Walmart Inc. said in a press release on Tuesday that it aims for 65 percent of its stores to be served by automation by 2026. The letter said that an “omnichannel” network will be used, which includes greater use of data, more intelligent software, and automation. “Walmart showcased its supply-chain innovation Tuesday at its Brooksville,…

Computer scientists in Indiana are training robots to comprehend human emotions, nonverbal cues, tone of voice, subconscious movements and gestures, and eye movements in pursuit of teaching them to become more heart-smart, not just head-smart. Aniket Bera, an Assoc. Prof. of computer science at Purdue University’s College of Science and an expert in emotional computing—the…

Commentary Part I discussed tech opportunities in areas like 5-G, cloud computing, healthcare, and finance, especially in insurance. This article examines opportunities for tech in meeting two huge issues facing the world’s economies. One is the growing number of older retirees in populations, and the other is the ever-present anxiety over climate change. Whether all the…

Commentary In the 1970s, with America’s market opening to China engineered by those peerless (not) ethicists and strategists, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, China became the “world’s factory” because many of America’s own factories moved there for the cheap and compliant workforce. Now folks are starting to realize—in part due to the pandemic, evidence of…

A group of students from Sydney’s Barker College are representing Australia at the world school robotics championships in Houston, Texas. There are no science geeks at Sydney’s Barker College. Instead, the kids involved in the school’s robotics program are international hall of famers. Rock stardom might be getting a little carried away. Yet the opportunity…

For nearly a decade, China has been the world’s largest producer and consumer of industrial robots. However, it has “no pricing power” in the market, experts say, due to foreign companies owning the core technologies. According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it has been the world’s largest consumer of industrial robots for…

FedEx and robotics company Nuro on Tuesday announced a multi-year agreement to test self-driving vehicles in the package delivery company’s network, starting with a pilot program in Houston. The partnership comes as parcel companies race to reduce the cost of last-mile delivery, which surged during the pandemic. The companies will target delivery scenarios where Nuro’s…

Technology, AI, robotics. We don’t always see it, but these days we are always surrounded by it. In the wrong hands, robots can be hacked, manipulated, or even programmed to kill. And will robots replace our jobs, or will they create a new industry requiring new workers to learn new skills? We went to a…