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Hailed as the future gold mine of the digital economy, the Internet of Things encompasses billions of connected objects whose data is managed on networks. How can we meet the connectivity needs of all these connected objects? How can we develop an ecosystem of applications and services that turns innovation into tangible benefits in our daily lives? That is up for debate.

Artificial pollination: robotic solutions that aim to supplement the work of bees

• In response to dwindling insect populations, engineers are calling on range of new technologies to supplement the work of natural pollinators which have proved to be particularly effective for certain crops, most notably kiwis and tomatoes.
• Developed by a research team led by Yu Gu at West Virginia University, a six-armed robot called Stickbug, which is equipped with a LiDAR system to map its environment and an AI for added accuracy, can efficiently pollinate individual flowers.
• Other research teams are working on alternative robotic solutions, among them an air–liquid spray system to pollinate kiwi flowers. However, to be effective these systems will require the production of large supplies of pollen.
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Biomimetics: can robots outperform animals?

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Autonomous cars: the five levels of autonomy

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Autonomous vehicles may soon benefit from 100 times faster neuromorphic cameras

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Bactery start-up team

AgTech: start-up Bactery aims to use soil microbial fuel cells to power IoT

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IoT and robotics: the need for privacy-preserving cameras

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