A football playing robot is to compete in an international tournament later this year - and experts say'she' is better than Lionel Messi. The 4ft 8in humanoid, named Artemis, can walk and jump, and is among the only three robots across the globe with the ability to run. Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) refer to Artemis as an anagram for'A Robot That Exceeds Messi In Soccer'. Dennis Hong, director at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory said: 'We're very excited to take Artemis out for field testing here at UCLA and we see this as an opportunity to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics to a much wider audience.' The human-sized robot will show off its football skills as a contender at France's RoboCup23 in July.

Governments and agencies are struggling to coordinate effective disaster relief programs. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) can help. Natural disasters wreak havoc around the world every year. But it's hard to appreciate the scale of this damage. And that doesn't include the Northern California Wildfires or the biggest hurricanes.

AR and VR systems are more than just fun party activities -- they're also great tools for nonprofits when training responders to go into areas that are unstable or dangerous. Getting safe, hands-on situational experience used to be difficult. Now, VR makes it possible to give volunteers and first responders the feel for a high-stakes situation without putting them in danger. That preparedness can do more than just help organizations develop their game plan going into a disaster zone -- it can also save lives. AR can also provide support for missions that wasn't available before.

A new, huge cargo drone, the APT 70, had the video of its first flight recorded and uploaded by pioneering aerospace manufacturer Bell. Built for delivery and disaster relief, the APT 70 can travel up to 18 miles on a single charge. The video shows off the impressive capabilities of cargo drones and how they could be used as an efficient future delivery system. The Autonomous Pod Transport 70 - or APT 70 for short - is 180 centimeters tall. The Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft comes with a range of 18 miles on a single charge.

In 2015, all 193 member countries of the United Nations ratified the 2030 "Sustainable Development Goals" (SDG): a call to action to "end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity." The 17 goals – shown in the chart below – are measured against 169 targets, set on a purposefully aggressive timeline. The first of these targets, for example, is: "by 2030, [to] eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day". The UN emphasizes that Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) will be critical in the pursuit of these ambitious targets. Rapid advances in technologies which have only really emerged in the past decade – such as the internet of things (IoT), blockchain, and advanced network connectivity – have exciting SDG applications.

After catastrophic wildfires in southern California late last year, the Israeli startup Watergen sent in its devices which pull clean water out of the atmosphere for firefighters and relief workers. The machines, which have been deployed in other global disaster areas, were among the technologies on display at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show to highlight innovations which can be used in various kinds of relief efforts. "We clean the air because it's much easier to clean air than it is to clean water," said Yehuda Kaploun, president of Watergen USA, who was demonstrating the device at the annual Las Vegas extravaganza which ends Friday after showcasing futuristic innovations. Watergen claims its technology--offered in a commercial-size Gen-350 and a consumer version known as Genny--has many applications for emergency response and helping the many millions who lack potable water. The exhibits showcased a broad array of "tech for good" services which use robotics, drones, artificial intelligence and the like.

Abstract--A crucial and time-sensitive task when any disaster occurs is to rescue victims and distribute resources to the right groups and locations. This task is challenging in populated urban areas, due to the huge burst of help requests generated in a very short period. To improve the efficiency of the emergency response in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, we propose a heuristic multi-agent reinforcement learning scheduling algorithm, named as ResQ, which can effectively schedule the rapid deployment of volunteers to rescue victims in dynamic settings. The core concept is to quickly identify victims and volunteers from social network data and then schedule rescue parties with an adaptive learning algorithm. This framework performs two key functions: 1) identify trapped victims and rescue volunteers, and 2) optimize the volunteers' rescue strategy in a complex time-sensitive environment. The proposed ResQ algorithm can speed up the training processes through a heuristic function which reduces the state-action space by identifying the set of particular actions over others. Experimental results showed that the proposed heuristic multi-agent reinforcement learning based scheduling outperforms several state-of-art methods, in terms of both reward rate and response times. Natural disasters have always posed a critical threat to human beings, often being accompanied by major loss of life and property damage. In recent years, we have witnessed more frequent and intense natural disasters all over the world.

Yesterday, NHK (the Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reported that Honda has decided to cancel further development of its flagship humanoid robot, Asimo. A Honda representative who spoke with AFP said, "We will still continue research into humanoid robots, but our future robots may not be named Asimo. We have obtained lots of technologies while developing Asimo, and how to utilize them is one issue." It's not like Honda is abandoning robotics completely, or even abandoning the idea of humanoid robots. Instead, it sounds like the company want to start focusing on how to apply the technology that it has to make robots that don't just promote its brand, but actually help out with things like elder care and disaster relief.

This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In an era of increasingly extreme hurricanes, floods, and drought, the people in charge of preparing for disasters depend on meteorologists to anticipate where the next catastrophe might strike. Here's some good news: Meteorologists are coming through, with unprecedented accuracy. In fact, weather forecasting technology has improved so dramatically that humanitarian organizations can now fund disaster relief before disaster hits. It's a revolutionary change that could save countless lives.

Whether you hate them for threatening your jobs or love them for handling a range of tasks, robots have become that quintessential part of our lives which can be ignored for a while but not completely written off. Many fear that one-day machines may rise above humanity and trigger the so-called "robocalypse" but, over the last few years it has also become evident that it is nearly impossible to shut them off and live a life with no bots around to do things the better way. The fact now is we have to move ahead with them, doing things for the betterment of humanity. Well, 2017 is coming to an end and it is the ideal time go back and see which machines got smarter or nailed some really complicated tasks this year -- things that we never thought could be done in a better way. Developed by Hanson Robotics, humanoid robot Sophia came to the limelight earlier this year, spoke at the UN, appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show and then wooed the Saudi Arabian government with its phenomenal way with words to win a citizenship of the oil-rich kingdom.