Ford is taking autonomous vehicle research to the next level by testing a pilot car equipped with sensors capable of driving safely in the dark. A few years ago, Google revealed plans to develop a self-driving car. Now being tested in California -- with few accidents -- automakers and technology firms across the globe are also exploring this area as a potential future revenue earner. Our own cars are now being equipped with rear-view cameras, cruise control and sensors which warn us when we are heading too close to obstacles, but autonomous vehicles are still a long way off. The purpose of self-driving cars, according to Google and other firms, is to reduce human error and therefore accidents, injuries, and fatalities.

Chat applications are becoming a mainstream trend and our preferred way of interacting with colleagues, friends and family. From the early days of SMS to the favorite snaps of our children, real-time online conversations are everywhere and here to stay. The acquisition of WhatAapp by Facebook in 2014 for a hefty 22 Billion price tag made it clear and promising as TechCrunch noticed it one year later. But although TechCrunch saw messaging apps as the future of mobile portal, they remained more or less next to the Internet, without a direct impact, except their increasing audience. The recent surge of interest in Bots and AI is changing the game and we'll be witnessing the second major fragmentation of the Internet.

Back in Autumn 2015, Amazon quietly acquired a Californian artificial intelligence startup that specialises in photo-recognition technology, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The publication bases its story on an unidentified source "familiar with the matter" -- as well as the fact the startup's website is now owned by an Amazon subsidiary. If you visit the website of Orbeus -- the company Amazon has apparently acquired -- now, you're greeted by by a short message saying it "is no longer taking new customers. Thank you very much for your interest and support. But last year, its website boasted that its "revolutionary image recognition technology helps computers to see like human beings."

IBM's Watson just gave doing the robot a whole new twist. While dancing has never been a forte of machines, IBM's artificial intelligence system is proving that robots really can have fun (even if it has to be programmed in). In a demo presented during Nvidia's GTU technology conference, IBM Watson's chief technology officer, Rob High, showed off a concierge robot named Watson Nao, whose many talents include singing and dancing -- all in an attempt to humanize these humanoids. The multi-lingual robot is powered by IBM Watson, and the AI has come a long way since winning Jeopardy back in 2011. Now, Watson is on a mission to show that it's more than just a super impressive brain -- it's kinda like you and me, too!

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Everyone's excited for self-driving cars that can ferry us from home to work and back again, but the most recent success in autonomous vehicles is a bit more business-based. A squad of a dozen or so self-driving cargo trucks just completed a demonstration in Europe that covered over a thousand miles and crossed several borders, all with minimal human help. The trucks were all part of the European Truck Platooning Challenge, an event sponsored by the Dutch government, and which is aimed at making fleets of smart, self-driving cargo trucks a practical business reality. "Platooning" is essentially just close, connected, fleet-based driving where follower trucks connect to the vehicle ahead of them with Wi-Fi and maintain a very tight driving formation that wouldn't be safe for more fallible human drivers. A number of different companies participated, each using trucks and technology of its own.

Ford recently drove an autonomous Fusion through the Arizona night, relying entirely on the car's laser radar system to plot its course. Ford engineers working on the company's autonomous car technology recently succeeded in making a self-driving Ford Fusion lap its Arizona Proving Grounds in complete darkness, using laser radar, or Lidar, as its guide. While Lidar is a standard feature of most self-driving car gadgetry - along with traditional radar and cameras - the test was meant to specifically highlight how an autonomous vehicle might operate in a situation that many humans find nerve-wracking. Most self-driving cars are tested during daylight hours so all of their electronic systems can contribution to the process.

Company officials unveiled a new development board, talked about their upcoming software platform and announced a race featuring driverless cars.

What if I told you that there was an Internet search company that's been working on self-driving cars since 2013 and its vehicles have logged countless successful autonomous miles? This company uses luxury vehicles for its autonomous car testing, has teamed up with self-driving tech leaders like NVIDIA, and is working with the government to make self-driving automobiles a reality. You might make an educated guess that I'm talking about Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google. But you'd be wrong (sorry about that). Baidu is working to bring self-driving public transportation to China by 2018 and the company is taking huge strides to make it happen.

Russian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, founder of investment firm Digital Sky Technologies Ltd (DST Global), has made a new investment in a tech company Horizon Robotics, a China-based startup focused on artificial intelligence (AI). The size of the investment venture was not disclosed. Horizon Robotics will use the latest proceeds on research and development, including team expansion, reported the China Money Network. The startup was established in July 2015 by Dr. Kai YU, the founder and former head of Institute of Deep Learning (IDL) at Baidu. Horizon Robotics previously received seed funding from Hillhouse Capital, Morningside Ventures, GSR Ventures, Sequoia Capital, among others.