A fly-tipper dressed as a giant purple T. rex has been caught on camera dumping rubbish in a street. The brightly coloured rogue raptor was spotted checking for traffic before crossing a road in Southend, Essex. The prehistoric predator then looks around before slinging two black bin bags to the ground next to large black bin. Footage of the incident, first reported by Your Southend, was captured on a resident's CCTV just before 21:30 GMT on Tuesday. The city council told the BBC it had not received any reports of fly-tipping in relation to the incident.

The Chinese military recently unveiled a new kind of battle buddy for its soldiers: a "robot dog" with a machine gun strapped to its back. In video distributed by the state-run news agency CCTV, People's Liberation Army personnel are shown operating on a testing range alongside a four-legged robot with what appears to be a variant of the standard-issue 5.8 x 42-mm QBZ-95 assault rifle mounted on it as part of China's recent Golden Dragon 24 joint military exercises with Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand. In one scenario, Chinese soldiers stand on either side of a doorway while the robot dog enters the building ahead of them; in another, the robot fires off a burst of bullets as it advances on a target. "It can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations, replacing our members to conduct reconnaissance and identify enemy [sic] and strike the target during our training," one Chinese soldier shown operating the robot told CCTV. This isn't the first time the Chinese military-industrial complex has shown off an armed robot dog. In October 2022, Chinese defense company Kestrel Defense published a video showing an unmanned aerial vehicle air-dropping a quadrupedal ground vehicle affixed with a 5.8 x 42-mm QBB-97 light machine gun on a roof during an urban warfare experiment.

Chinese authorities have said they may revise newly drafted online gaming rules shortly after the planned restrictions caused major tech companies to lose billions of dollars. State broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday that the authorities have heard the "concerns and opinions raised by all parties", adding that "the State Press and Publication Administration will study them carefully and further revise and improve them", referring to the media regulator. The authorities released a draft on Friday with a wide range of rules and regulations aimed at curbing online spending and rewards in video games. Its impact was immediate, dealing a massive blow to the world's biggest games market. Investors went into a tailspin, leading to as much as $80bn in market value being wiped off from China's two biggest companies, industry leader Tencent Holdings and Netease.

The interaction and collaboration between humans and multiple robots represent a novel field of research known as human multi-robot systems. Adequately designed systems within this field allow teams composed of both humans and robots to work together effectively on tasks such as monitoring, exploration, and search and rescue operations. This paper presents a deep reinforcement learning-based affective workload allocation controller specifically for multi-human multi-robot teams. The proposed controller can dynamically reallocate workloads based on the performance of the operators during collaborative missions with multi-robot systems. The operators' performances are evaluated through the scores of a self-reported questionnaire (i.e., subjective measurement) and the results of a deep learning-based cognitive workload prediction algorithm that uses physiological and behavioral data (i.e., objective measurement). To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed controller, we use a multi-human multi-robot CCTV monitoring task as an example and carry out comprehensive real-world experiments with 32 human subjects for both quantitative measurement and qualitative analysis. Our results demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed controller and highlight the importance of incorporating both subjective and objective measurements of the operators' cognitive workload as well as seeking consent for workload transitions, to enhance the performance of multi-human multi-robot teams.

On June 25th, BBC Click aired a feature on how artificial intelligence and smart cameras can help reduce flytipping. Featuring iDefigo and The South London Partnership, the feature includes a piece from iDefigo co-founder Scott Wattie. There has been a surge in the illegal dumping of rubbish during the pandemic. With over a million reported incidents across the UK and clear-up costs of over £10 million, pressure is mounting on Local Authorities to take action to reduce these figures. A number of councils have turned to tech to combat the problem.

A leaked Woolworths employee training module slide claims that it is using "artificial intelligence and facial mapping" in its stores -- but the company denies it is using the technology. This is from a Woolies training module from 2020." At the bottom of the slide, a box titled "Did You Know?" boasts about the company's use of technology to catch offenders: "Our high standard CCTV is already resulting in offenders being arrested by police. We are using technology like artificial intelligence and facial mapping to identify offenders!" Woolworths confirmed that the slide was real, but denied it is using either artificial intelligence or facial recognition to prevent theft.

Dupin's pinned a homicide on you." Special Agent Dinah Carter and I had worked on only a couple of cases as partners in the FBI. Now she was programming me for survival mode, to elude the bureau's AI-based crime-solving system, Dupin. "Lose your phone," Dinah told me. Dupin had named me prime suspect in a crime that had occurred just moments before and miles away because I had guessed that the AI was fabricating evidence. I didn't realize then how soon I'd be declared dead. I took the emergency stairs to street level, dropping my cell phone behind a fire hose. With my hood up and watching out for security cameras, I headed onto 10th Street Northwest. When I gave the barista cash for my half-hour online and thimbleful of espresso, he looked at me as if I was something he needed to wipe off his shoe. That left me with a dollar and some loose change. I sat down at a screen and pulled out the AI Primer that Dinah had given me. In the back were the author's details--Professor Francesca Adriaco from Georgetown University. If I had any chance of surviving this, I needed her help. I need to speak with you urgently about artificial intelligence. I guess she had a system monitoring her emails; she replied in minutes and invited me to her office. If I ever survived this, I needed to exercise more. "Hey, Saskia, good to meet you.

China has developed the world's largest electrically-powered quadruped bionic robot to assist the military on logistics and reconnaissance missions. This comes as the latest in China's push to become a global leader in robotics by 2025 and also, of course, in military tech. Walking on four legs and boasting a yak-like appearance, the robot is not only huge but powerful, smart, and surprisingly agile. It can move forward and backward and can perform a series of unexpected movements, such as jumping, running, turning, or walking diagonally. This mechanical beast is strong enough to carry up to 350 pounds (160 kg) and can sprint at 6 mph (10 km/h). The robot is more than half the height of an adult when walking, and its length is about twice its height.

Video management platforms, equipped with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, are vastly expanding capabilities in the area of urban surveillance and public safety, according to research. The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred the use of technologies, such as crowd monitoring, which ABI Research believes are here to stay. It adds that other developments in urban surveillance from live video feeds to bodycams, will be assisted by the introduction of 5G. In its report, Urban Surveillance Technologies and Public Safety Strategies, global technology intelligence firm, ABI Research, forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 11.6 per cent with 1.4 billion closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban areas worldwide in 2030. "Currently, the main use of CCTV in public safety is to aid authorities to solve crimes retroactively," said Lindsey Vest, smart cities and smart spaces research analyst at ABI Research.

Chinese TV will introduce the first AI sign language presenter in time for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. China Central Television (CCTV) and Baidu AI Cloud said the launch of the AI sign language presenter represents a huge leap forwards in'overcoming the barrier of sound with technology'. Nearly 28 million people in China are hearing impaired and about 430 million around the world also suffer from hearing loss. The launch of the AI presenter will allow the state broadcaster to include sign language services for viewers around the clock, and will start by giving updates of the Winter Olympics in Beijing early next year. The presenter achieves high-level sign language expression thanks to Baidu's natural action engine and their sign language translation engine.