Artificial Intelligence

As most of us have noticed over the past couple of years, face masks can sometimes be a hassle – necessary though they are. An experimental new mask, though, automatically becomes easier to breathe through when maximum air filtration isn't required.

Having flexed its muscles in predicting kidney injury, toppling Go champions and solving 50-year-old science problems, artificial intelligence company DeepMind is now dipping its toes in weather forecasting.

Oakland-based electric mobility firm Unagi has teamed up with acclaimed industrial designer Yves Behar for a smooth-looking, full-suspension e-kickscoot with AI smarts that warn riders of possible collisions with people or objects.

Ever since the first iRobot Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner was introduced, successive models have offered additional features. The new Roomba j7 is particularly interesting, however, in that it uses a visible light camera to identify and avoid obstacles … such as dog and cat poop.

Although self-driving cars are coming, the first ones will likely still need to periodically have the driver take manual control of the vehicle. A new system could check if the driver is currently able to do so, by monitoring what they're doing.

Scientists have demonstrated a new type of machine learning algorithm they say can detect structural changes in the brain and combined with standard memory tests to calculate the likelihood of someone going on to develop Alzheimer's.

For more than five years, a team has been developing and testing control software under Alphabet's X moonshot factory, aimed at making industrial robots smarter and easier to use. Now the project has branched out into a new company called Intrinsic.

Last year DeepMind put forward a solution to a 50-year-old science problem, demonstrating how its AlphaFold AI could predict the 3D structures of unique proteins, and which it has now used to predict structures for nearly every protein in the human body.

Beijing-based Mobvoi has launched a digital dictation machine called the AI Recorder that taps into artificial intelligence to automatically transcribe audio, making it a useful addition to the travel bag of journalists, students and business folk.

Scientists in Australia have adapted AI technology for the early detection of prostate cancer, with their software analyzing CT scans and outperforming trained radiologists to detect cancerous growths in seconds.

Accumulation of fat around the heart has long been linked to cardiovascular and metabolic disease but until now there hasn’t been a simple way to measure this. A new AI tool has been developed that can quantify these fat deposits from regular MRI images.

Samsung is claiming a few world firsts with its latest robot vacuum cleaner. The Jet Bot AI+ is said to be the first to feature an active stereo-type 3D sensor for object detection, and the first equipped with Intel AI for object recognition.