AI-enabled Woogie answers questions, plays interactive games and has the ability to engage in conversation.This is part of a series of articles that looks at entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the ground through crowdfunding. At the time of writing, each of these innovations is currently seeking funding.UK-based Arrow Electronics is crowdfunding for its robot Woogie, a voice-activated...

Hint: You’re not watching commercials.You know how sometimes you still watch live TV? And how if you’re watching live TV, sometimes a commercial comes on? Well, guess what happens then?If you’re reading this, you know. But now Facebook wants to spell it out for you: You ignore the commercials and you look at your phone.Here’s the graphic version of this story: Facebook says it tracked the b...

The Powervault trial using Renault's recycled batteries will kick off next month.While the batteries that power modern electric vehicles typically last eight or ten years, after that they still retain a valuable capacity that can be repurposed for other means. One carmaker with a keen interest in the area is Renault, who has just announced a partnership with UK company Powervault that will see...

The Bottomless Joystick could be the future of controllers for virtual reality gaming.Most VR controllers of today look and work just like a regular gamepad, but this kind of hardware doesn’t really lend itself to the immersive qualities of virtual reality gaming. To bridge the gap, the humble arcade-type joystick control might be making a comeback. The Bottomless Joystick is especially suitab...

The SomnaPatch is currently awaiting regulatory approval.When someone is suspected of suffering from sleep apnea, they're often sent for a sleep study (also known as polysomnography). This involves their spending the night sleeping at a clinic, with numerous electrodes hard-wired to their head. There are diagnostic devices that they can use at home, although these can also be rather cumbersome....

For any athlete, icing is a crucial therapy for acute injuries and recovery from intense performance. The Hail Ice Pack offers an alternative to messy, less than ergonomic conventional ice packs of today.It acts as a second skin of cool relief, adapting to the anatomy of the athlete no matter which part of the body it’s placed. The flexible design is composed of hexagonal pods that bend and co...

Facebook's newest patent, granted May 25, aims to monitor users' typing speed to predict emotions and adapt messages in response.We took a look at some of Facebook’s emotion-based patents to understand how the company is thinking about capturing and responding to people’s emotional reactions, which has been a tricky area for consumer tech companies but key to their future. On the one hand, th...

Nation's biggest retailer tries out machine which could FINALLY save us from having to endure the misery of a weekly slog around the supermarket.TESCO could start delivering groceries by robot after a successful trial.The supermarket managed to deliver a shopping order using a six-wheeled robot.The robots are made by Starship Technologies, which has also trialled deliveries with takeaway firm J...

Rapid progress in the development artificial intelligence (AI) has allowed humans to communicate with robots using natural languages. TrendForce’s breakdown of global sales of service robots for 2016 reveals that voice-based assistant robots accounted for the majority share of the total sales at nearly 50%. Robot vacuum cleaners made up the second-largest share of total service robot sales at...