Self-Folding Origami

Robert Wood of Harvard University, Daniela Rus and Erik Demaine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology take us to a new level of robotic creepiness with self-folding origami.  The device is able to morph itself into new shapes using shape-memory alloys that line the edges of triangular modules.  Each module also sports a strong magnet that holds the final form after a module has executed a desired fold.

Giant, Post-Apocalyptic "Rescue" Robot

I found this gem in a gallery of vintage robots featured in Popular Science. 
This robot, called "The Beetle" weighed 170,000 pounds and cost $1.5 Million in 1962.  It was originally designed as a "mechanic's suit" for some kind of half-baked nuclear-powered airplane.  There are more awesome pictures in the original article, particularly of the "pilot" sitting behind 2 feet of leaded glass.

The whole thing looks like something out of the movie Aliens.

Virginia Tech's new CHARLI-L robot

CHARLI is actually a series of robots that initially consists of the 5-foot tall CHARLI-L (or lightweight, pictured above), and the forthcoming CHARLI-H (or heavy), both of which are completely autonomous, with a full range of movements and gestures thanks to a series of pulleys, springs, carbon fiber rods, and actuators (not to mention some slightly more mysterious AI). What's more, while CHARLI-L is currently restricted to walking on flat surfaces, CHARLI-H promises to be able to walk on the uneven ground around the Virginia Tech campus, and eventually even be able to "run, jump, kick, open doors, pick up objects, and do just about anything a real person can do."

This robot reminds me a lot of the machines from I, Robot.  I can't wait until machines like these are ninja-ing around  the world.

Your daily dose of creepiness

Time for another trip into the Uncanny Valley:

M3: Neony & Synchy

Baby Robots!

I'm 100% certain these will grow up to kill us all.

Inside Google

Wired has an excellent article on how the Google search engine works and it's continued development. 

What strikes me about this article is how many times the core Google search engine has been revised - 5 major changes to the fundamental search architecture over the last 13 years.  Also, the details about how Google handles "bi-gram breakage" are awesome.  This kind of processing requires an very high level of 'understanding' of the human world, and Google is doing it extremely efficiently. This is the kind of system that is going to wake up one morning and take over it's own development.