A 5-foot-tall, 300 pound security robot at a Palo Alto, CA shopping mall ran over a 16-month child last Thursday, hitting the toddler in the head.

From KPTV:

"The robot hit my son's head and he fell down facing down on the floor, and the robot did not stop. And it just kept on moving forward," said Tiffany Teng.

Harwin's parents say the robot ran over his right foot, causing it to swell, but luckily caused no broken bones. Harwin also got a scrape on his leg from the incident.

The Pew Research Center is soliciting answers for a "Future of the Internet" survey that asks a bunch of thought-provoking questions about the security of the Internet of Things; social cohesion in a social media-dominated public sphere; education and innovation; automation and robots taking our jobs; machine learning and justice; and the tone of the online public sphere in the next 10 years. Read the rest

A Chinese government official told the South China Morning Post that a Foxconn factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs. More companies are likely to follow suit."

As many as 600 major companies in Kunshan have similar plans, according to a government survey.

The job cuts do not augur well for Kunshan, which had a population of more than 2.5 million at the end of 2014, two-thirds of whom were migrant workers.

This vehicle picks up and stores traffic cones at nearly half the speed, 10 times the noise, and 20 times the expense of a human crew. But it looks cool.

[ GIF is faster than actual speed ]

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