at each joint. We are learning that many of the "analog" qualities of this system will pay dividends for autonomous "digital" operation; for example, the natural haptic properties of the system can be of equal service to an autonomous control system as they are to a human operator.

Hitachi Ltd. started trials of its EMIEW3 humanoid robot at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Friday to aid foreign visitors to Japan. During the trials through December in the airport's domestic Terminal 2, the robot will communicate with passengers in Japanese and English at a designated information center as well as display information. The industrial conglomerate is hoping to enable the 90-centimeter-tall humanoid robot with autonomous capabilities to guide users to destinations starting around December. At a demonstration on Friday morning, a female foreign passenger asked EMIEW3 for directions to a foreign exchange counter. The humanoid robot at the information center called another EMIEW3 robot to take her to the location.

The odds that artificial intelligence will enslave or eliminate humankind within the next decade or so are thankfully slim. So concludes a major report from Stanford University on the social and economic implications of artificial intelligence. At the same time, however, the report concludes that AI looks certain to upend huge aspects of everyday life, from employment and education to transportation and entertainment. The analysis is significant because the public alarm over the impact of AI threatens to shape public policy and corporate decisions. It predicts that automated trucks, flying vehicles, and personal robots will be commonplace by 2030, but cautions that remaining technical obstacles will limit such technologies to certain niches.

Apple's Siri upgrades will let you dictate LinkedIn messages, verbally search for shoe photos on Pinterest, and hail an Uber, hands-free. When Apple unveils its new iPhone Wednesday, it's expected to push hard on software improvements available for its next mobile operating system, iOS 10, available for current iPhones and a predicted new iPhone model. The iPhone's voice-activated digital assistant Siri will be a key part of this upgrade, say tech analysts and developers. Siri, primarily used for voice commands to dial phone numbers, set reminders and get traffic information, has been opened to third-party developers after five years of existence. "This is such a huge leap," says Sagi Dudai, vice-president of mobile development for voice over internet protocol company Vonage.

IBM unveils their latest innovations and shows us how Watson helps the U.S. Open Sara Snyder, USA TODAY NEW YORK--The computer that famously became a Jeopardy champ a few years ago isn't about to take on top seeded tennis superstar Serena Williams. But off the court, IBM Watson is making its presence felt at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, home to the U.S. Open Tennis Championships that began this week. IBM has collaborated with the United State Tennis Association on technology for more than a quarter-century, but Watson, IBM's self-proclaimed cognitive computer, is a newbie at the Open. IBM is leveraging Watson's machine learning smarts and cloud-based analytics to try and bolster the fan experience during the tournament--while simultaneously raising Watson's profile. IBM of course is not the only company with a vested interest in artificial intelligence, and the field has become a hotbed of activity. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others, have planted major stakes in the ground.

After months of cancer treatment at the University of Tokyo Hospital, the patient – a woman in her 60s – was not getting much better. So the medical team plugged the woman's symptoms into IBM's Watson, the supercomputer that once famously trounced human champs in the TV quiz show Jeopardy! Watson rifled through its storehouse of oncology data and announced that she had a rare form of secondary leukemia. The team changed the treatment, and she was soon out of hospital. Watson spotted in minutes what could otherwise have taken weeks to diagnose, one doctor told The Japan Times. "It might be an exaggeration to say AI saved her life, but it surely gave us the data we needed in an extremely speedy fashion."

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