Chinese metaverse company NetDragon Websoft recently made history by appointing an AI-powered virtual humanoid robot as its CEO.

The new AI-powered CEO, known as ‘Ms Tang Yu’, will reportedly be at the forefront of  Fujian NetDragon Websoft’s “organizational and efficiency department”, overseeing operations at the technology company valued at almost $10 billion. The board of NetDragon Websoft apparently believes that artificial intelligence is the future of corporate management, and the appointment of Ms. Tang Yu is a symbolic commitment to embrace the use of AI and change the way the company does business.

Read More »

Family Mart, Japan’s second-largest convenience store chain, recently started using AI-powered robots to restock shelves, as a way to deal with the country’s fast-shrinking workforce.

The decline in labor population is one of the biggest threats to businesses operating in Japan, and some have already started looking for ways to replace human workers. Case in point, major convenience store chain Family Mart, a company has recently teamed up with Tokyo-based robotics company Telexistence to introduce AI-powered robots in hundreds of its stores across the country. The new “employees” will be in charge of replenishing drinks in refrigerators and are expected to make human workers’ jobs easier and, in some cases, replace them completely.

Read More »

Scientists at the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime with up to 90% accuracy by analyzing data and learning patterns.

Minority Report is a very popular sci-fi film about a special police unit that can arrest murderers before they commit their crimes with the help of three clairvoyant humans called Precogs, which can visualize impending homicides. It’s a brilliant film, if you like sci-fi murder mysteries, or you’re simply a fan of Tom Cruise, but the reason we bring it up in this story is that a team of researchers claims to have come up with a real-world, AI-powered system that is also able to predict crimes with an accuracy of 90%. And their systems doesn’t require Precogs, just past data so it can predict the future.

Read More »

You may think that wheels are essential when it comes to bicycles, but one resourceful engineer’s recent invention demonstrates that two half wheels are just as good as one full wheel.

Sergii Gordieiev, engineer and YouTuber extraordinaire, is known for his ingenious inventions – including a chainless bike and a drill-powered ice bike – but his latest creation undoubtedly takes the cake as the most unusual. This bizarre contraption basically has two half rear wheels instead of a complete one, and they work in tandem to do the job of a regular one. As weird as it sounds, this crazy bike shows that two half wheels, when used correctly, are just as good as one full wheel.

Read More »

Prism Courage, a 134,000-tonne commercial tanker, recently sailed from the Gulf of Mexico to South Korea while controlled mostly by an artificial intelligence system called HiNAS 2.0.

Avikus, a subsidiary of South Korean technology giant Hyundai, recently announced that Prism Courage, a tanker designed to transport natural gas, had become the first large ship to make an ocean passage of over 10,000 km (6,210 miles) autonomously. The key to this incredible achievement was HiNAS 2.0, an AI-powered system capable of analyzing different kinds of sensor readings in real-time and responding to them swiftly, efficiently, and, most importantly, in accordance with the rules of maritime laws.

Read More »

Speech2Face is an advanced neural network developed by MIT scientists and trained to recognize certain facial features and reconstruct people’s faces just by listening to the sound of their voices.

You’ve probably already heard about AI-powered cameras that can recognize people just by analyzing their facial features, but what if there was a way for artificial intelligence to figure out what you look like just by the sound of your voice and without comparing your voice to a database? That’s exactly what a team of scientists at MIT has been working on, and the results of their work are impressive, kind of. While their neural network, named Speech2Face, can’t yet figure out the exact facial features of a human just by their voice, it certainly gets plenty of details right.

Read More »

Japanese beverage maker Kirin Holdings teamed up with researchers at Meiji University in Tokyo to create smart chopsticks that reportedly make food taste more savory.

Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita has been researching electrical stimulation as a way to alter the way people experience food and flavor for years. In 2016, along with fellow researcher Hiromi Nakamura, he made international news headlines for developing a revolutionary electric fork that could make any food taste saltier than it actually was. And last year, he got even more attention for his Taste the TV (TTTV) project, a lickable TV screen that could imitate the taste of various foods. Now, he’s once again the talk of the interwebs thanks to his latest invention, a pair of smart chopsticks that can allegedly make food more savory.

Read More »

A Japanese startup is trying to blur the line between reality and virtual reality with technology that allows the wearer to feel the pain experienced inside the metaverse in real life.

