Humanoid called Digit fuelled boosterism at Web Summit, but also raised concerns about jobs, safety and climate
This year’s Web Summit, in Lisbon, was all about artificial intelligence – and a robot sorting laundry.
Digit, a humanoid built by the US firm Agility Robotics, demonstrated how far AI has come in a few years by responding to voice commands – filtered through Google’s Gemini AI model – to sift through a pile of coloured T-shirts and place them in a basket.
Continue reading...German city’s Sinfoniker says aim is not to replace humans but to play music human conductors would find impossible
She’s not long on charisma or passion but keeps perfect rhythm and is never prone to temperamental outbursts against the musicians beneath her three batons. Meet MAiRA Pro S, the next-generation robot conductor who made her debut this weekend in Dresden.
Her two performances in the eastern German city are intended to show off the latest advances in machine maestros, as well as music written explicitly to harness 21st-century technology. The artistic director of Dresden’s Sinfoniker, Markus Rindt, said the intention was “not to replace human beings” but to perform complex music that human conductors would find impossible.
Continue reading...Billionaire says Optimus will start performing tasks for carmaker in 2025 and could be ready for sale in 2026
The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has claimed the company will produce “genuinely useful” humanoid robots to start working in its factories next year.
The world’s richest person, who has a penchant for making overambitious claims on social media, posted on his platform X, formerly Twitter, that he also hoped to expand into “high production” mode to make robots with a humanlike form available sell to other companies in 2026.
Continue reading...Revenues from technology arm, which sells robots to retailers, climbed by nearly 22% in six months to June
Shares in Ocado jumped by as much as 18% after the UK online grocer reported narrowing losses and raised its annual guidance for its technology arm, which sells warehouse robots to other retailers around the world.
Technology revenues climbed by nearly 22% year on year in the six months to 2 June, while retail revenues were also up by 11%. Ocado sells groceries in the UK through its joint venture with Marks & Spencer and was the fastest-growing grocer for the fifth month in a row based on recent sales figures, according to the data analytics company Kantar.
Continue reading...The 12-metre high machine has coke bottle eyes and a crude Wall-E-like head, as well as large arms that can be fitted with blades or paint brushes
It resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind.
Starting this month, the large machine with enormous arms, a crude, disproportionately small Wall-E-like head and coke-bottle eyes mounted on a truck – which can drive on rails – will be put to use for maintenance work on the company’s network.
Continue reading...Tech such as laptops, tablets and instant messaging has more positive effect on wellbeing, says thinktank
Exposure to new technologies including trackers, robots and AI-based software at work is bad for people’s quality of life, according to a groundbreaking study from the the Institute for Work thinktank.
Based on a survey of more than 6,000 people, the study analysed the impact on wellbeing of four groups of technologies that are becoming increasingly prevalent across the economy.
Continue reading...City council approves year-long contract with Knightscope to rent a K5 robot to respond to door alarms at the airport
An autonomous robot is due to become the latest addition to San Antonio International Airport’s security apparatus.
Following a 7 to 3 vote on Thursday by the San Antonio city council, city officials approved a year-long contract with Knightscope, a California-based developer of autonomous security robots, to rent its K5 robot for $21,000.
Continue reading...Machine apparently identified man inspecting it as one of the boxes it was stacking
A robot crushed a man to death in South Korea after the machine apparently failed to differentiate him from the boxes of produce it was handling, the Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday.
The man, a robotics company worker in his 40s, was inspecting the robot’s sensor operations at a distribution centre for agricultural produce in South Gyeongsang province.
Continue reading...Digit will begin its time on the floor by shifting empty tote boxes amid concerns humans will be shifted out of jobs
Amazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses.
It has started testing Digit, a two-legged robot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes.
Continue reading...Animatronic cats that purr and dogs that wag their tails have helped staff at Oak Manor care home in Bedfordshire to avoid medicating some residents with dementia
“You’re bloody lovely ain’t you,” said Frances Barrett, as the robotic cat she was stroking flicked its ears and whiskers one lunchtime this week at the Oak Manor care home in Bedfordshire.
The resident was one of several who live with dementia playing with the home’s small menagerie of animatronic animals that were originally designed to entertain American girls aged four to eight but have found a fast growing market in British care homes.
Continue reading...Boston Dynamics’ canine automatons steal show in Paris as maison stages modern fable, designers say
Welcome to the age of the super-robot.
With their impossible proportions, thousand-yard stares and supernatural ability to walk in 5in heels, catwalk models often appear a different species to regular humans.
But it was the models, including Kate Moss’s daughter Lila, who played the role of vulnerable, flesh and blood creatures at the Coperni fashion show in Paris, where they shared the stage with five robots.
Coperni partnered with Boston Dynamics for the first fashion show in which robots, rather than models, were the star turn.
