Ever since robotic technology became a mainstream thought, people have imagined a future where robots would deal with all of the housework in the home, or even help clean up in the office environment, so that us humans wouldn't have to. LG Corporation wants to make some of these dreams a reality, today unveiling a trio of intelligent robots at CES in Las Vegas, which together offer attendees a glimpse into a future where robots can help you around the house, make sure you catch a flight on-time, mow your lawn, or clean-up trash at the airport.

The LG Hub Robot
(Image Courtesy LG Newsroom)

The trio of robots are part of the company's movements in developing Internet of Things objects; and are designed to showcase LG’s advancements in artificial intelligence. Leading the pack is the Hub Robot, a robot designed to interact with a household through voice-recognition technology and an anthropomorphic design. Hub's "face" is an interactive display which can show a wide variety of information; and even express emotions using a digitised face.

The Hub Robot connects to other smart appliances you own; then, using Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition technology, the robot can be instructed using simple voice commands to perform tasks such as turning on air conditioning, setting a washing machine, or any other task made possible by the smart gadgets in the home. The robot can also "speak" to guide you through recipes or provide you with information in addition to what's on screen; and the robot can even respond using simple body language like nodding. The Hub Robot also contains a built-in camera; and can be programmed to recognise different family members and respond to them in different ways, for that more personal touch.

But LG isn’t just interested in building robots to help you around the house; and for the second part of its technology triple-punch, the company has unveiled two robots designed for use in the Airport. The Airport Guide Robot is exactly what the name suggests – already being prepared for deployment in Seoul’s Incheon International Airport, this robot is designed to help travellers by answering their questions in English, Chinese, Japanese or Korean; and can offer directions, provide detailed flight information like boarding times or the gate location, scan a passenger's ticket or escort you to the gate itself. It can even tell you what weather to expect when you arrive at your destination.

Joining it is the Airport Cleaning Robot, which LG describes as "a super-sized robot vacuum". Using a combination of smart light sensors, multiple cameras, and sensitive bumpers, the Airport Cleaning Robot offers enough cleaning power to clean everything from carpeted floors to tiles – all while avoiding obstacles and passengers to provide the most effective performance in crowded airports.

On a very similar tangent, the company's final offering is the Lawn Mowing Robot, which uses the same advanced sensors and bumpers as the Airport Cleaning Robot to map out a user's garden and avoid obstacles, hedges and trees as it trims the grass. According to LG, this robot is ideal for all types of yards and uses its fast-moving blade to trim grass safely and accurately.

All of these robots are now on display at LG's CES booth in Las Vegas, alongside other gadgets such as a smart refrigerator with Amazon Alexa voice-recognition tech and a razor-thin television set. Needless to say, 2017 may prove to be a stellar year for technological advances.

This article first appeared on Technically Motivated

Reddit users have discovered a security flaw in Steam, that allows for users to find out the e-mail addresses of other users.

Don’t panic though, all that can be done through the process to find it is that e-mail preferences can then be altered, but the actual address tied to the other user’s account can’t be changed to something else, nor can very much else be done with the ‘access’ to the address. Still, it’s not exactly comforting knowing that people can find out your e-mail address without you knowing.

The process involves something to do with using a cached token that is can change the e-mail preferences of an account. That same token is used instead of a login if a user wishes to unsubscribe themselves from e-mails without logging in. The token is a long, randomly generated one; but not much use if the token is being cached and stored for later use.

The method is not able to target specific addresses, but will reveal e-mails to other people without permission and if it can be used to edit the settings of another person’s account there’s a possibility that there could be other undiscovered vulnerabilities lurking that could change other, more potentially damaging settings of accounts. Valve have been notified of the exploit though, so here’s hoping that this hole will soon be plugged, along with any others they might discover during the plugging process.

Steam is currently holding a sale. Yes, another one – just after New Year and Christmas ones.

This time the sale is on the top 100 best selling games of the last year, and the games in there are pretty much the most talked about and popular games of 2016, as you would expect. The game are ranked in categories of Platinum, Gold, Silver and so on. It’s also been judged on the basis of gross revenue which means that some free to play games with microtransactions are in there, such as Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2.

Lower down the table you’ll find the likes of Kerbal Space Program, Youtubers Life Cooking Channel, DayZ, Terraria and The Forest. Higher up though tends to be reserved for some of the biggest and most well-known games, with Silver containing Payday 2, Planet Coaster, Smite and others; Gold containing Stardew Valley, Doom and Dead By Daylight; and Platinum holding CS:Go, Fallout 4 and even No Man’s Sky, which shows that sometimes even negative reception can’t stop a game selling well.

If you’re interested in buying one of the games (if the previous sales left you with any), or even just curious as to which games made the list, check out the sales page here.

We might be in 2017 right now, but there’s no doubt that the last year left its mark – especially in the way that a good number of famous ‘idols’ passed on in 2016. One such idol who recently left us was Carrie Fisher, most famously known for her role as Princess and then General Leia in the Star Wars films; although she was also known for her writing and script doctor skills, being a mental health advocate and much more.

Now, like others before her, Carrie Fisher is due to get a tribute to her added into the virtual space universe of Elite: Dangerous. Posting on the Frontier Forums about the passing, executive producer Michael Brookes wrote: “Sad news indeed. A ‘Fisher’s Rest’ outpost will be added to the game in the 2.3 release.”

As mentioned, Fisher is not the first to be given a tribute in the game, with Leonard Nimoy giving his name to a space station that was orbiting the game’s equivalent of the planet Vulcan in the year of 2015. Later that year upon the passing of author Terry Pratchett, a starport known as ‘Pratchett’s Disc’ was added into the game making reference to Pratchett’s most popular and well-known book series.

Update 2.3 will be coming to the game sometime in the early part of this year.