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And the the elderly and disabled will walk again! Thanks to robots of course, specifically a system called “Hybrid Assistive Limb”, shortened to HAL and created by Japanese companyCyberdyne. The powered robot exoskeleton moves in response to nerve signals in a human’s legs. Users only need to “think” and the robot legs will move for them. Think of the legs like an incredibly advanced Segway that is actually sensing your nervous system....

This time last year,33 minerswere trapped 2300 feet below the Atacama Desert in Chile for 70 days. After a mining accident, first responders typically work against the clock to assess the situation, watching out for poisonous gases, flooded tunnels, explosive vapors and unstable walls and roofs before being able to save the miners. These necessary precautions can bring the rescue mission to a frustratingly slow pace. To speed rescue efforts, engineers at Sandia National Laboratoriesjust announcedits Gemini-Scout Mine Rescue Robot, which is equipped to handle any number of obstacles, including rubble piles and flooded rooms, to eliminate some of the unknowns of mine rescue operations and arm first responders with the most valuable tool: information....

If the idea of having to implant a QR code onto your clothing turns you off, then this is likely to look like a great option. We all have that favorite t-shirt, right? It’s the one that everybody knows you by. So why not really lay claim to it by tying the pattern of the shirt to your contact information? A company calledCapturiowill let you take a picture of the shirt that you love, then send it to them with your contact information....

This shape-shifting robot adjusts its body to walk across all kinds of terrain This robot’s got legs for days A shape-shifting quadruped DyRET, the Dynamic Robot for Embodied Testing, or “the animal” in the Norwegian of its creator,Tønnes Nygaard, was designed to explore the idea of a shape-shifting robot. Each of DyRET’s four legs has two telescopic sections, so that it can change the length of its thigh or shin bones....

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce,”says Karl Marx. In 1981, riots broke out between local police and black residents inBrixton, UK, a working class neighborhood in South London. Now, imagine a futuristic Brixton, which has degenerated into a disregarded area inhabited by London’s new robot workforce – robots built and designed to carry out all of the tasks which humans are no longer inclined to do. Filmmaker and architecture graduate Kibwe Tavares ofFactory Fifteenproduced this futuristic and harrowing vision in the following short film, a mix of animation with architectural drawing, overlaid with photographs from the Brixton riots of the early 1980s....