GuideGeek uses artificial intelligence to help plan vacations. In your beach bag, sunscreen, a towel, sunglasses and plenty of snacks are essentials. While some people can easily spend the whole day lying in the sun with a good book in hand, others enjoy more of an activity-filled day. This is where beach games come into play. There are so many different games that your family, friends or significant other can enjoy during your day in the sand.

High resolution tactile sensing has great potential in autonomous mobile robotics, particularly for legged robots. One particular area where it has significant promise is the traversal of challenging, varied terrain. Depending on whether an environment is slippery, soft, hard or dry, a robot must adapt its method of locomotion accordingly. Currently many multi-legged robots, such as Boston Dynamic's Spot robot, have preset gaits for different surface types, but struggle over terrains where the surface type changes frequently. Being able to automatically detect changes within an environment would allow a robot to autonomously adjust its method of locomotion to better suit conditions, without requiring a human user to manually set the change in surface type. In this paper we report on the first detailed investigation of the properties of a particular bio-inspired tactile sensor, the TacTip, to test its suitability for this kind of automatic detection of surface conditions. We explored different processing techniques and a regression model, using a custom made rig for data collection to determine how a robot could sense directional and general force on the sensor in a variety of conditions. This allowed us to successfully demonstrate how the sensor can be used to distinguish between soft, hard, dry and (wet) slippery surfaces. We further explored a neural model to classify specific surface textures. Pin movement (the movement of optical markers within the sensor) was key to sensing this information, and all models relied on some form of temporal information. Our final trained models could successfully determine the direction the sensor is heading in, the amount of force acting on it, and determine differences in the surface texture such as Lego vs smooth hard surface, or concrete vs smooth hard surface.

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table.

Snow White's stepmother might have had her magic mirror, but the brutally-honest device is not just the stuff of fairytales. A tech company has created a voice-controlled vanity mirror that uses an in-built camera and artificial intelligence to tell users exactly what is wrong with their skin - down to the last wrinkle, red spot and open pore. The HiMirror Plus, which is sold at Selfridges for £210, takes a photograph of the user's face that is analysed to a Skin Index Synthesis, assessing its health, clarity, firmness, texture, and brightness. The HiMirror Plus takes a photograph of the user's face, which it then analyses to detect any problem areas that need targeting. Above, the dark spots on the user's face are identified The device, which can be fitted to any hard surface, costs £210 and is be managed by a controller and gestures.