Naver Labs, the research subsidiary of South Korean search giant Naver, has opened the patent and design for its robotic cart, dubbed AIRCART, the company announced. Third-party developers will be able to use an open kit provided by the firm sometime within the first half of next year to create related robotic products, the company said. The kit will have the source code, circuit design board, and user guide for the patents. AIRCART is an electronic cart with physical human-robot interaction technology applied that augments strength. A strength sensor on the handle reads the user's intention and controls power and direction, and the user can then move heavy items with little exertion.

The UK government is planning to introduce fresh rules for drone owners including a new requirement to sit safety tests and potentially no-fly zones. When you undergo the time-consuming and expensive process to gain a car license in the UK, you are expected to pass not only practical tests but sit an exam on the highway code and click your way through tedious hazard perception tests. Now, UK drone owners may be required to undergo a similar process to fly their beloved devices. As reported by the BBC, new legislation undergoing scrutiny by the UK government will require drone hobbyists to sit safety awareness tests to legally fly drones. Should drones be flown without this requirement in place, police will have new powers to confiscate drones which "may have been used in criminal activity," according to the publication, and this potentially could be extended to those flying illegally and without a license.

Google has made no secret of its overarching ambition to organise the world's information and make it accessible to anyone. And the healthcare industry has no shortage of such information, in any number of repositories and diverse formats, from MRI images to patient notes and data gathered from wearable devices. Google's DeepMind and the NHS: A glimpse of what AI means for the future of healthcare The Google subsidiary has struck a series of deals with organisations in the UK health service -- so what's really happening? Google has long sought to diversify its revenues streams away from search and advertising, the business it was founded on and which continues to make up the bulk of its revenue nearly 20 years later. So could health be the industry that helps the company to achieve that aim?

Qualcomm is continuing to place emphasis on the wearables segment, with senior director of Product Management for Qualcomm Atheros Pankaj Kedia telling media that the chip giant will be "doubling" its play in the market. "We have seen public announcements from some of our competitors that they are exiting the wearables space; Qualcomm is doubling our investment, because we are winning today and we intend to continue," Kedia said during the Qualcomm 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong. Over the next two to three years, you will really see growth around all of this." Kedia said Qualcomm has a cyclical relationship in wearables market growth, increasing its investments alongside growth while in return driving the market with these investments. "Because we are investing in wearable-specific chipsets, we are able to drive market growth, and we are able to do that in a leadership fashion where a majority of wearables shipping today are based on Qualcomm," he said.

According to a new analysis by Inkwood Research, the global market for collaborative robots is on track to generate a net revenue of about $9.27 billion by 2025. Many so-called cobots cost around $30K. There's increasing demand for small, flexible robotic platforms in numerous industries. Other factors responsible for the surging market and stiffening competition include widening applications of collaborative robots, falling sensor and platform prices, and heavy investments by robotics companies over the past decade in research & development.

According to a global survey of 260 large organizations conducted by market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of Teradata, a data and analytics company, 80 percent of enterprises are investing in AI and one in three "believe their company will need to invest more over the next 36 months to keep pace with competitors." In general, enterprise AI includes things like machine and deep learning, voice recognition and response, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), automated communications and reporting, predictive analytics, and recommendation engines. The report reaffirms the findings of a similar study from Narrative Science last year, which found that 59 percent of respondents saw the shortage of data science talent as the primary barrier to getting the full value out of emerging Big Data and AI technologies. But it's going to happen quickly: Currently, most businesses are using existing technology leaders, such as CTOs, to drive AI deployment and strategy.

The program, called Alibaba DAMO Academy, is aimed at increasing technological collaboration globally, advancing the development of "cutting-edge" technology, and making the world more inclusive by "narrowing the technology gap", it said in an announcement on Wednesday. Within those research areas, the labs will focus on machine learning, network security, visual computing, and natural language processing. "[DAMO] is the first major global initiative to focus on developing the global technological capabilities and infrastructure that will enable Alibaba to fulfil its commitment to serve 2 billion customers and create 100 million job opportunities in 20 years," the Chinese ecommerce giant said in an announcement. The DAMO Academy's advisory board members include professors from a range of educational institutions including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Beijing University of Technology, Peking University, and Zhejiang University.

But with the pace of development of seemingly game changing technologies like AI, self-driving cars, and robots over the last few years, people seem particularly high strung. The company asked 500 people to rank several technologies based on how concerned and excited the technologies make them. Swarms of autonomous drones, which are pretty much already a technological reality, if not a legislative one? Gen-Xers, by contrast, are more worried about self-driving cars, while Boomers seemed to find flying cars quite concerning.

According to an unsubstantiated report by equity research firm Baird, citing no evidence, the blame falls on the open-source server framework, Apache Struts. Could the root cause of the hack be a Struts security hole? If that's the case, is it the fault of Struts developers or Equifax's developers, system admins, and their management? The Apache Struts Project Management Committee said in a statement that while they're sorry Equifax "suffered from a security breach," they're not ready to take on the burden for this all-time security fiasco.

Microsoft is combining its Cortana, Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics engineering teams with part of its Microsoft Research team to create a new Microsoft AI and Research Group. The newly formed group, unveiled on September 29, will have more than 5,000 people focused on Microsoft's AI product work all-up, and will be headed by Executive Vice President Harry Shum. The new group will handle AI product engineering, basic and applied research and Microssoft's New Experiences and Technologies (NExT) team. Microsoft has been honing its AI focus as of late, emphasizing the company's multi-faceted work in agent technologies (Cortana); increased built-in intelligence in its apps and bots; machine-learning and cognitive services; and infrastructure, specifically around some of its work around field-programmable gate-array technologies and other related Azure cloud work.