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What We Like This Week: Electric Weddings and Robot Chefs

This week, the royal wedding got electric, robots are taking over the cooking line, and cities are bringing humans back into the urban design process. Check out our picks:

  • Royal electric. In case you missed it, the UK’s new royal couple drove off in an all-electric Jaguar after the ceremony. Road & Track gives us a glimpse under the hood of the classic roadster and talks about the partnership that made it possible.

Image credit: Jaguar

  • City smarts. What’s the best way to design a city? Check out Savona, Italy, Europe’s first to receive LEED Gold certification (via Architect Magazine). Or talk to the folks behind a new London program that’s placing designers and urban planners into 17 public authorities to boost inclusiveness, speed outcomes, and add some style to things (via Citylab).
  • Automating atomic accuracy. Atomic-scale manufacturing is now a reality, thanks to a team of researchers at the University of Alberta. We’ve had the tools to arrange atoms for some time—and as you can imagine, it’s been a tedious, painstaking manual process. Now it can happen at scale, thanks to AI and automation. Wired has a good take.
  • Overcoming uncanny. How do you make a virtual assistant that’s relatable but still clearly artificial? The CEO of Soul Machines talks to VentureBeat about the creation of Autodesk’s AVA digital assistant.
  • Computer-aided dining. What happens when four MIT grads team up with famed chef Daniel Boulud? Spyce, a new fast-casual restaurant in Boston where robots handle the cooking. The Outline has the download, or watch the video from NY Mag: