The fitness class at the Do Life Shinagawa nursing home begins at 10:30 a.m., drawing about two dozen eager participants -- many of them pushing 70, 80 and even 90 years of age. At the front of the room is a human instructor, but it is the 16 inch tall robot standing on a table to his right that the crowd is paying attention to. The sleek, white humanoid robot is turned on and with fluid motion, stands up and spreads out its arms. "Why are you waking me up?" the robot asks in Japanese in an almost child-like voice. "Oh, you want to exercise?"

The future arrived on Monday, wrapped in a tortilla. Chipotle burritos were delivered via drone to waiting Virginia Tech students in the first of a series of tests that could be giving foodies a taste of things to come. The drone delivery arrived just before 1 p.m., according to Roanoke Times journalist Jacob Demmett, who managed to capture the landmark moment on video. The flying burrito tests were not open to the public, presumedly so the recipients wouldn't have to share their bounty with other hungry students. The burrito drone descended to about 10 feet over a grass patch before lowering a large white package to the ground on a string.

Editor's note: Our 6th Annual Vator Splash LA conference is coming up on October 13 at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica. Speakers include Mark Cuban (one of the hosts of Shark Tank and owner of the Dallas Mavericks); Brian Lee (Founder & CEO, Honest Company); Leura Fine (Founder & CEO, Laurel & Wolf); Nick Green (Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Thrive Market); Tri Tran (CEO & Co-founder, Munchery); Adam Goldenberg (Founder & CEO, JustFab); Andre Haddad (CEO, Turo); Mike Jones (Founder, Science) and many more. Yesterday I ate lunch at Eatsa. If you've never been, imagine a fast food joint the size of a large bedroom. Instead of a line of cashiers with the kitchen behind them, you see a line of electronic kiosks with a grid of screens behind them. After sliding your credit card in the kiosk and selecting your quinoa bowl, you wait alongside several other humans, looking at their phones, waiting for their orders.

Smart technology has made life so much easier in recent years. It's made homes safer, it's made meals tastier, and it's made watches a whole lot more complicated. Unfortunately, there is no device that can work out for you. There's no app that can motivate you to run, and there's no wearable that will give you abs. Working out is still something you need to do on your own.

Ever imagined being able to order a burrito and have it delivered by a drone? Well, Google has you covered. The search giant, which is now under the parent company Alphabet, began testing drone food deliveries using Chipotle burritos at Virginia Tech this week. A drone was spotted Monday flying overhead before lowering a large white package to the ground, the Roanoke Times reports. Virginia Tech was approved as a test site for drones by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2013 and the school provided safety oversight for the Google tests, according to the Times.

At the recent VentureBeat MobileBeat conference on July 13, a panel of executives assembled to discuss the impact of emerging technologies on the future of commerce. Three executives from high-profile companies - Holger Luedorf, senior vice president of Business Development at Postmates; Nichele Lindstrom, director of Digital Marketing at Whole Foods Market; and Eric Moujaes, senior director of Global Digital Product at McDonald's - chimed in and gave their insights on what they believe to be the most overhyped and promising technologies that will impact commerce in the near term. Their perspectives fell on the spectrum of the slightly surprising (drones will not be the future delivery vehicle of choice) as well as in alignment with current'hot' trends (chat bots look to be in like flynn). All three executives' opinions shed light on the potential future of our role as consumers and on businesses as providers in a'brave new world'. With companies like Amazon and Google forecasting the use of drones for delivery (any day now), people may be expecting these unmanned aerial vehicles to be a serious part of the future of commerce, but McDonald's Eric Moujaes believes differently.

Imagine infusing thousands of wireless devices into your brain, and using them to both monitor its activity and directly influence its actions. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and for the moment it still is – but possibly not for long. Brain research is on a roll at the moment. And as it converges with advances in science and technology more broadly, it's transforming what we are likely to be able to achieve in the near future. Spurring the field on is the promise of more effective treatments for debilitating neurological and psychological disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and depression.

AI-enabled messaging programs that respond to text-based requests -- are the latest innovation that startups and corporations are using to serve existing customers and bring in new ones. Companies across a wide variety of industries are building these tools on popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Kik, and Hipchat, as well as on their own websites and apps. Some are even available by text, to help users do things like fight parking tickets, respond to customer service inquiries, and order tacos. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you see we're missing a chatbot that's currently up and running, please share the link with us in the comments section. We'll add new, significant chatbots to the list over time.

Did robots help make your pizza? If you ordered it from Silicon Valley's Zume Pizza, the answer is yes. The startup, which began delivery in April, is using intelligent machines to grab a slice of the multibillion-dollar pizza delivery market. Zume is one of a growing number of food-tech firms seeking to disrupt the restaurant industry with software and robots. "We're going to eliminate boring, repetitive, dangerous jobs, and we're going to free up people to do things that are higher value," said co-founder Alex Garden, a former Microsoft manager and president of mobile game maker Zynga Studios.

Your phone doesn't know how you're feeling -- but you may want it to if that capability came with a few fringe benefits. Affectiva makes emotion-detection software, and CEO Rana el Kaliouby was full of ideas today at Disrupt SF as to how it could be deployed, from gifs to Ubers. "We're obsessed with emotional AI, we wake up thinking about it," said Rana el Kaliouby. "I imagine a future where every device has a little emotion chip and can read your emotions, just like it's touchscreen enabled or GPS enabled." If you aren't creeped out by that, you might see a few of the benefits.