With self-driving vehicle technology rapidly advancing, many companies are turning to autonomous robots for the last mile of the delivery process, from the store to the customer. The latest to join the trend is e-commerce giant Amazon. Following a successful eight-month test run in Snohomish County, Washington, the company’s Scout robots have been making the rounds of Irvine, California, since August 6, 2019.

The six-wheeled Scout is about the size of a large cooler with the capacity to carry small or medium-sized packages. The battery-powered vehicle, which moves at a regular walking pace, has been programmed to stay away from pedestrians, animals, and unexpected obstacles, like garbage cans. Its powerful sensors can also detect the movement of a car backing out of a driveway.

Though Amazon hasn’t revealed how Scout ensures the delivery is picked up by the right person, it most likely requires the customer to apply a unique code, texted to them before the delivery, to unlock the cargo bay. Also unclear is the number of deliveries Scout can complete before its battery needs recharging Though the initial tests are being conducted with a human in tow, the robot will be autonomous in the future. Its location however, will be tracked at all times—if someone attempts to steal Scout, Amazon employees will be instantly alerted.

While Amazon is focusing on home deliveries, food and grocery delivery company Postmates’ bug-eyed robots are currently making their rounds along the busy San Francisco streets. Also in test-mode, the robots can carry up to 50 pounds and travel 30 miles on a single battery charge.

Though the eco-friendly robots will help free our streets of bicycles, motor bikes, and large delivery trucks that typically ferry packages, they can t climb stairs or open gates, which means they can only reach consumers living the ground level. Additionally, the robots are unable to leave packages at the front door if the customers aren’t home. whether these issues get solved remains to be seen. For now, it appears that humans will still be needed to satisfy the ever-growing demand for home and office deliveries.

It may surprise bookworms, but apparently masterpieces such as Jane Eyre are lacking in something — sound effects. An electronic-book firm is adding background noises and music to the works of Charlotte Bronte, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Shakespeare in the hope of attracting younger readers. In one example, a description of rain lashing against a window in a Sherlock Holmes story will be “enhanced” with matching noises.

The first multimedia e-books — with sounds to accompany novels — will be available this Friday in the UK. The Booktrack releases are available to iPad users, with other tablet computer versions to follow. The concept is already in use in the U.S., where the classics come with added sound effects. Readers for example can hear the china cups chinking in Mr. Darcy’s garden as they read Pride And Prejudice.

A story by Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie will be released later in the year with a specially crafted orchestral score. Rushdie’s story In The South will be released with a soundtrack provided by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

The Power Of Six by Pittacus Lore, a novel for young adults, is one of the first to be tested with a soundtrack which builds in suspense in keeping with the plot. It works by timing the speed of each reader and the software measures the “turning” of a page and moves the music or sounds along accordingly. It has been created by Booktrack which synchronizes (使同步) music to each novel. It is funded by Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal.

Mr. Thiel said, “It’s always exciting to witness the creation of a new form of media. The technology promises to captivate readers in a different way.”

However, they have been greeted with horror by traditionalists, who say the technology takes away the pleasure of having one’s imagination stimulated by a story. They also raise the prospect (预期) of having to ask an overly eager reader to turn their book down. David Nicholls, whose bestseller One Day was recently turned into a film starring Anne Hathaway, said, “This sounds like the opposite of reading. It would be a distraction.”

Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a common eye condition in which you can see objects near to you clearly, but objects farther away are blurry. To see the farther clearly, you have the option of wearing eyeglasses, or undergoing the more invasive refractive surgery (屈光手术).

But Japan’s Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings claims to have developed smart glasses that, if worn just an hour per day, can cure myopia. It projects an image onto the wearers’ retina (视网膜) to correct the refractive error that causes nearsightedness. Obviously, wearing the device 60 to 90 minutes a day corrects myopia.

So how does the technology developed by Kubota work exactly? Well, according to a company press release from December of last year, the special glasses rely on micro-LEDS to project virtual images on the visual field to make the retina active. Apparently, it can do that without affecting the wearer’s daily activities.

Founded by Dr. Ryo Kubota, Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings is still testing the device, known as Kubota Glasses, and trying to determine how long the effect lasts after the user wears the device. And how much the ugly-looking glasses have to be worn for the correction to be permanent.

Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings began testing the glasses in the summer of last year, and is currently conducting tests on about 25 people in the U.S to assess the effectiveness of its smart glasses. The company plans to begin selling the device in Asia in the second half of 2021, where there are more nearsighted people, but it has plans to enter other markets in the future.