The coronavirus outbreak has forced retailers to focus more on sanitation while they are struggling to restock shelves and hire more employees. Some grocery stores are turning to floor cleaning robots for additional help. Phil Duffy, vice president of product management and marketing at Brain Corp, shared how autonomous floor care robots are helping retailers. Brain Corp's proprietary software, BrainOS, is a cloud-connected operating system for commercial autonomous robots. Brain Corp has partnerships with major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), such as Tennant, Minuteman, ICE, Kärcher, Nilfisk and SoftBank Robotics, to add autonomy to their existing floor care machines.

The automotive industry is experiencing a paradigm shift. Today's vehicles are no longer just for transport. Instead, they are moving data centres with the potential to offer consumers access to in-car services like on-the-go toll and parking payments, weather data, automatic route calculation and much more. In the week that Frankfurt hosts its well-renowned international motor show, IAA 2017, the automotive industry is buzzing with talk of self-driving cars, in-vehicle concierge services and ever-increasing personalization for drivers. To understand how ready the automotive industry is to accept cognitive technology like this, the IBM Institute for Business Value surveyed 500 automotive executives, original equipment manufacturers and suppliers for their perspectives.

Even if self-driving cars aren't part of our daily lives yet, vehicles are becoming internet-connected at a rapid pace. Gartner predicts that one fifth of all autos on the road, and great majority of new vehicles being produced worldwide will have wireless network connectivity by 2020. Yet, few organizations have access to use the data generated by these vehicles today. That's where Otonomo, a startup based in Herzliya, Israel comes in. The company's systems gather up driver and vehicle data from disparate automakers and original equipment manufacturers.