A smart toilet seat by Hamberger Medical records a six-lead EKG in 30 seconds, checking for atrial fibrillation and irregular heartbeat while you sit normally.

Scrubbing surfaces is a physically demanding and time-intensive task. Removing adhered contamination requires substantial friction generated through pressure and torque or high lateral forces. Rigid robotic manipulators, while capable of exerting these forces, are usually confined to structured environments isolated from humans due to safety risks. In contrast, soft robot arms can safely work around humans and adapt to environmental uncertainty, but typically struggle to transmit the continuous torques or lateral forces necessary for scrubbing. Here, we demonstrate a soft robotic arm scrubbing adhered residues using torque and pressure, a task traditionally challenging for soft robots. We train a neural network to learn the arm's inverse kinematics and elasticity, which enables open-loop force and position control. Using this learned model, the robot successfully scrubbed burnt food residue from a plate and sticky fruit preserve from a toilet seat, removing an average of 99.7% of contamination. This work demonstrates how soft robots, capable of exerting continuous torque, can effectively and safely scrub challenging contamination from surfaces.

For the past 10 years, Sonia Grego has been thinking about toilets – and more specifically what we deposit into them. "We are laser-focused on the analysis of stool," says the Duke University research professor, with all the unselfconsciousness of someone used to talking about bodily functions. "We think there is an incredible untapped opportunity for health data. And this information is not tapped because of the universal aversion to having anything to do with your stool." As the co-founder of Coprata, Grego is working on a toilet that uses sensors and artificial intelligence to analyse waste; she hopes to have an early model for a pilot study ready within nine months.

Smart gadgets seem to be everywhere nowadays, popping up in our cars and even in our refrigerators. But there's one place they've been absent from - until now, that is: Our toilets. At the Consumer Electronics Show, the display floor was flush with'intelligent toilets' that tout all kinds of high-tech capabilities. Smart gadgets seem to be everywhere nowadays, popping up in our cars and even in our refrigerators. But there's one place they've been absent from - until now, that is: Our toilets The toilet that turned the most heads was Kohler's $8,000 Numi 2.0 Intelligent toilet.

A useful general home robot, as far as I'm concerned, needs to be able to do three things: fold laundry, wash dishes, and clean toilets. That's all it would take to make me happy. We've seen some attempts at both laundry folding and washing dishes, but not a lot of bathroom cleaning. Now, thanks to the World Robot Summit (WRS) in Japan, robots are finally tackling this task. As part of a competition held at the event, robots had to clean water from around a toilet and clean trash off the floor. Team Homer at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, managed to get things done with a TIAGo mobile manipulator that you could (almost) picture cleaning up your bathroom as well.

Each of Burger King's new ads starts with an anachronistic burst of noise from a dial-up modem and a solemn warning: "This ad was created by artificial intelligence." Then, over shots of glistening burgers and balletic fries, a robotic-sounding narrator deploys exactly the sort of clunky grammar and conceptual malapropisms we expect from a dumb AI. "The chicken crossed the road to become a sandwich. Burger King encouraged the chicken," says the voice. In a press release, Burger King claims the videos are the work of a "new deep learning algorithm," but an article from AdAge makes it clear that humans -- not machines -- are responsible for the funnies. "Artificial intelligence is not a substitute for a great creative idea coming from a real person," Burger King's global head of brand marketing, Marcelo Pascoa, told the publication.

If you're an Amazon Prime member, it's likely that you've had a shopping list ready for weeks. But if you're just browsing today through July 18, we have a few Prime Day deals on weird or quirky items that you might not have even considered. From robots you can keep in your home to Japanese-style toilet seats, here are the strangest, coolest discounted items we've seen this Prime Day. Jibo is kind of like an Alexa speaker... if Alexa had a body, face, and could dance. When we reviewed Jibo a year ago he brought us joy and creeped us out in almost equal order, but we kept him around.

If you know anything about home design, I'm guessing you know the name Kohler. Their kitchen and bath collections are some of the most visually stunning out there, and at CES 2018 they unveiled a whole new facet to their faucets (and showers and toilets and baths). Kohler Konnect marks the brand's foray into the smart home world, and they're making a big splash with a lineup of connected bath and kitchen products. Bathroom humor aside, Kohler is a strong contender for anyone who wants to enjoy all the luxuries of design and technology in new and innovative ways. With Kohler Konnect and a lineup of seven new connected bathroom and kitchen products, your hands-free smart technology reaches into new areas of your home.

Some people may view their bathrooms as a fortress of solitude or sanctuary for soaking in a bubble bath, but that doesn't mean Amazon doesn't want to be there, only a whisper away. One of the latest products to include the company's smart assistant, Alexa, is from Kohler, which added voice capability to its new Verdera mirror, just in time for the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. For the last couple of years at CES, there have been prototypes and platforms for smart mirrors. Instead of showing you how you'd look with red hair or a new shade of eyeshadow, Kohler's Verdera is simply harnessing Alexa to act as a smart bathroom hub. If you have smart lights in your bathroom, you can ask Alexa to turn them off without having to wander to the living room, for example.

While Kohler is mostly known for simple bathroom fixtures, it's been releasing a few high-end smart products, like toilets, for years. But now the company is expanding to the whole bathroom. The brand introduced a new platform at CES, Kohler Konnect, that runs on a new line of products users can customize with presets and control with motion or voice -- and some even have Amazon Alexa built-in. These apply to a new suite of products, from mirrors to showers to toilets, designed to work with Konnect. Users can start a shower, warm a toilet seat, adjust lighting from the mirror or fill a bathtub to a desired depth through vocal control.