TECH WORLD

Russian Search Engine Yandex Launches Its Own Smart Speaker Russia's Yandex debuted its first foray into hardware with the Yandex Station, a smart speaker featuring the company's assistant named Alice. Alexa and Google Home  are getting some stiff international competition. Russian search engine Yandex recently launched its own version of a smart speaker called the  Yandex Station .  The Yandex Station is the company's first foray into hardware elements, and yes, the Yandex speakers have an assistant. While  Amazon  has Alexa, Yandex has Alice -- a Russian-speaking assistant developed by the company's in-house engineers. Alice has been available on mobile devices since she launched in October 2017.  Tens of millions of Russians use Alice for a variety of purposes, Yandex noted in a press statement. Alice will also see an expansion when Yandex debuts its connected car platform later this year after the program merged with Uber.  "With the i...

New Biohybrid Robot Uses Living Muscle Tissue to Move a Finger Researchers continue to push the limits of robotics with their new biohybrid robot which uses living muscle tissue to move its robotic fingers. In a  paper  recently published in the journal  Science Robotics , the University of Tokyo researchers presented their new  "biohybrid" robot.  The robot is a crossover between living tissue and robotics, integrating biohybrid robotics with living muscle tissue grown from the cells of a rat. The biohybrid robot could perhaps be used to replace missing appendages on humans - should the technology be repeated and replicated with human tissue. But the University of Tokyo suggests their research is laying the foundation for building far more advanced and lifelike robots. Building a Biohybrid Robot which Uses Living Tissue Fortunately, the research did not involve the direct harm of a rodent. The muscle was instead grown from myoblasts - muscle ...

The Rise of the Robots Robots in logistics and warehouse applications are much more cost-justifiable than they used to be. It used to seem that a headline like the one for today’s column would freak everyone out that “robots are taking all of our jobs.” However, low unemployment combined with dropping prices and increasing capabilities for robots has to a great degree  silenced that cry , especially in logistics where companies are having a hard time with staffing (especially finding pickers) and where, in total, there are 600,000 open jobs industry-wide. In logistics, robots can pay for themselves within three to nine months, and with lower purchase prices, easier-to-configure robots and greater capabilities of robots that can find their way around a building, even small- and mid-size companies can now more easily deploy robots and gain a fast return. So it’s no surprise that in logistics and warehousing, robots are taking a larger and larger role, at least partially d...