European Robotics Week 2020 (ERW2020) began on Thursday and hundreds of interactive robotics events for the public have been announced. These will take place in countries across Europe and beyond, to show how robots will impact the way we work, live, and learn. In a year when humanity has faced a global pandemic crisis, robotics companies and researchers across Europe have been able to demonstrate how robotics help societies and economies to keep operating in a world affected by Covid-19. With the opportunities arising from Europe's digital transformation driven by new technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing and blockchain, the demand for ICT specialists continues to grow. In the future, 9 out of 10 jobs will require digital skills (source). Yet fewer women than men take up ICT-related jobs and education: for every 1000 women, only 24 graduate in digital fields (source).

It's hard to believe that it's been a decade since the first National Robotics Week. A decade ago I was a fledgling robotics blogger and was absolutely convinced that within the next 10 years, robots would be everywhere. That hasn't quite happened (yet), but robots certainly are a lot more places and doing a lot more things than they were in 2010, and that's definitely worth celebrating! National Robotics Week 2019 officially starts this Saturday, and runs from 6 to 14 April. To get everyone excited, the organizers put together this awesome video featuring a lineup of star roboticists: Ayanna Howard (Georgia Tech), Colin Angle (iRobot), Ian Bernstein (Misty Robotics), Kate Darling (MIT Media Lab), Mark Palatucci (Anki), and Rodney Brooks (MIT). There are all kinds of ways of getting involved with National Robotics Week, with events taking place nationwide--see everything that's going on here.

In the fourth issue of this monthly digest series you can find out how Qualcomm is bringing deep learning and AI to smart devices, why Daimler sent self-driving trucks all across Europe, how to imitate Rembrandt's best work with the help of deep learning, and much more. From the Smithsonian comes news--and a must-see fascinating video--about a painting created using data from more than 168,000 fragments of Rembrandt's work, trained to paint in Rembrandt's signature style. Over the course of 18 months, a group of engineers, Rembrandt experts and data scientists analyzed 346 of Rembrandt's works, then trained a deep learning engine to "paint" in the master's signature style. In order to stay true to Rembrandt's art, the team decided to flex the engine's muscles on a portrait. They analyzed the demographics of the people Rembrandt painted over his lifetime and determined that it should paint a Caucasian male between 30 and 40 years of age, complete with black clothes, a white collar and hat, and facial hair.