The phone is not lost, quite the opposite. Incongruous but invaluable, the phone is part of a network of devices placed throughout the forest to listen for the telltale sounds of illegal logging. Amidst the rustle of leaves, the scampering of critters, and the steady drip of moisture, the sound of a lorry or chainsaw is an alarm bell that can bring forest rangers hurrying to the scene. It's just one of the ways that technology is helping conservationists in the fight to protect wildlife and the planet. The advance of technology is often seen as a risk for the environment: From the invention of the plough to carve the landscape, through the industrial revolution, to the electronic age's thirst for Earth's limited resources.

We propose a sensorization method for soft pneumatic actuators that uses an embedded microphone and speaker to measure different actuator properties. The physical state of the actuator determines the specific modulation of sound as it travels through the structure. Using simple machine learning, we create a computational sensor that infers the corresponding state from sound recordings. We demonstrate the acoustic sensor on a soft pneumatic continuum actuator and use it to measure contact locations, contact forces, object materials, actuator inflation, and actuator temperature. We show that the sensor is reliable (average classification rate for six contact locations of 93%), precise (mean spatial accuracy of 3.7 mm), and robust against common disturbances like background noise. Finally, we compare different sounds and learning methods and achieve best results with 20 ms of white noise and a support vector classifier as the sensor model.

'Robot dogs' are being tested by the US Space Force so they can carry out patrols of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The $150,000 (£123,000) four-legged bots can be equipped with a wide variety of optical and acoustic sensors, allowing them to serve as the'eyes and ears' around sensitive areas of the base. They are being used for patrols'to save significant man hours', according to a statement from the Department of Defense. Space Launch Delta 45 – the unit responsible for all space launch operations from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral – used at least two Vision 60 unmanned ground vehicles (Q-UGVs), or'robot dogs', during the two-day test last month. Built by Ghost Robotics, the robots can be operated either autonomously or by a human controller.

Voice recognition technology is increasingly prevalent. It is a convenient technology with broad applications. However, to get the most of its intended functions, users must stand near the device and articulate carefully. What if the skin on our bodies could recognize voices without the use of devices? Professor Kilwon Cho and Dr. Siyoung Lee of the Department of Chemical Engineering, together with Professor Wonkyu Moon and Dr. Junsoo Kim of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH have developed a microphone that detects sound by applying polymer materials to microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) The small, thin microphone demonstrates a wider auditory field than human ears, while it can be easily attachable to the skin. This academic achievement was recently presented in Advanced Materials.

Robotic speedboats and drones have taken up life-guarding duty in a lake in China. Self-driving vehicles that can detect'moving targets' have started patrolling Tian'e Lake in Hefei, eastern China - an area where 15 people drowned in 2016. New images reveal how the autonomous boats are equipped with cameras, GPS and infrared and acoustic sensors, according to Chinese police officers. Robotic speedboats (pictured) and drones have taken up life-guarding duty in a lake in China. The self-driving vehicles able to detect'moving targets' Self-driving vehicles able to detect'moving targets' have started patrolling Tian'e Lake in Hefei, eastern China - an area where 15 people drowned in 2016.

Recently there has been a spate of articles in the mainstream press, and a spate of high profile people who are in tech but not AI, speculating about the dangers of malevolent AI being developed, and how we should be worried about that possibility. This all comes from some fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of the undeniable progress that is being made in AI, and from a misunderstanding of how far we really are from having volitional or intentional artificially intelligent beings, whether they be deeply benevolent or malevolent. By the way, this is not a new fear, and we've seen it played out in movies for a long time, from "2001: A Space Odyssey", in 1968, "Colossus: The Forbin Project" in 1970, through many others, and then "I, Robot" in 2004. In all cases a computer decided that humans couldn't be trusted to run things and started murdering them. The computer knew better than the people who built them, so it started killing them.