A robot that uses the same technology as self-driving vehicles is transporting medicines around hospitals as part of a new trial. The'helper bot' is being used to carry and deliver prescriptions and other items around Milton Keynes University Hospital, helping to relieve pressure on human staff. It is the creation of British firm Academy of Robotics, which has already worked on autonomous technology for its'Kar-Go' self-driving vehicle. Just like Kar-Go, the bot uses sonar and LiDAR technology to navigate around obstacles such as people, wheelchairs and beds inside the hospital. The robot uses a combination of three types of sensors to see both into the distance and to understand how close objects are and how they are moving in relation to its own path.

Zipline has teamed up with a healthcare provider servicing the Intermountain Region in the US to deliver medicine to customers using its drones. The company has started doing drone deliveries to select Intermountain Healthcare patients in the Salt Lake Valley area. For now, it can only do drops for local communities within several miles of its distribution center. Zipline intends to add more centers over the next five years, though, so it can eventually expand beyond Salt Lake Valley and deliver medicine throughout Utah. As TechCrunch notes, Zipline has long been deploying drones for delivery in Africa, and it wasn't until the pandemic that it started doing drops in the US.

UK pharmacy Boots has completed a test flight from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight which involved prescription-only medicines being delivered by drone. The flight departed from the British Army's Baker Barracks on Thorney Island near Portsmouth and arrived at St. Mary's Hospital on the Isle of Wight. Boots collected the medicines and transported them to its pharmacies across the island, where they will be distributed to patients with prescriptions for them. Rich Corbridge, chief information officer at Boots, said: "Drones have huge potential in the delivery of medicines, and it is incredibly exciting to be the first community pharmacy in the UK to transport them in this way. "An island location like the Isle of Wight seemed like a sensible place to start a trial of drones and their value to the delivery of medicines to more remote locations is very clear.

AI is everywhere, but perhaps its greatest impact could be felt across the supply chain. From anticipating orders to managing deliveries, AI has the power to drastically increase efficiency in all areas of the supply chain. In fact, McKinsey estimates that firms could gain $1.3 trillion to $2 trillion a year from using AI in supply chain and manufacturing. Here are five companies that are already taking advantage of this forward-focused technology. Rolls Royce recently partnered with Google to create autonomous ships.

But consider this: every day, US companies tease apart chemicals in billions of reactions to make food and beverages, drugs, and fuel. In fact, this process is so common in industrial settings that it uses as much energy as all US cars and trucks combined. "It represents 12 percent of all US energy consumption," says Shreya Dave, cofounder of the year-old startup Via Separations. That's largely because separation technology relies largely on a wasteful and time-consuming procedure that's hardly changed in 100 years: using heat to boil and condense chemicals into a pure form. Filtering liquids with a membrane is more efficient, but it's difficult to find one stable enough to avoid reacting with the chemicals it's supposed to filter, or fine enough to filter nanoparticles.

We may soon have teeny tiny robots crawling throughout our bodies to deliver drugs. That is, if a prototype robot from scientists in Germany ever sees the light of day. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany have developed a rubbery, worm-like robot that they hope will be used for medicinal purposes in the future. The robot can crawl, walk and roll on land, swim in water and navigate obstacle courses. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany have developed a rubbery, worm-like robot that they hope will be used for medicinal purposes in the future.

Scientists have built and tested a walking robot that can pick up and carry objects but is too small to be seen with the naked eye. The machine is made from DNA, the molecule that carries the'book of life' genetic instructions for all living things. In future, similar nanobots could be used to assemble new chemicals and materials at the molecular level, build incredibly miniaturised circuit boards, or roam through blood vessels delivering medicines. Shown here is a conceptual illustration of a DNA robot sorting two types of cargos. The machine is made from DNA, the molecule that carries the'book of life' genetic instructions for all living things Nanobots are devices made from DNA that are so small they can be injected into the human bloodstream. The nanobot described in the journal was made with a few nucleotides, sub-unit elements of DNA.

Drones soon will be used in Tanzania to deliver medicines to health facilities across the East African country, continuing a trend of African governments embracing drone networks to deliver critical services.