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"Vicarious buys standard industrial robots, enhances them with its software, and contracts them out the way a temp agency does workers-charging per task completed or at an hourly rate. In Baltimore, Vicarious robots assemble sampler packs for makeup company Sephora, work previously done exclusively by humans. Vicarious CEO and cofounder D. Scott Phoenix says the deal demonstrates his business model: Create artificial intelligence software that makes industrial robots smart enough to perform jobs previously done only by people. Vicarious hasn't previously discussed its customers or robots publicly but has earned itself an air of mystery among AI and robot experts since its founding in 2010. The startup has raised more than $130 million, according to data service PitchBook. Its investors include some of Silicon Valley's most famous names and deepest pockets-venture firm Founders Fund, cofounded by early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, and billionaire entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. "

"While still young in robot years (and actual years; she turns 2 years old on Feb. 14), Sophia's natural language processing capabilities, a key function of AI across many voice AI platforms like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant, in some ways seem impressive. That's because she doesn't simply answer what she's asked. However, she also sometimes doesn't answer at all. Hanson Robotics requested some prep questions to train her in some topics ahead of time (something I'd never give a human before an interview), and Sophia could answer very few of them. Here's a transcript of our conversation. And the ones she did answer were nothing more than one-liners."

robots robots robots

Noooooo...a dark day for domestic robots

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control. Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

"The robot is built using the Pepper companion robot, IBM Watson's artificial intelligence systems for natural language, and Panasonic's in-flight data and displays, along with Here Maps indoor navigational data. It isn't just for in-flight use. The robot can check in passengers at the gate, scan their tickets, and then circulate in a plane or wait at the end of a flight to tell passengers - in their own language - which gate they need to go to for a connecting flight."

Between the Turing test, robot bartenders and this I'm begining to wonder if "Rise of the robots" should be a 2015 trend.

...sex robots...

robots. enough said.

Good high level read on robots and AI in 2015.

Robots. Mind control. Mobile games. Social films. Been there, done that. That is, if you're B-Reel. Last year, Ad Age's sibling publication, Creativity, named the Stockholm-headquartered outfit its Digital Production Company of the Year. It was an easy call, based on groundbreaking projects including the Cannes Cyber Grand Prix-winning "Wilderness Downtown" for Arcade Fire (directed and conceived by Radical Media's Chris Milk and Google's Aaron Koblin) and the much-buzzed-about LiveDrive for Mitsubishi, from 180, Los Angeles. Yet B-Reel's output during the past 12 months has proved even more impressive. A small sampling of the work includes a "Minority Report"-style retail interface for telecom provider 3Sweden; a Rube Goldberg-inspired browser puzzle for Honda and Wieden & Kennedy, London; a social-media-created film for Intel/Toshiba via Pereira & O'Dell; and yes, some really great commercials.