A chess-playing robot stole the show as Asia's largest tech fair kicked off in Taiwan with artificial intelligence center stage. The annual Computex trade show in Taipei comes as Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen seeks to boost the island's economy with her'Asian Silicon Valley' project, nurturing startups and attracting investments from major international companies. The full-sized robot was one of the many gadgets that impressed visitors this week, along with a VR backpack that lets the user move around and a new VR headset. A chess-playing robot (pictured) stole the show as Asia's largest tech fair kicked off in Taiwan with artificial intelligence center stage Chess playing robot uses an intelligent vision system to interpret the visual world, act on visual information and learn from experience. The robot was able to play chess with attendees and fill coffee at various fill levels while the coffee cup is at random locations. Hong Kong firm Zotac displayed its VR backpack that lets the user move around without fear of tripping over connecting wires while playing a video game.

Some of the hottest tech coming to CES this year includes home robots, Super UHD TVs, and the latest in PCs. Artificial intelligence in the home has been making big gains at CES over the last several years, according to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) in a statement released Tuesday. CTA projects 2017 unit sales for voice-controlled, stand-alone digital assistant devices with a cloud-based operating system -- including Amazon's Echo and Google Home -- to reach 4.5 million units, a 52 percent increase, and reach $608 million in revenue, up 36 percent. And with home robots, companies at CES in 2017 will be looking to upstage intelligent home assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo. Kuri: This home robot from Mayfield Robotics is all about personality.

Maintaining the highest level of user safety will be non-negotiable when it comes to the deployment of autonomous vehicles whether they are used for personal or mass transport, or logistics in industrial environments. However, for reasons of sheer volume, it will be road vehicles where the biggest changes will be felt. Vehicle efficiency and road safety will be improved and congestion will come down and the technology and legislation is in development to make it a reality. It is generally agreed that the transition to autonomous driving will be gradual. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has defined five levels of automation, from 0 to 4, which it refers to as the automation continuum.