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Brazilian twins who were joined at the head have been separated by surgeons using virtual reality. Three-year-olds Bernardo and Arthur Lima underwent surgeries in Rio de Janeiro, with a connection to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The doctors have trained for months, using virtual reality projections of the twins based on CT and MRI scans.

Constructing a tiny robot from DNA and using it to study cell processes invisible to the naked eye. This is the subject of research by scientists from Inserm, CNRS and Université de Montpellier at the Structural Biology Center in Montpellier. This highly innovative “nano-robot” should enable closer study of the mechanical forces applied at microscopic levels, which are crucial for many biological and pathological processes. It is described in a new study published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at the Robotics Institute (RI) in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science have developed a new learning method for robots called WHIRL, short for In-the-Wild Human Imitating Robot Learning. WHIRL is an efficient algorithm for one-shot visual imitation. It can learn directly from human-interaction videos and generalize that information to new tasks, making robots well-suited to learning household chores.

In a paper published in the Canadian Journal of Recreation Therapy, University of Utah researcher Rhonda Nelson and graduate student Rebecca Westenskow developed a protocol for using robotic pets with older adults with dementia. The protocol uses a low-cost robotic pet, establishes ideal session lengths and identifies common participant responses to the pets to aid in future research.

The convergence of AI and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and solutions (AIoT) is leading to “thinking” networks and systems that are becoming increasingly more capable of solving a wide range of problems across a diverse number of industry verticals. AI adds value to IoT through machine learning and improved decision-making. IoT adds value to AI through connectivity, signaling, and data exchange.

Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) implemented a non-verbal Turing test that shows that people interacting with the humanoid robot iCub were not able to tell whether the robot was human-controlled or pre-programmed.

A miniaturized robot invented by Nebraska Engineering Professor Shane Farritor may soon work in space. NASA has awarded the University of Nebraska-Lincoln $100,000 through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) at the University of Nebraska Omaha to ready the surgical robot for a 2024 test mission aboard the International Space Station. 

The new global economic reality, combined with an unprecedented labour shortage, is encouraging companies to reconsider sustainability strategies. Until recently, sustainability has been synonymous with environmental goals for many businesses and, as a result, treated as an add on to corporate strategy. Sustainability can no longer be considered in isolation. 

Amazon will acquire iRobot, provider of cleaning robots for the home. Amazon will acquire iRobot for $61 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.7 billion, including iRobot’s net debt. Completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by iRobot’s shareholders and regulatory approvals. On completion, Colin Angle will remain as CEO of iRobot.

Cloud infrastructure services continued to be in high demand in Q2 2022. Worldwide spending increased 33% year on year to US$62.3 billion, driven by a range of factors, including demand for data analytics and machine learning, data center consolidation, application migration, cloud-native development and service delivery.