Self-driving vehicles are hitting some roads but not all of them are intended to carry people. Kroger, America's largest supermarket retailer with stores in 35 states, has started its driverless vehicle grocery delivery trial in Arizona.

As phone makers start to look at launching 5G phones, Verizon just announced that it will launch residential 5G in four markets (Houston, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Indianapolis) this year. On the phone front, Lenovo claims it will be the first smartphone maker to launch a 5G smartphone, with Qualcomm's new chipset, though not likely until near the end of this year.

A new forecast projects that despite some challenges, the speech recognition market is on track for significant annual growth. Technology is more fully understanding what is being said.

Smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home are in one of the hottest IoT product categories in the market, but their ultimate role within the smart home is still evolving. While most smart speakers don't have screens, consumers are spending nearly half of their waking hours looking at screens, according to one survey.

Artificial intelligence has been finding its way into countless applications, and now even the creation of personalized music soundtracks matched to vacation photos. A new system called SoundSeeker is designed to use machine learning to create original soundtracks based on the content of a few photos submitted by an individual.

More consumers are about to get a new taste of augmented reality. L'Oreal acquired the slick AR company ModiFace a while back and now plans to put it to work via Facebook.

With smartphones becoming essentially full-fledged personal and portable computers, pricing is rising accordingly.

Some consumers have a complex relationship with their smart home devices, with trust in some higher than in others. Consumers worry about their conversations being monitored and they trust some brands more than others.

South Korea's largest telecom company, KT Corp., is pioneering artificial technology for hotel room use and plans to open three more AI-assisted room services by 2022.

The Internet of Things is about connections everywhere, and hotel rooms are no exception. Various hotel brands are adding various smart devices and other connected services to their rooms.