President Donald Trump has arrived in the UK for his historic second state visit, which will see a crowded mix of royal pageantry, trade talks and international politics. Before making the trip from the US on Air Force One, Trump sent positive signals, describing the visit as an honour and saying: My relationship is very good with the UK. They want to see if they can refine the trade deal a little bit I'm into helping them, said Trump, with a multi-billion US technology investment deal being announced as the president's visit got underway. But Trump said the main purpose of the visit was to see my friend King Charles: He represents the country so well, such an elegant gentleman. Landing at Stansted airport, President Trump received an official welcome from a line-up on the runway including Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. The president is spending the night in the US ambassador's residence, Winfield House, before a day of royal ceremony and lavish spectacle in Windsor Castle on Wednesday - with the president describing Windsor as the ultimate in settings.

For the first time in three years, the Windsor-Essex Great Lakes District Competition saw high school students from across Ontario put their robots to the test – as 17 teams battled it out Saturday at the St. Denis Centre to showcase their design and engineering skills. It marks the first district competition for robotics students in Windsor-Essex since 2019. Competitions in 2020 and 2021 were shut down due to COVID-19. That means for a student who joined their school's robotics team after Grade 9, this would be their only district competition before high school graduation. "I've wanted to join robotics for about three years now. But in Grade 10, I didn't because everything was getting shut down around springtime," said Sandwich Secondary student Alma Piche.

Creating opportunities for collisions where computer science students, academia and industry can interact, share ideas and launch innovative programs is critical if Windsor is to attract and retain the best and brightest in the emerging technology workforce. Dr. Ziad Kobti, director of the school of computer science at the University of Windsor, believes these opportunities – including spaces and programs – need to be open to the public so that potential students can determine whether the fast-growing field is part of their future. "It can't only be done behind closed doors between academia and industry," said Kobti recently. "We have to create opportunities and settings where people can come and chat with someone and exchange ideas." Kobti believes the Windsor region needs to create these networking opportunities for students and industry so that talent can be identified, nurtured and convinced to remain in the Windsor area.

One of China's newest autonomous vehicle makers, Neolix, recently put self-driving microvans into action as it looks to scale up its solution to the country's logistics puzzle made more complex by a surge in online shopping. The Beijing-based startup, barely a year old, has already deployed the vehicles in the capital and other cities, but it faces stiff competition from a crowded field where other players, especially e-commerce groups, are racing to develop similar robovans. "Operating 10,000 units will be an industry milestone and it is crucial [for us] to achieve it," said Yu Enyuan, 45, Neolix's founder and chief executive. Neolix's ambition is to replace the roughly 40 million vehicles providing so-called last-mile logistics in China, a market projected to be 3 trillion yuan ($428 billion). These home deliveries are now handled mainly by two- and three-wheel electric motorbikes, zigzagging through neighborhoods to carry everything from milk tea to mattresses.

File photo - Britain's Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle leave St Mary Magdalene's church after the Royal Family's Christmas Day service on the Sandringham estate in eastern England, Britain, December 25, 2017. The Royal Wedding this weekend will be spectacular and the vast security operation to keep the couple, their guests and the crowds safe will be a masterpiece of planning. Authorities in the U.K. have had to consider all potential threats and prepare solutions. Highly trained and experienced manpower, combined with a blend of low tech and high tech approaches will deliver a masterclass in how to keep a gigantic event safe - one highly attractive to terrorists, protesters and pranksters alike, and while the entire world is watching on their televisions. Keeping a Royal wedding safe is no small task.

Google, which prides itself on developing simple, intuitive software that seems to know what you want almost before you do, is finding itself in a very different world when it comes to its own phones and other gadgets. Its new Pixel 2 phones, released in October, got high marks for their camera and design -- at least until some users complained about "burned in" afterimages on their screens, a bluish tint, periodic clicking sounds and occasionally unresponsive touch commands . Then the company's new Home Mini smart speaker was caught always listening . Finally, its wireless "Pixel Buds" headset received savagereviews for a cheap look and feel, mediocre sound quality, and being difficult to set up and confusing to use. In short, Google is re-learning an old adage in the technology business: Hardware is hard.

According to driving statistics published by California, Uber is the worst of six major self-driving car companies testing its vehicles in the state. The minicab firm experienced a "disengagement" – when the automated system forces the human driver/passenger to take over control of the vehicle – once every mile driven, with a total of 20,354 miles clocked up before it was banned from testing in the state. By contrast, at the top of the table was Waymo, Google's sibling company, with one disengagement every 5,128 miles driven, and more than half a million miles driven in the last 12 months. The figures shed new light on the ongoing lawsuit between Waymo and Uber. The latter company is accused of stealing intellectual property after it acquired a self-driving truck company, Otto, which had been founded by Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo employee. The technology in question is the design of the lidar array, the light-based imaging system that sits on the top of self-driving cars to help them see the world around them.

Google is launching its rival to Amazon's Echo, the Google Home, in the UK as the battle for the living room hots up. The smart speaker, which can play music, control Internet of Things devices, and answer questions, will cost British customers £129, some £20 more than Amazon's Echo, when it launches in Britain on 6 April. Google first launched the Home in the US in November, alongside the introduction of the Pixel phone and Google Assistant AI. Google Assistant is a voice-controlled digital assistant that runs on phones, Google Home and even smart TVs, and can provide context-aware assistance, knowing what sort of environment it's in. Since the initial launch, Google Assistant has gradually come to more Android phones, as well as Android Wear-based smartwatches.

Samsung could start a new chapter when it unveils its long-awaited Galaxy S8 on March 29, putting the disaster of the Note 7 behind it and showing that it can take a big step forward with innovative features. It's a digital assistant you'll be able activate by pressing a dedicated button on the side of the S8, and it has an impressive pedigree. The feature descends from Viv, the A.I. startup that Samsung bought in October 2016 and which claimed to be a more extensive and powerful alternative to Siri, which its creators also built. Apple bought Siri in 2010, and its co-founders Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham left the company in 2012 to build a better version of Siri that could connect to other services on a phone, and not just refer queries that it didn't understand to the Web. That's what Samsung is now promising Bixby will be able to do, claiming it will be better than other digital assistants like Siri or Google Assistant because of how it can link more deeply with apps on your phone.

"Artificial intelligence appears at last to be coming of age," wrote Richard Windsor, analyst at Edison Investment Research, in a recent 51-page report on the subject. Amazon took a big step in bringing artificial intelligence into the masses two years ago with the introduction of Echo. The multifunctional, voice-activated speaker system is voiced by Alexa. Ask Alexa a question and she'll try to find you an answer, with the support of AI technology. The device can also be used to manage and monitor home utilities.