We've seen impressive developments in humanoid robots over the last few years. Elon Musk and Tesla introduced the Optimus robot last year, and every few months Boston Dynamics teaches its Atlas robot a few new tricks. Next month at South by Southwest, a Texas-based startup will reveal to a small group its take on a general-purpose robot. Apptronik calls its newest robot Apollo, in part because it partnered with NASA on commercializing the robot. Though there aren't plans to send Apollo to space, the space agency wants to encourage the development of humanoid robots that could one day lead to a robotic space-explorer.

A spin out of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, startup Apptronik has some serious R&D behind it. Two of the company co-founders were part of NASA's Johnson Space Center Valkyrie team, working on the actuators and controls of the humanoid robot, as well as participating in the DARPA Robotics Challenge to build a versatile "hero robot" that could do all the things needed in a disaster relief scenario. These projects became advanced R&D work to eventually commercialize a more versatile robot that fills the need of working in an environment of unstructured tasks. And, despite the look of the robots the company has in its portfolio--like Astra, an upper body humanoid robot designed to operate with and around humans on a mobile platform, and Draco, a biped designed for agile dynamic walking--the company says it's solving a huge problem in manufacturing. "In manufacturing there are structured and highly repeatable tasks. Where we see this going is robots [designed] for the unstructured world," said Jeff Cardenas, Apptronik co-founder and CEO.

Staring through a microscope at samples of material for hours on end, attempting to locate monolayers, is one of the most laborious and intimidating tasks for undergraduate assistants in university research laboratories. As a result of their unique properties, these two-dimensional materials -- which are less than 1/100,000th the width of a human hair -- are in high demand for use in photonics, electronics, and optoelectronic devices. Research labs hire armies of undergraduates to do nothing but look for monolayers. It's very tedious, and if you get tired, you might miss some of the monolayers or you might start making misidentifications. Jesús Sánchez Juárez, a Ph.D. student in the Cardenas Lab, has made work simpler for undergraduates, their research facilities, and companies that have difficulty identifying monolayers.

Before performing radiation therapy, radiation oncologists first carefully review medical images of a patient to identify the gross tumor volume -- the observable portion of the disease. They then design patient-specific clinical target volumes that include surrounding tissues, since these regions can hide cancerous cells and provide pathways for metastasis. Known as contouring, this process establishes how much radiation a patient will receive and how it will be delivered. In the case of head and neck cancer, this is a particularly sensitive task due to the presence of vulnerable tissues in the vicinity. Though it may sound straightforward, contouring clinical target volumes is quite subjective.

Collaboration and teamwork were a consistent theme at the Colorado Digital Government Summit with city and county officials providing uses cases that emphasized partnerships crucial to maximizing value from shared services, while standing up new solutions and embarking on new development techniques. The consolidated city-county of Denver migrated to shared services about 12 years ago, a journey that's nearly complete, said Scott Cardenas, Denver CIO, following his opening remarks to more than 200 at the event on Wednesday, Oct. 25. Having previously collaborated on apps like Ballot TRACE, their award-winning ballot tracking solution, Denver's IT and elections officials were primed to work together again during the 2016 election cycle.Together, they were able to establish a temporary election security operations center with real-time dynamics and audio and visual connections to watch for bad actors. The agency saw activity, but didn't experience a significant incident or breach during the election, according to Cardenas, a result that proved the project's worth and attracted nationwide notice. Denver is currently a finalist for project of the year at the Colorado Technology Association's 17th annual Apex Awards on Nov. 8 as a result of its elections collaboration.

Many businesses today understand that AI and machine learning -- which uses data to make predictions -- is the way of the future. It is the fuel behind image recognition, speech processing, translation, and other tasks that have business implications for marketing, customer service, and many other disciplines. For instance, according to a 2015 report by McKinsey, "predictive maintenance" by manufacturers could save between $240 billion and $630 billion by 2025. Although the significance is clear, dipping your toes into AI can be a daunting task. So how can businesses get started?

RoboWaiter's crack team, consisting of a developer, designer and a robotics expert, came together at last night's Disrupt NY hackathon to create a faster, better, smarter waiter using IBM Watson and robots. Developer Nina Yang came up with the idea last night before the event when her waiter took a while to take her order. Humans, she pointed out, are often busy and can't handle everything. They also can get orders wrong. RoboWaiter works through an app powered by IBM Watson which hooks up to a backend ordering platform that can also control a robot to bring you your food.

In the brightly lit robotics workshop at Abyss Creations' factory in San Marcos, California, a life-size humanoid was dangling from a stand, hooked between her shoulder blades. She wore a white leotard, her chest was thrust forward and her French-manicured fingers were splayed across the tops of her slim thighs. Harmony is a prototype, a robotic version of the company's hyper-realistic silicone sex toy, the RealDoll. The Realbotix room where she was assembled was lined with varnished pine surfaces covered with wires and circuit boards, and a 3D printer whirred in the corner, spitting out tiny, intricate parts that will be inserted beneath her PVC skull. Her hazel eyes darted between me and her creator, Matt McMullen, as he described her accomplishments. Harmony smiles, blinks and frowns. She can hold a conversation, tell jokes and quote Shakespeare. She'll remember your birthday, McMullen told me, what you like to eat, and the names of your brothers and sisters. She can hold a conversation about music, movies and books. And of course, Harmony will have sex with you whenever you want. Harmony is the culmination of 20 years' work making sex dolls, and five years of robot research and development. After his team had made their silicone and steel dolls as "human" as they could, the way ahead began to feel inevitable, irresistible: they would animate them, giving them personality and bringing them to life. McMullen had toyed with animatronics for years.

In 2016, the White House recognized the importance of AI at its Frontiers Conference. The concept of driverless cars became a reality, with Uber's self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh and Tesla's new models equipped with the hardware for full autonomy. Google's DeepMind platform, AlphaGo, beat the world champion of the game--10 years ahead of predictions. "Increasing use of machine learning and knowledge-based modeling methods" are major trends to watch in 2017, said Marie desJardins, associate dean and professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. How will this play out?

In 2016, the White House recognized the importance of AI at its Frontiers Conference. The concept of driverless cars became a reality, with Uber's self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh and Tesla's new models equipped with the hardware for full autonomy. Google's DeepMind platform, AlphaGo, beat the world champion of the game--10 years ahead of predictions. "Increasing use of machine learning and knowledge-based modeling methods" are major trends to watch in 2017, said Marie desJardins, associate dean and professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. How will this play out?