People take pictures and videos of the Boston Dynamics robot Spot during an event in Lisbon in 2019. People take pictures and videos of the Boston Dynamics robot Spot during an event in Lisbon in 2019. Boston Dynamics and five other robotics companies have signed an open letter saying what many of us were already nervously hoping for anyway: Let's not weaponize general-purpose robots. The six leading tech firms -- including Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics and Unitree -- say advanced robots could result in huge benefits in our work and home lives but that they may also be used for nefarious purposes. "Untrustworthy people could use them to invade civil rights or to threaten, harm, or intimidate others," the companies said.

If you are quite enthusiastic about robotics like me, then by now you will probably have finished the third season of Netflix acclaimed series Love, Death and Robots. I believe that animation, like many other artistic expressions, is an effective way to communicate the ideas and concepts that revolve around contemporary robotics. If we envision a future in which robots and society coexist, we must ensure that the way we communicate about robotics engages positively with the non-specialized public. Art is an interesting way to achieve it. I think that, in the broader sense, art could help us to create robots that engage better with people.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Hyundai Motor Group and its chairman have agreed to buy a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank Group Corp in a deal that values the U.S.-based robot maker at $1.1 billion. The South Korean automaker group said on Friday the purchase would help it expand automation in its vehicle factories and design autonomous cars, drones and robots, as it seeks to turn itself from a manufacturer into a broader mobility service provider. Hyundai Motor Group said the deal, which involves a new share issue, would give the company and its chief a combined 80% stake in Boston Dynamics, while Softbank will retain 20%. Newly promoted Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung has pledged to reduce reliance on traditional car manufacturing. He has said robotics would account for 20% of the firm's future business, while car-making would account for 50% and urban air transport would make up the remaining 30%.

Industrial robots are now being used to assemble everything from airplanes to smartphones, using human-like arms to mechanically repeat the same processes over and over, thousands of times a day with nanometric precision. But according to a new report entitled "Rogue Automation," some robots have flaws that could make them vulnerable to advanced hackers, who could steal data or alter a robot's movements remotely, like a scene out of science fiction. "Attacks on industrial environments in these sectors could have serious consequences, including operational failure, physical damage, environmental harm and injury or loss of life," according to Federico Maggi, a researcher at Trend Micro Inc., and Marcello Pogliani, an information security researcher at Politecnico di Milano, in a research report reviewed by Bloomberg News. The report will be presented Wednesday at a virtual forum organized by Black Hat, which hosts cybersecurity events around the world. Robots are often connected to networks and run via software, according to the report, and previously unknown vulnerabilities could allow hackers to hide malicious code in them and other automated, programmable manufacturing machines.

Americans choosing to --or forced to--stay inside during the Covid-19 pandemic are leaning heavily on food delivery. Instacart sales soared 98 percent, and Amazon Fresh sales 68 percent, in March, compared with February, according to the consumer analytics firm Second Measure. Restaurants that can't open their doors are tapping delivery services to preserve some revenue. But many delivery workers say they don't feel safe. Workers for Instacart have said they lack the gloves, face masks, and disinfectant to do the job safely; others who have received equipment complain it's subpar.

Mix the rise of e-commerce in Japan with a chronic labor shortage and a graying society and what do you get? "I'm delivering delicious food," announced CarriRo Deli, a robot the size of a cooler box that was navigating a South Korean apartment complex in April, bringing food and drinks to residents during a trial of its "last-mile" delivery service. The robot's maker, Tokyo-based ZMP Inc., has already held a number of delivery trials at university campuses and elsewhere in Japan and is looking for partners to help it develop the business further. Aside from having a 50 kg cargo capacity and a speed of 6 kph, the robot speaks short phrases like "hello" and "thank you" and has LED eyes, a feature aimed at making it more lifelike and engaging when interacting with people. "It would be scary if a simple box was running around places," ZMP Manager Hiromasa Iwano explained at a gathering in Tokyo in late July, adding the company took into account how people would react to the robots. "We wanted to create a robot that is well-received, socially." ZMP CEO Hisashi Taniguchi said at the same event that CarriRo Deli was the world's only autonomous delivery robot with eyes when it was revealed last year, noting that although eyes had long been a feature industrial designers avoided, others are now following suit.

By the third century B.C., engineers in Hellenistic Alexandria, in Egypt, were building real mechanical robots and machines. And such science fictions and historical technologies were not unique to Greco-Roman culture. In my recent book "Gods and Robots," I explain that many ancient societies imagined and constructed automatons. Chinese chronicles tell of emperors fooled by realistic androids and describe artificial servants crafted in the second century by the female inventor Huang Yueying. Techno-marvels, such as flying war chariots and animated beings, also appear in Hindu epics. One of the most intriguing stories from India tells how robots once guarded Buddha's relics.

What inspired you to take an interest in robots? I've always played with robots. For example, I remember a competition in high school where my friends and I built a robotic arm to move the chess pieces on the chessboard. It seems very trivial now, but way back then, the robots were all primitive and as high school students, we thought that building a robot that could do that was a big deal. Graduate students Ashutosh Saxena, left, and Morgan Quigley, center, and Ng were part of a large effort to develop a robot to see an unfamiliar object and ascertain the best spot to grasp it.

Robots are the most powerful blank slate humans have ever created. A robot is a mirror held up not just to its creator, but to our whole species: What we make of the machine reflects what we are. That also means we have the very real opportunity to screw up robots by infusing them with exaggerated, overly simplified gender stereotypes. "I think of it more as a funhouse mirror," says Julie Carpenter, who studies human-robot interaction. "It's very distorted, especially right now when we're still being introduced to the idea of robots, especially real humanoid robots that exist in the world outside of science fiction."

China purchased 141,000 industrial robots in 2017, up 58.1 per cent year-on-year, but foreign brands accounted for nearly three-quarters of that, showing that the gap is still widening between Chinese robot makers and their foreign peers. The China International Robot Industry Summit, held in Shanghai, said the sales and growth rate of industrial robots hit records in 2017. Among industrial robots, 37,825 were domestically manufactured, up 29.8 per cent year-on-year. "As robotics is expanding into nearly every industry, Chinese robot makers should realise the gap between them and foreign brands, take advantage of China's robotics development boom and learn from foreign experience to help China grow from the world's largest robot market into a robot manufacturing power," said Qu Daokui, president of China Robot Industry Alliance and chief executive of the Shenyang-based Siasun Robot and Automation company. According to Mr Qu, foreign robot makers sold 103,191 robots to China in 2017, up 71.9 per cent from a year earlier.