A robot arm that can pick up and carry objects without touching them using ultrasonic levitation is being developed by scientists. Researchers at ETH Zurich used an array of tiny speakers that emit sound at tightly controlled frequencies and volumes in order to'grip' an object. The sound waves from the speakers create a pressure field that holds an object up - a kind of'acoustic levitation', according to researcher Marcel Shuck. Dr Shuck says the acoustic gripper will be ideal for delicate tasks such as assembling watches or microchips, where any damage from touch marks would cost money. The sound waves used to levitate an object can also move it around by having audio coming from multiple directions, the team says.

In 2006, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency vowed to build, within four years, a brain-controlled prosthetic arm indistinguishable from the real thing. Yet after hundreds of millions of dollars and more than a decade of engineering, most limb replacements (even those wired straight to the noggin) struggle to mimic human gestures. Cracking the neural code for movement was trickier than expected. The trouble lies in getting past conscious thought. "Capturing the body's innate ability to just know what to do is something really lacking from all prosthetics today," says Mike McLoughlin, who manages the prosthetics program at Johns Hopkins.

A woman who is completely paralyzed below the neck has regained the ability to reach out and interact with the world around her thanks to the most advanced brain-computer interface for operating a robotic arm so far. Each chip has 96 electrodes and is wired through the skull to a computer that translates her thoughts into signals for the robotic arm. The work, performed by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, is reported in the latest issue of The Lancet. The work is the latest advance to show how brain-controlled interface technology can restore some movement to quadriplegics. In May of this year, researchers at Brown University described how a paralyzed patient could use a robotic limb to perform basic tasks, including giving herself a drink of coffee (see "Brain Chip Helps Quadriplegics Move Robotic Arms with Their Thoughts").

LiquidSky CEO Ian McLoughlin knows video game streaming isn't a new concept. For years, various companies have promised players they'd be able to load up any game on any device via cloud streaming. It sounds too good to be true, and since the early 2010s, it has been. LiquidSky is the latest company to promise low-latency game streaming. The premise is simple: Play any game you own on any Windows, Mac, Android or Linux device, no matter how outdated or powerless it may be.

Now machines are going on internet-watching sprees too – but with something to show for it. After viewing a year's worth of online videos, a computer model has learned to distinguish between sounds such as bird chirps, door knocks, snoring and fireworks. Such technology could transform how we interact with machines and make it easier for our cellphones, smart homes and robot assistants to understand the world around them. Computer vision has dramatically improved over the past few years thanks to the wealth of labelled data machines can tap into online. They can now recognise faces or cats as accurately as a human can.

Robert Gaunt tests Nathan Copeland's ability to detect touch by tapping fingers on a robotic hand. Robert Gaunt tests Nathan Copeland's ability to detect touch by tapping fingers on a robotic hand. Twelve years ago, a car wreck took away Nathan Copeland's ability to control his hands or sense what his fingers were touching. A few months ago, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center gave Copeland a new way to reach out and feel the world around him. It's a mind-controlled robotic arm that has pressure sensors in each fingertip that send signals directly to Copeland's brain.

Decades ago, before the Internet was a gleam in Uncle Sam's eye, computers were stupid. Not in the sense of being primitive, though they were also that, but in the literal sense of being internally braindead. So stupid, in fact, that we nicknamed this prehistoric, biz-angled species of keyboard-and-monitor "dumb terminals"--slang for intentionally complexity-allergic vessels into which content was beamed by sophisticated, centrally located machines that filled rooms like squadrons of refrigerators. In old-school parlance, we called those machines "mainframes." In today-speak, you might call them cloud servers.