The multidisciplinary team of the EU-funded Joint Action Science and Technology (JAST) project first analyzed human-human collaborations, seeing what kind of behavior and brain function are at play when we work (or don’t work) well together, and then applied the research into building proactive robots.

The eventual aim is to build robots that can ask questions, discuss and explore possibilities, assess their companion’s ideas, and anticipate what their partners might do next.

Army Mechanic’s Garage Tinkering Yields 18-Foot Mecha Exoskeleton,
27 hydraulic cylinders bring the Mecha to life, its movements matching those of the person inside it.

Yes, now scientists are cooking up ways to teach robots to
walk on water!

No, I’m not kidding. Walk on freaking water!
The only guy I ever heard of doing this was considered pretty freaking special, but no, let’s figure out how to get robots to do it.

A robot that can walk on water: such a miracle is one step closer to reality, thanks to some new research that learns from the work nature has done with water striders. Walking on water may seem like a superpower and the name scientists have give the property of the striders’ legs is fitting: super-hydrophobia.

Super-hydrophobic legs repel water, and it is exactly this super property that scientists have tried to simulate with a (you guessed it) supercomputer. Professor of Chemistry at University of Nebraska-Lincoln Xiao Cheng Zeng worked together with colleagues — and the supercomputer — at Japan’s RIKEN Institute, Takahiro Koishi, Shigenori Fujikawa, and Toshikazu Ebisuzaki and Kenji Yasuoka of Keio University.

Super hero powers: Robots – 1, Humans – 0
Thanks guys!

Called the “Ember,” the robot runs on reversible treads and has two flippers on one end to get it over obstacles and right itself. It’s got a tiny camera mounted on one side, and an antenna mount. It’s even got its own Facebook photo album.

It’s small, it’s sturdy and someday every soldier may have one.

It’s been made under a Pentagon contract to develop “LANdroids,” small, automatically networking communications and surveillance robots.

Yeah! Networked robots!
Yeah! LANdroids!
Right, keep telling yourself that this won’t go horribly awry.
I’ll just go find Sarah and John and head for the hills.

Ibn Sina Robot is joining Facebook, seeks friends

Named for a medical doctor, the Ibn Sina Robot wants to shed his scholarly ways and you know, hang out, make friends, have a bit of fun. The prototype robot is based on a PeopleBot machine from ActivRobots. It features face recognition and language modules that allow it to carry on real-time conversations with its database of friends. The plan is to put the bot on Facebook where according to the BBC it will "foster meaningful realtionships with people.".

At least it kinda looks like UBL, so we won’t trust it right off the bat. But if they make it look like a 15-year old girl the gamer boys will be in trouble.

The near-fatal incident took place at a factory north of Stockholm in June 2007. A worker was about to fix a broken rock-lifting robot. He’d shut the power off, but the machine suddenly woke up and grabbed the man by the head… "But the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim’s head. The man succeeded in defending himself but not before suffering serious injuries."

This week, Johansson decided not to prosecute either the company that owned the factory or its robot. Instead, the company will have to pay a $3,000 fine.

Time to start buying that robot insurance people.

In what universe is this a good idea? Let’s make humans food for robots! Freaking vampire robots, that’s what we need!

I think I saw this movie. It was called ‘The Matrix’.

Yeast cells feeding on the glucose in human blood might one day power implants such as pacemakers. A living source of power that is able to regenerate itself would eliminate the need for regular operations to replace batteries.
A team at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has created tiny microbial fuel cells by encapsulating yeast cells in a flexible capsule. They went on to show the fuel cells can generate power from a drop of human blood plasma.

Is it me, or does this look like a hybrid of RoboCop and Voltron characters?

… had gone to see a team of Japanese engineers from the company proudly showing off their new mobility technology — a pair of wearable robotic “Walking Assist Devices.” Strapping the powered gadgets to our legs felt silly, but after taking them off, the sensation of being cast back among unaugmented humans, forced to walk completely under our own primitive power, was a distinct comedown.

Because, if you weren’t afraid of one, now you can be afraid of both.