What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01The Robot That Creates Virtual Home Tours
Story 02Edible Robots Offer New Ways To Deliver Healthcare
Story 03Robothespian Take The Stage Alongside Actors In Theater
Story 04Lingerie Brand Replaces Ad Agency With Artificial Intelligence
Story 05The Strange Japanese Hotel With An All-Robot Staff
Story 06Why Irresponsible Media Should Be Replaced By RobotsThe Robot That Creates Virtual Home Tours
Every buyer wants to get a deeper and more interactive look at a prospective home. While companies like MatterPort create 3-D home tours, this technology from VirtualAPT uses a roving remotely controlled robot and allows a real estate agent to give the tour in real time, as if they were streaming it. Then the tour is recorded, packaged and shared. The technology strikes a nice balance between respecting the human connection of a real estate agent while also using technology to create an immersive experience.
Edible Robots Offer New Ways To Deliver Healthcare
The idea of swallowing a nanobot which can map your insides to tell doctors what is wrong with you seems like it should come straight from the pages of a science fiction story, yet this week a new paper from researchers in Switzerland announced the development of "gelatin-based actuators," a technology that could bring us closer to edible robots. As they develop it, they are even teaming up with a local culinary school to make the robots better tasting.
Robothespian Take The Stage Alongside Actors In Theater
A robot maker builds a robot to keep his wife company after he dies. Though you've probably seen that plot line in a movie or two already, a play in the UK is putting the story on stage along with an active working "robothespian," a robot who stars alongside humans in the production. The play, which is now running in London, raises questions about the nature of humanity, how we interact with robots, and what happens if they adopt the personality of a lost loved one.
Lingerie Brand Replaces Ad Agency With Artificial Intelligence
The somewhat terrifying headline of this article is about how lingerie brand Cosabella replaced their agency with AI. Rather than replacing creative talent, the brand uses AI for managing the brand's digital ad spend and optimizing ads for performance. Exactly the things tech is best suited for, and it seems to be working. The article also includes some great stats about impressive results the brand has seen since implementing the experiment as well.
The Strange Japanese Hotel With An All-Robot Staff
Any place that has a robotic dinosaur receptionist has a different idea of hospitality than most. The Henn na Hotel located just outside of Tokyo near Disney Japan is just that kind of place, and this story takes you inside the structure of the all-robot staff and how the hotel actually makes it work with customers. The vision, according to the hotel's founder, is to build the most efficient hotel in the world. The newly launched hotel is the second with this theme, and the brand plans to announce and build more in the future.
Why Irresponsible Media Should Be Replaced By Robots
While robots have been tested in various parts of the media, such as using automation to write about the outcome of local sports games or Purple's chatbot, the mainstream media is still mostly non-robotic. This past week, news reporter Rachel Maddow invoked the ire of the Internet by doing exactly what irresponsible media do with a story ... overhype and under-deliver. Everything from her self-aggrandizing tweet before the show to the grandstanding reporting was criticized by many on both sides of the partisan divide as the opposite of serious journalism. In the context of the other stories this week, it's not not wonder if perhaps we could use a few more dispassionate robots in how the news is reported.
