What you're looking at above is the Actroid-SIT, a human-like robot from Japanese firm Kokoro. It can make eye contact and even gestures in the direction of a person trying to speak to her, enabling it to competently handle crowds of people. Nara Institute of Science and Technology researchers studied how individuals and groups interacted with the robot to develop new behavior. They focused "interruptibility" and "motion parameterization" to improve human-robot interaction. Continue reading for more.
The Furusawa group at the University of Tokyo has succeeded for the first time in demonstrating complete quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits by a hybrid technique. The demonstration of quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits by Furusawa group shows that transport efficiency can be over 100 times higher than before. Also, because no measurement is needed after transport, this result constitutes a major advance toward quantum information processing technology.
4. Driverless Cars
The Google driverless car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for autonomous cars. The software powering Google's cars is called Google Chauffeur. The project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Google's robotic cars have about $150,000 in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR (laser radar) system. The range finder mounted on the top is a Velodyne 64-beam laser. This laser allows the vehicle to generate a detailed 3D map of its environment. The car then takes these generated maps and combines them with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself.
The Black Hornet Nano is a military micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Prox Dynamics AS of Norway, and in use by the British Army. The unit measures around 10 x 2.5 cm (4 x 1 in) and provides troops on the ground with local situational awareness. They are small enough to fit in one hand and weigh just over half an ounce (16 gm-including batteries). The UAV is equipped with a camera which gives the operator full-motion video and still images. They were developed as part of a £20 million contract for 160 units with Marlborough Communications Ltd.
2. Stem Cell Burger
On August 5, 2013, the world's first lab-grown burger was cooked and eaten at a news conference in London. Scientists from the Netherlands, led by professor Mark Post, took stem cells from a cow and grew them into strips of muscle that they combined to make a burger. The burger was cooked by chef Richard McGeown of Couch's Great House Restaurant, Polperro, Cornwall, and tasted by critics Hanni Ruetzler, a food researcher from the Future Food Studio and Josh Schonwald.
Human Universal Load Carrier, or HULC, is an un-tethered, hydraulic-powered anthropomorphic exoskeleton developed by Professor H. Kazerooni and his team at Ekso Bionics. It is intended to help soldiers in combat carry a load of up to 200 pounds at a top speed of 10 miles per hour for extended periods of time. After being under development at Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory since 2000, the system was announced publicly at the AUSA Winter Symposium on February 26, 2009 when an exclusive licensing agreement was reached with Lockheed Martin.