Geometric alignment appears in a variety of applications, ranging from domain adaptation, optimal transport, and normalizing flows in machine learning; optical flow and learned augmentation in computer vision and deformable registration within biomedical imaging. A recurring challenge is the alignment of domains whose topology is not the same; a problem that is routinely ignored, potentially introducing bias in downstream analysis. As a first step towards solving such alignment problems, we propose an unsupervised algorithm for the detection of changes in image topology. The model is based on a conditional variational auto-encoder and detects topological changes between two images during the registration step. We account for both topological changes in the image under spatial variation and unexpected transformations. Our approach is validated on two tasks and datasets: detection of topological changes in microscopy images of cells, and unsupervised anomaly detection brain imaging.

Our old friend Spot the robot dog is joining the Big Apple's police force. New York City mayor Eric Adams announced that the New York Police Department will be acquiring some new semi-autonomous robotic canines in the coming weeks. The move comes almost exactly two years after the NYPD halted its first go at using a camera-carrying robot dog for surveillance, after a massive public outcry; citizens felt it was a dystopian overreach of police power. Now Adams, a former NYPD captain, is moving the program forward again. The NYPD says it will acquire two of Boston Dynamic's controversial Spot bots. While the robot dogs have autonomous capabilities, the NYPD says these units won't be patrolling the streets by themselves just yet.

Scientists revealed a robot dog that can teach itself to walk in just one hour. In a video released by researchers, the 4-legged robot is at first seen flailing its legs in the air and struggling - but after just 10 minutes it can take steps - and by the one hour mark it's walking quite easily, rolling off of its back and even navigating being knocked over with a stick by one of the researchers. Unlike many robots, this one was not shown what to do beforehand in a computer simulation. Danijar Hafner, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, worked with his colleagues to train the robot using reinforcement learning. A robotic dog has been trained to walk, roll over and navigate obstacles in about an hour, University of California at Berkeley researchers reveal. This type of machine learning is concerned training algorithms by rewarding them for taking certain actions within their environment.

A unique robotic version of Start Me Up celebrates 40 years since the release of The Rolling Stones' Tattoo You album.

New Delhi: Google on Thursday said it is setting up an artificial intelligence research unit at Bengaluru as the tech giant looks to continue developing products for India and taking them to global markets. Google Research India, the artificial intelligence (AI) lab, will focus on advancing fundamental computer science and AI research. Apart from the Google team led by AI scientist Manish Gupta, the company will also partner with the research community across the country to focus on tackling challenges in fields like healthcare, agriculture, and education. "We are incredibly inspired by India. With a world-class engineering talent, strong computer science programs and entrepreneurial drive, India has the potential to contribute to advancements in AI and its application to tackle big challenges," Google Vice President Next Billion Users and Payments Caeser Sengupta said.

Shopping centre owner Hammerson is utilising its CCTV cameras for more than just security, as it looks to better manage its space and support business growth for its tenants and itself. Working with Deepnorth – a company that says it provides artificial intelligence (AI) for a physical world – the property group is tracking anonymised footfall and counting people going in and out of particular zones. The aim is to gain deeper insights into flow and traffic numbers around its centres, using AI-enabled technology that grows in sophistication the more it is used. The group said in July that it had started a trial at Westquay shopping centre to monitor customer behaviour, but Kathyrn Malloch, head of customer experience at Hammerson, has provided Essential Retail with more details. Against the backdrop of some high-profile controversial deployments of facial recognition systems in the UK, she points out Hammerson's decision not to use such technology despite its availability.

As good as devices like the Amazon Echo have become at relaying information verbally, there are still some tasks that are better accomplished using a touchscreen. That's perhaps why Amazon in June released the $229.99 Echo Show, which includes a 7-inch touchscreen placed above a speaker. But the convenience of having a tablet-sized screen also introduced trade-offs -- the Echo Show is bulkier, pricier, and generally less attractive compared to the $99.99 cylindrical Echo. Echo Spot, Amazon hopes to solve some of those issues.

Crude contraptions using mirrors to see round corners have been used for centuries as spying devices, as well as at war. But now scientists have developed a camera system that lets users see round corners using laser light. By tracking diffusely reflected light, the invention reconstructs the shape of objects outside of the field of view. Computer scientists have developed a camera system (pictured) that that lets users see round corners without using a mirror. Researchers at the University of Bonn and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, came up with the array of devices.