Humanoid robots could also take robotics back to the factory floor in the 21st century. Theres a very pragmatic engineering reason to build humanoid robots, and thats because most of our environment h

Theres another, equally important, purpose to making humanoids such as Cog human: interaction with other human beings. For human/robot interaction, its good to have something that looks vaguely human

Child-robot with Biometric Body has 200 optical, auditory and tactile sensors.

Humanoid robots arent a new concept. Perhaps the first appearance of a humanoid robot was Elektro, who appeared at the 1939 World Trade Fair in New York. Elektro danced, counted to ten, smoked and rav

Each month we put together a list of the technology and trends that have made us sit up and take notice.

Earlier walking robots had a more serious side: to discover more about the human brain. Shakey, for example, emerged from the Stanford Research Institute (now SRIs artificial intelligence centre) in 1

Sarah Kidner explores our fascination with robots, looks at their past and ponders the robotic future. What have a Czech playwright, 15th century artist Leonardo da Vinci and the future o

Aarons studio is in a modern purpose-built block on the UCSD campus in La Jolla. Canvases are stacked ten- or 12-deep, others fill the racks at the back of the room. It could be any artists studio any

Not just a roadie-killing piece of innovation, but a stunning guitar too.

Fictional depictions such as these are startlingly accurate, since sci-fi has paved the way for our acceptance of each generation of robots. Capeks prophecies were fulfilled when robots made their fir

Remember Anakin Skywalker? Here he is, 10 years after. Also: Intel's power saving trick and why it might hurt your eyes, robotic motorcyclists, Monkey Island on the iPhone

Microsoft owns up about what it really does with those bug reports. Also: a universal robot operating system, see the stunning 1960s McLaren that CAD revived.

Apparently, AI doctors have been around for almost two years. And this year, we can expect chat shows hosted by robots, Barbies that demand an allowance and the first synthetic life form.

Perhaps the most prominent of recent developments have been the emergence of the computerized pet as a viable concept. The trend started only a few years ago with those obnoxious little tamagotchi toy

The research thats being done now is often aimed at exploring the mental space that brains operate in without necessarily trying to duplicate the way they work. At the Free University of Brussels and

The Sennheiser HD800's massive transducers make them the Rolls Royce of headphones. Also in Most Wanted this week, HTC's Dream smartphone, Sony's Walkman W Series and the niftiest gadget we've seen for the Blackberry in a while.

The freakish looks are cool but Roboquad is frustrating to use: it doesn't react fast enough and the functions aren't that impressive

Packed with features, works like a dream and can take pictures of your cat from the other side of the world. What more do you want?

The Turing Test does illustrate one thing further than the ability of modern machines to trick us into various things. The test shows just how important the quality and depth of information provided t

One day, the Head of the Art Department at UCSD was looking at some of his prints and said, You should really meet this guy, Jeff Raskin he does computing and I think you might be interested in workin