As the lights went down, four pairs of green eyes began to flash in the darkness. When the “Spots” – Boston Dynamic’s robot canines, in tarantula stripes of yellow and black – stalked into the room, there was an audible collective intake of breath as each creature seemed to lock eyes with, and approach, an audience member.
Chores such as shopping likely to have most automation, while caring for young or old least likely to be affected, says report
A revolution in artificial intelligence could slash the amount of time people spend on household chores and caring, with robots able to perform about 39% of domestic tasks within a decade, according to experts.
Tasks such as shopping for groceries were likely to have the most automation, while caring for the young or old was the least likely to be affected by AI, according to a large survey of 65 artificial intelligence (AI) experts in the UK and Japan, who were asked to predict the impact of robots on household chores.
Continue reading...City’s board of supervisors to consider proposal involving remote-controlled devices
The San Francisco police department has proposed that it be allowed to use robots with “deadly force” while responding to incidents, according to a policy draft.
The document outlines how the department proposes to use its collection of robots, which number 17 in total although 12 are not operational.
Continue reading...CEO also expected to discuss self-driving technology and high-speed computer at Friday event
Elon Musk has said a robot business will be worth more than Tesla’s cars, and on Friday investors, customers and potential workers expect to see a prototype at Tesla’s “AI Day” that could prove whether the bot named “Optimus” is ready for work.
The robot will be the star of the AI show, but Musk is also expected to discuss Tesla’s long-delayed self-driving technology. In May, the CEO said that the world’s most valuable carmaker would be “worth basically zero” without achieving full self-driving capability, and it faces growing regulatory investigations, as well as technological hurdles.
Continue reading...Japanese innovation thought to have potential to ‘build a new relationship between humans and robots’
Japanese scientists have developed a “slightly sweaty” robotic finger covered in living skin in an advance they say brings truly human-like robots a step closer.
The finger, which was shown to be able to heal itself, is seen as an impressive technical feat that blurs the line between living flesh and machine. But scientists were divided on whether people would warm to its lifelike anatomy or find it creepy.
Continue reading...I despise chores – so I jumped at the chance to test the latest hi-tech solutions (and simple hacks) that promise to keep domestic drudgery to a minimum
A prime candidate for secular canonisation – and a personal hero of mine – is Frances Gabe. She was a visionary, a terrible neighbour (she antagonised hers with a succession of snarling great danes and a penchant for nude DIY) and the inventor of the self-cleaning home. Gabe, who died in 2016 at 101, transformed her Oregon bungalow into a “giant dishwasher”, with a system of sprinklers, air dryers and drains, plus self-cleaning sinks, bath and toilet. “Housework is a thankless, unending job,” Gabe said. “Who wants it? Nobody!”
I agree with Gabe – and with Lenin, who condemned housework as “barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery”. My own objections are mainly founded in sloth and a vague desire to stick it to the man, but for others housework can be difficult, or even impossible.
Continue reading...Billionaire Tesla chief gives no indication of any progress in actually building such a machine
Elon Musk said he would probably launch a humanoid robot prototype next year dubbed the “Tesla Bot”, which is designed to do “boring, repetitious and dangerous” work.
The billionaire chief executive of the electric carmaker Tesla said the robot, which would be about 5ft 8in (1.7m) tall and weigh 125 pounds (56kg), would be able to handle tasks such as attaching bolts to cars with a spanner or picking up groceries at stores.
Continue reading...The makers of robot weeders say the machines can reduce pesticide use and be part of a more sustainable food system
In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.
This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral.
Continue reading...The creators of the Aibo robot dog say it has ‘real emotions and instinct’. This may seem over the top, but is it? In today’s AI universe, all the eternal questions have become engineering problems
The package arrived on a Thursday. I came home from a walk and found it sitting near the mailboxes in the front hall of my building, a box so large and imposing I was embarrassed to discover my name on the label. It took all my strength to drag it up the stairs.
I paused once on the landing, considered abandoning it there, then continued hauling it up to my apartment on the third floor, where I used my keys to cut it open. Inside the box, beneath lavish folds of bubble wrap, was a sleek plastic pod. I opened the clasp: inside, lying prone, was a small white dog.
Continue reading...Makers say machine could be part of an agricultural revolution of automation and sustainability
In a sunny field in Hampshire, a killer robot is on the prowl. Once its artificial intelligence engine has locked on to its target, a black electrode descends and delivers an 8,000-volt blast. A crackle, a puff of smoke, and the target is dead – a weed, boiled alive from the inside.
It is part of a fourth agricultural revolution, its makers say, bringing automation and big data into farming to produce more while harming the environment less. Pressure to cut pesticide use and increasing resistance to the chemicals meant killing weeds was the top priority for the farmers advising the robot company.
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