Okay, that’s not exactly what happened, but Google-owned Boston Dynamics has released a new video of the latest incarnation of their Atlas robot, showcasing it’s capabilities for balance, navigating rough terrain, handling objects, and even getting back up after being knocked over. And all of this is accomplished while the robot is untethered.

Slimmed down to a 180-lb, 5’9" — quite svelte compared to it’s previous 6-foot form — the video shows the new Atlas model leaving the office to take a stroll through the snowy woods, using LiDAR and stereo cameras to "avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects".
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Researchers in Sweden have created what they are calling an electronic plant, a machine-plant hybrid that has electrically conductive wiring integrated into it’s internal structure. The research team sees a wide variety of applications for this development, including plants that can react to environmental changes, or plants that could act as electrical batteries, using photosynthesis as a power source.
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California’s Silicon Valley’s tech gurus are famous for their technical problem-solving skills, but as we’ve all experienced, sometimes there’s a ghost in the machine, that particular gremlin that no amount of tech support seems to exorcise. But tech companies know who to call, and it’s a specialist with a seemingly unlikely skillset…
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With the help of a smart tablet and Angry Birds, children can now do something typically reserved for engineers and computer scientists: program a robot to learn new skills. The Georgia Institute of Technology project is designed to serve as a rehabilitation tool and to help kids with disabilities.

The researchers have paired a small humanoid robot with an Android tablet. Kids teach it how to play Angry Birds, dragging their finger on the tablet to whiz the bird across the screen. In the meantime, the robot watches what happens and records “snapshots” in its memory.read more