The robot revolution will have to wait at the Henn na Hotel in Japan, which is laying off low-performing droids after they created more work by annoying and confusing guests and piling up in the repair shop.

Amazon is using an electric vest to help improve worker safety when dealing with automated systems and robots inside its warehouses, according to a report from TechCrunch. The Robotic Tech Vest, which is really just a pair of suspenders connected to a belt, signals to robots that a human is entering a space to avoid any sort of collision. The way the so-called vest works is by arming human workers with sensors that can communicate with robotic systems.

Germany automotive firm Continental is best know for its tires, but at CES 2019 the company is demonstrating something a little different: package delivery by robot dog. As part of its research into the future of mobility, Continental has partnered with robotics company ANYbotics (a spin off from ETH Zurich) to imagine the future of package delivery. In a staged demonstration on the CES show floor, the firm showed how one of ANYbotics’ four-legged robots could jump out the back of a self-driving delivery truck and carry a package right up to someone’s front door.

The Army is looking for a few good robots. Not to fight — not yet, at least — but to help the men and women who do. These robots aren’t taking up arms, but the companies making them have waged a different kind of battle. At stake is a contract worth almost half a billion dollars for 3,000 backpack-sized robots that can defuse bombs and scout enemy positions. Competition for the work has spilled over into Congress and federal court.

To pick a single pepper takes about 24 seconds, though the researchers say they purposefully slowed down the robot's movements for safety reasons. Sweeper is also equipped with LED lights so that it can work regardless of the time of day, for about 20 hours/day. Still, the robot is far from perfect, with only 61 percent accuracy in picking ripe fruit.

Robots that grill meat, slice tomatoes, stir-fry vegetables and stretch pizza dough are making fast food even faster, but can you trust a chef who's never tasted the food it creates? There is a distinct lack of chopping, smoke, sweating or swearing in the kitchen at Creator, a new burger restaurant in San Francisco. Instead, there is faint whirring and, if you really listen, the muffled sound of grinding and distant sizzling. It’s because the chefs here are not human.

If advanced robotics become ubiquitous in society, we need to know that we can trust them. At the same time, we need to make sure robots trust us mere humans in matters they’re not equipped to handle, researchers argue in a paper published last month in the academic journal ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. The work — a collaboration of Penn State, MIT, and Georgia Institute of Tech scientists — is an attempt to develop a definition and model of trust that could easily translate into software code. After all, robots can’t get a “gut feeling” to trust someone the way humans do.

A cafe staffed by robot waiters controlled remotely by paralysed people has opened in Tokyo, Japan. A total of 10 people with a variety of conditions that restrict their movement have helped control robots in the Dawn Ver cafe. The robot's controllers earned 1,000 yen (£7) per hour - the standard rate of pay for waiting staff in Japan.

Humans blaming each other of being rude is too mainstream, as now a robot has blamed people of being mean to it.

Europe and America have far fewer robot workers than we might expect them to have. The most common measure is one used by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) each year: the number of industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in the country. According to information released by the IFR to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the global average in 2017 was 85 bots per 10,000 workers. This is a 15% increase from last year.

Elon Musk, the inventor and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, told "Axios on HBO" that humans must merge with machines to overcome the “existential threat” of artificial intelligence. The big picture: Musk said artificial intelligence is "just digital intelligence. And as the algorithms and the hardware improve, that digital intelligence will exceed biological intelligence by a substantial margin. It's obvious." And he said we're way behind: "We're like children in a playground. ... We're not paying attention. We worry more about ... what name somebody called someone else ... than whether AI will destroy humanity. That's insane."

Route 9 skims by Boston and cuts clear across Massachusetts to Pittsfield, a city of roughly 50,000, the largest in Berkshire County. Well east of Pittsfield, Route 9 becomes Worcester Road, named for a city that in earlier times was the nation’s largest manufacturer of wire—barbed wire, electrical wire, telephone wire and the wire used in the making of undergarments by the Royal Worcester Corset Co., once the largest employer of women in the United States.

Agriculture has a reputation of being stuck in the past. In reality, for farmers, their workplaces are a fertile testbed for innovative technology – they were among the first to embrace commercial drone use, and autonomous vehicles that could work effectively (and safely) in confined areas of farmland. Among the latest developments in agri-tech are small, farming robots that can improve crop yield and reduce farming’s impact on the environment.

During christmas time, Amazon traditionally hires thousands of seasonal workers to meet the sharp rise in demand. However, the number of these workers is said to be declining by almost 20,000 this year. The reason for this is the ongoing automation.

Kate Devlin, computer scientist and sex-tech expert, talks about teledildonics, the possible futures of human relationships and the intersection of AI and sex. Dr Kate Devlin is a computer scientist at Kings College London whose work includes delving into the overlap between sex, intimacy and technology as well as human-computer and human-robot interactions. She has organised two sex-tech hackathons, and has recently written a book about sex robots called Turned On.

In the 2015 film Ex Machina, computer programmer Caleb Smith becomes romantically attracted to Ava, an artificially intelligent robot. Caleb believes that Ava is similarly attracted to him, and they plan her escape from the facility in which she is held. It is clear that Caleb thinks of Ava not only as highly intelligent but also as capable of emotional engagement with the world. But does she really like him? Could she like him? Could a robot ever experience the emotions that we typically think of as fundamental to the human condition?

This year's International Conference for Robotics and Systems was like a clash of the robot dog titans as a video emerged of the Boston Dynamics SpotMini hanging out with the ANYbotics robot, called ANYmal. According to ANYbotics' cofounder Péter Fankhauser, it's no coincidence that the design and technology is converging, but it's too early to fear the rise of the robot dog empire.

Last year, CNET traveled to San Marcos, California, for an early, behind-the-scenes look at a new generation of artificially intelligent sex robots from Abyss Creations, maker of the popular "RealDolls" line of customizable sex dolls. Now, customers can expect to start receiving those same sexbots within the next month.

Millions of unproductive, polluting farms in China could be modernized through a new pilot for automated agriculture. With a rise in automated farming, China could experience greater yields and cheaper food production.

This versatile concrete machine makes curbs, gutters, sidewalks, and barrier walls. Following is a transcript of the video. This machine perfectly pours concrete. It's the 5700-C machine by Power Curbers & Power Pavers. This versatile machine makes curbs, gutters, sidewalks, and barrier walls. It can even handle irrigation ditches and bridge walkways.