H2L Technologies, a Sony-backed technology company based in Tokyo, recently unveiled a wristband that dishes out small electric shocks whenever the wearer suffers pain-inducing damage in the much-hyped metaverse. The device is supposed to do a lot more than that, including mimicking a range of sensations from catching a ball to a bird pinching the wearer’s skin, as well as conveying weight and resistance. It’s all meant to make the metaverse this immersive experience that the people and companies involved in its creation have been pushing over the last year or so.

Read More »

In an attempt to increase the daily milk yield of his cows, a farmer in Turkey is experimenting with virtual reality goggles that make the bovines think they are in the middle of a green pasture in summer.

İzzet Koçak’s family has been rearing cattle on a farm in Aksaray, Turkey for three generations, and the business has endured for so long because they have always tried to keep up with the times. Now it’s Izzet’s turn to make sure the family business does well enough to be passed on to the next generation, and he is going all-in on unconventional solutions. After experimenting with soothing music designed to relax the cows, the Turkish farmer is now experimenting with special VR goggles that allegedly make the animals believe that they are grazing in a sunny pasture, instead of a gloomy indoor farm in the middle of winter.

Read More »

A Japanese professor has created a prototype lickable TV screen that can reportedly imitate the taste of various foods.

Dubbed Taste the TV (TTTV), the prototype was developed by Homei Miyashita, a professor at the prestigious Meiji University in Japan, as a step towards a true multisensory viewing experience. The Intriguing device uses a carousel of 10 flavor canisters that are sprayed in combination to create the taste of a particular food. The cocktail then rolls onto hygienic film over a flat TV screen, and the viewer can sample it. Miyashita believes that this technology can help people connect and interact even over long distances.

Read More »

A Polish robotics engineer recently posted a series of intriguing videos of what looks like a dextrous android arm powered by synthetic muscles.

Łukasz Koźlik, who goes under the moniker Automaton Robotics online, is a talented robotics engineer from Poland who has spent the last few years creating an incredible synthetic muscle arm that moves eerily like a human one. A firm believer in the idea that muscle mimicry is the key to fast, efficient, and affordable robots, Łukasz has been building on the concept of McKibben muscle, or pneumatic artificial muscles, creating a synthetic muscular system that allows robots to move their fingers and palms in a similar way to humans.

Read More »

A woman who had exhausted all other options of treating her depression claims her life has become infinitely better since having a matchbox-sized implanted into her skull.

Having holes drilled into your skull and electrical wires connected directly to your brain sounds like a daunting proposition for most people, but for Sarah, a 36-year-old woman who had been battling depression for years, it was a desperate attempt to get back to a normal life. For years, she had been battling severe depression, and all other treatments, including anti-depressants and electroconvulsive therapy, had failed. Anything was better than the darkness she had been experiencing, and getting a brain implant proved a winning bet, as she has now been depression-free for over a year.

Read More »

A beauty salon in Dubai has been getting a lot of attention for its microchip manicure, which involves applying a small NFC chip onto the client’s fingernails and turning them into business cards.

We covered the trend of having NFC microchips inserted under the skin to make interacting with gadgets a more seamless experience, but one Dubai salon has come up with a non-invasive technique to achieve similar results. Instead of using a needle to insert the subdermal chip, the Lanour Beauty Lounge in Dubai simply applies it onto the fingernail and covers it with a special coating for protection. They can have all sorts of data installed onto the chip, from the user’s social media profiles and websites, to their contact details and phone number.

Read More »

An ultra-realistic underwater drone modelled after the arowana fish has been getting a lot of attention online, after making its debut at a military expo earlier this month.

This year’s Beijing Military Expo opened on June 5th, but it wasn’t the tanks, missiles, and other potentially lethal military equipment that drew reporters’ attention, it was a rather strange arowana fish swimming in a large water tank installed on site. At first glance, it was just a fish that seemed to swim and behave normally. It would swim around normally, and raise its head for a while whenever it reached a wall, then just wing its tail again and swim in another direction. At first glance, its appearance and movements were those of an actual fish, and it was only on close inspection that one realized this was an advanced fish-like robot.

Read More »

After losing his balance and falling off his bicycle, a bright Chinese engineer dedicated his spare time to designing and building a bike that not only self-balances, but also detects and avoids obstacles.

I never learned how to ride a bicycle, and I always wondered how people managed to keep their balance on those two thin wheels, but thanks to the efforts of Zhi Hui Jun, I may never have to. The talented engineer was fascinated by the self-driving bicycle built by scientists at Beijing Tsinghua University back in 2019, and after suffering a bicycle accident that left him with minor injuries to his face, the young engineer decided to build his own self-balancing bicycle.

Read More »