Robots that trundle along sidewalks R2D2-style to deliver takeout food or packages are still in early test phases. Few even exist. But San Francisco is cracking down on them, and that may stem from mounting concerns about automation gobbling up jobs. On Tuesday night, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed tough new regulations that will limit companies to three robots each; limit the city to nine robots total; and confine robots to industrial areas where almost no one lives - all of which makes it hard to test their basic function of delivering goods to consumers.

Chances are you’ve seen this tomato-sorting machine before. Video footage of it goes viral on a semi-regular basis, as with this clip above, tweeted by @MachinePix this week. As mechanical contraptions go, it’s impressively fast and unnervingly precise. It’s sorting tomatoes, but it looks like the fingers of God flicked damned souls straight into hell.

A security robot has been put to work in San Francisco in an attempt to deter homeless people from forming tent cities along the sidewalks.

Researchers at Tohoku University and Hokkaido University have, for the first time, succeeded in developing a robot capable of immediately adapting to unexpected physical damage. This is a significant breakthrough as robots are increasingly expected to function in tough environments under hazardous conditions.

There are so many things that could go wrong when you’re sleeping with a robot. Your partner might freak out in a burst of 21st century jealousy. Or you could accidentally push the robot off the edge of the bed and smash it into a million pieces. In my case, the robot woke me up at 5AM saying “goodnight” in Dutch and started breathing.

Many of the basics we'll buy will be constructed, bought, and shipped by machines.

For those of us who have lived in relatively placid times, it is hard to believe that American politics could become more chaotic than it is today. But far beyond allegations of criminal acts in the executive branch, the unending reality-show trash talk of the president on his Twitter feed or even nuclear brinkmanship, something else will push us into a new and uncertain era of politics, likely far stranger and possibly more dangerous than anything in memory.

https://youtu.be/16-lLlH0Zls This is Mobile Suit Gundam in real life. A company called Furrion created this monster of a mech. It's called Prosthesis.

Seven Dreamers’ Laundroid is a laundry folding machine that uses AI to sort clothing.

In several showrooms and conference centers all over Las Vegas, tech companies large and small are hawking the latest and greatest wall-sized televisions, VR headsets, and exercise bike/computer desk hybrids. CES is full of stuff that won’t get released before its manufacturer goes out of business, stuff you probably don’t need, and stuff that’s slightly better than last year’s stuff.

This year’s electronics expo promised a ‘better life’ and ‘better world.’ It instead offered a folding machine that can’t fold sweatshirts.

Harvard engineers have developed the world’s smallest Delta robot, dubbed the MilliDelta. As its name suggests, the new robot measures just a few millimeters, and could lend a hand in precise picking, packing, manufacturing and surgery on the micro scale.

It makes up to 75 motions a second, and could be used in tiny factories or even surgery. Researchers at Harvard have created a new robot that’s the smallest, fastest, and most precise of its kind. It’s called the milliDelta, and can move so quickly — up to 75 motions a second — that on camera it’s just a blur. The bot could be put to a range of uses, says its creators, from working in assembly lines for making tiny circuitboards to assisting in delicate microsurgeries.

Millennials, don't give up your smashed avo just yet. Hadrian the WA bricklaying robot is about to make construction of houses safer, faster and cheaper.

Android robots are seen at the reception desk of Henn na Hotel Tokyo Ginza in Tokyo, Japan.

Researchers in Germany have developed a robot that is about a seventh of an inch long and looks at first like no more than a tiny strip of something rubbery. Then it starts moving. The robot walks, jumps, crawls, rolls and swims. It even climbs out of the pool, moving from a watery environment into a dry one.

Oh great.

As robots start to enter public spaces and work alongside humans, the need for safety measures has become more pressing, argue academics. Robots should be fitted with an “ethical black box” to keep track of their decisions and enable them to explain their actions when accidents happen, researchers say. The need for such a safety measure has become more pressing as robots have spread beyond the controlled environments of industrial production lines to work alongside humans as driverless cars, security guards, carers and customer assistants, they claim.

Your next home could be built by robots. Designed by Construction Robotics, this robot mason is named SAM 100, short for "Semi-Automated Mason." According to Construction Robotics, the bot can place between 300 and 400 bricks an hour, compared to a human which can only lay around 60 to 75 bricks an hour.