Trust is a very important aspect of human-robot interactions, as it could play a crucial role in the widespread implementation of robots in real-world settings. Nonetheless, trust is a considerably complex construct that can depend on psychological and environmental factors.

Understanding a robot’s decision-making processes and why it performs specific behaviors is not always easy. The ability to talk to itself while completing a given task could thus make a robot more transparent, allowing its users to understand the different processes, considerations and calculations that lead to specific conclusions.

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This robotic arm fuses data from a camera and antenna to locate and retrieve items, even if they are buried under a pile.

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A busy commuter is ready to walk out the door, only to realize they’ve misplaced their keys and must search through piles of stuff to find them. Rapidly sifting through clutter, they wish they could figure out which pile was hiding the keys.

Researchers at MIT have created a robotic system that can do just that. The system, RFusion, is a robotic arm with a camera and radio frequency (RF) antenna attached to its gripper. It fuses signals from the antenna with visual input from the camera to locate and retrieve an item, even if the item is buried under a pile and completely out of view.

The RFusion prototype the researchers developed relies on RFID tags, which are cheap, battery-less tags that can be stuck to an item and reflect signals sent by an antenna. Because RF signals can travel through most surfaces (like the mound of dirty laundry that may be obscuring the keys), RFusion is able to locate a tagged item within a pile.

Looks kind of like a computer printer on big wheels.

We got to see Amazon’s latest gadget early — it’s the long-rumored robot.

We spent about 50 minutes with Astro. Like robots of the past (some have fizzled out; others have gone extinct like Anki’s Vector and Cozmo robots), it focuses on peace of mind in the likes of home monitoring and checking in on household members, along with providing entertainment. At the heart of Astro is Amazon’s smart assistant and artificial intelligence chops — so, yes, Alexa is on board just with an “Astro” wake word so that you can ask for the weather, a question or to go to a specific room.

So let’s break down Astro, what it can do and what we think after seeing this unique robot up close.

Google announced today it will be applying AI advancements, including a new technology called Multitask Unified Model (MUM) to improve Google Search. At the company’s Search On event, the company demonstrated new features, including those that leverage MUM, to better connect web searchers to the content they’re looking for, while also making web search feel more natural and intuitive.

One of the features being launched is called “Things to know,” which will focus on making it easier for people to understand new topics they’re searching for. This feature understands how people typically explore various topics and then shows web searchers the aspects of the topic people are most likely to look at first.