A coach is indispensable to the serious athlete -- everyone from Olympians to up-and-coming youth athletes needs experts who can spot the strengths and weaknesses of an athlete's style and cater to their personal needs. But now AI systems are almost sophisticated enough to do the job just as well as -- better in some ways -- than the old human experts. HomeCourt, an iPhone app that basketball players can use to track their shots, might be the first of its kind. If the phone's camera is propped up and aimed at them while they practice, the app will track the position and success rate of each throw. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the free app offers users real-time feedback, complete with an automatically-spliced video recording of every single shot the athlete takes so they can check their form. At least, it does for 300 shots per month -- more than that, and a user is prompted to pay $8 for a subscription.

The US Army has released footage of an exoskeleton that looks like something out of Ridley Scott's iconic film Alien. The device, dubbed the'Third Arm', looks like a harness and takes the weight of weapons off of soldiers' arms. Infantrymen have been required to'shoot, move and communicate' throughout history, all while carrying weapons weighing close to 30 pounds. The US Army has released footage of a'third arm' exoskeleton. The device, officially called the Third Arm, looks like a harness and takes the weight of weapons off soldiers' arms The Third Arm doesn't need batteries, is lightweight and can evenly distribute the load of a heavy weapon. 'It falls in line with the direction that the Army wants to be heading in the future,' mechanical engineer Dan Baechle said.

Over the last few years we've seen more camera drones than we can count, but getting the best footage out of them will take something extra. While many big budget productions are already using drone cameras, a system developed by MIT and ETH Zurich researchers goes beyond mere Steadicam or even subject-tracking, by allowing the director to define exactly how a shot is framed. Specifically, it lets operators specify where an object or face should be in the frame, which direction it should face and how large it will appear, while also accounting for obstacles in the environment. That way the drone can calculate an appropriate flight path on its own, weighing the various factors against each other to get the best shot each time. The researchers will present their findings at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation later this month, but for now, directors will have to keep begging Roger Deakins to shoot their next project.