“The Queen’s Gambit,” the recent TV mini-series about a chess master, may have stirred increased interest in chess, but a word to the wise: social media talk about game-piece colors could lead to misunderstandings, at least for hate-speech detection software.

Klinikum Chemnitz, a leading public hospital based in Saxony, is the first German hospital to install Versius, a Surgical Robotic System by CMR Surgical. It has now been used in over 1,000 clinical cases across Europe, Australia and India. Versius will be used by Klinikum Chemnitz in a broad range of laparoscopic (minimal access or keyhole) procedures.

Locus Robotics announces $150 million in funding. This makes the valuation of this provider of warehouse automation to $ 1 billion. Locus will use the new investment to further expand its global market and finance research and development (R&D).

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have created a four-legged soft robot that doesn’t need any electronics to work. The robot only needs a constant source of pressurized air for all its functions, including its controls and locomotion systems.

The Army of the future will involve humans and autonomous machines working together to accomplish the mission. According to Army researchers, this vision will only succeed if artificial intelligence is perceived to be ethical.

Network provider Verizon has acquired Austrian-based incubed IT, the creator of a software platform that provides autonomous navigation tools to administer, manage and optimize mixed fleets of robots in industrial settings. This acquisition will expand Verizon’s robotic capabilities to power robotic automation for enterprise customers, for a large part based on 5G.

Annual installations of industrial robots more than tripled within ten years (2010-2019) reaching 381 thousand units in factories around the world. The International Federation of Robotics shows top 5 trends shaping industries around the globe. “The mission to combine traditional production with ´go digital strategies´ puts robots in a pole position,” says Dr Susanne Bieller, General Secretary of the IFR.

Seegrid, vendor of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for material handling, today premiered a new autonomous lift truck, Palion Lift AMR, further expanding the capabilities of the company’s fleet of mobile robotics solutions.

Last week The Banking Scene organized a webinar on Automation in Banking. In an hour long discussion the benefits and pitfalls of automation in finance were discussed. This report summarizes the proceedings: “Be very transparent with your compliance team, your security team, cybersecurity team, and specifically in relation to the vendors that you’re going to engage with for these different components to build out your RPA and Intelligent Automation tool stack”.

The worldwide low-code development technologies market is projected to total $11.3 billion in 2021, an increase of 23.2% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. The surge in remote development during the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to boost low- code adoption, despite ongoing cost optimisation efforts.