Automation

To make it easier for students to grab a slice of everyone's favorite college staple, French company Paline is installing its first Pizza ATM in the US at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Available 24/7, the machine dispenses boxed, 12-inch pies in 3 minutes.

Lockheed Martin's Hybrid Airship is one beast of a heavy hauler. Naturally, maintaining a vehicle almost as long as a football field takes a lot of man hours, but the technology company has a new little helper on deck.

​Imagine a pill-dispensing, health-focused version of Amazon Echo, and you'll get an idea of what Pillo is designed to be. Utilizing facial and voice recognition software, the internet-connected device can reportedly recognize multiple family members on sight.

Adidas has announced that it is ready to begin commercial production of footwear at a robot-staffed factory in Germany. The so-called "Speedfactory" in Ansbach will apparently allow the firm to produce more shoes, with greater precision and with new designs.

As the world's automakers push to have their self-driving cars ready for widespread adoption, trials are popping up everywhere. Greenwich is the latest area to open itself up to self-driving car trials, in an attempt to find out how the public feels about ceding control to a car.

It may look like a one-eyed trash can, but Nxrobo calls its Big-i a "personal robot butler." Big-i combines the features of domestic robot, home automation, and personal assistant that learns and adapts to its owner's behavior,

When Nest launched its first thermostat in 2011, its aim was for the device to learn the rhythm of a user's household so it could automate heating. Now a new software update is seeking to take the next step in automation, with family accounts and geofencing.

The car and home are typically separate domains, but Ford wants to change that. It wants drivers to be able to control smart home devices from their car. And their car from their smart home devices. The carmaker is exploring Sync integration with devices like Amazon Echo and Wink.

Keeping track of multiple medications can be challenging. That's why PharmRight Corporation has developed Livi. It's a cloud-connected pill dispenser that can manage a 90-day supply of up to 15 medications at once, letting users know when to take what.

We all get caught in downpours without an umbrella every now and then. For students at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, however, that will no longer be a problem. A kiosk from a new firm called UmbraCity is offering automated umbrella loans that are free for 48 hours.

With the goal of letting button-operated legacy devices join the home automation bandwagon, South Korean startup Naran has come up with Microbot Push – a wireless robotic "finger" designed to operate standard buttons and switches.

If you've ever wanted the perfectly mixed drink, you may soon be in mechanized luck. An automated bartender is about to begin serving the public. Makr Shakr is claimed to be the world’s first robotic bar, and can apparently mix one Googol (the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes) drink combinations.