Its creators nicknamed it the "Luke Arm," after Luke Skywalker's ultra-advanced bionic limb. Now, after nearly eight years of development and testing, this robotic arm for amputees has been approved for commercialization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The "Luke Arm," whose official name is DEKA Arm System, is one of the most advanced robotic prostheses ever built. According to the FDA, this is the first prosthetic arm approved by the agency that "translates signals from a person's muscles to perform complex tasks." The DEKA Arm was created by famed inventor Dean Kamen and his team at DEKA Research and Development Corp., in Manchester, N.H., as part of DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.

"Can you hold on a minute? I need to charge my robot." Uri Kartoun is developing robots, nicknamed EDNex and Clango, for handling suspicious packages. Down the hall, classmate Juan Wachs is working on a computer interface that responds to hand gestures. Both are enrolled in a joint master's/Ph.D. program in intelligent systems at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, located in Beersheba, Israel [see photo, " School Daze"]. But their reasons for choosing Ben-Gurion were very different and illustrate the range of issues prospective students should consider when choosing an engineering graduate program.

Two free-flying satellites performed the first autonomous separation and docking for the US on 5 and 6 May. The test was done without any human intervention as the craft flew nearly 500 kilometres above the planet, and could one day lead to robotic spacecraft that are able to repair damaged satellites. The ASTRO (Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Operations) and NextSat satellites together make up the Orbital Express mission. ASTRO waited for 90 minutes, then navigated back to NextSat and docked. Watch a video comprised of still shots from the encounter (.wmv file, 18 MB).

Having recently turned a corner in profitability, Nuance (NASDAQ:NUAN) trades at a PEG ratio of 0.0762. For reference, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a PEG of 0.2012. Nuance is 1/60th the size of Apple. Nuance has an EV/EBITDA TTM of 25.07. Nuance has a Price/Sales ratio of 4.075.

The brightest light in Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) quarterly earnings report came from sales of its iPhone 4S, whose most defining feature is the voice recognition assistant Siri. The phone's eye popping growth, particularly in Asia where it launched in January, was likely behind Nuance's (NASDAQ:NUAN) upside guidance issued on April 26th. Of course, consumer sales to OEMs like Apple still account for less revenue than Nuance's healthcare division, which is riding a wave higher in medical transcription. But, voice driven consumer electronics are increasingly important to Nuance's growth story. Following the launch of the 4S last fall, phones at Nuance were likely lit up by manufacturers looking to close the gap with Apple. In Nuance's Q4 earnings call, CEO Paul Ricci described interest in its solutions as "unprecedented".

Most people wouldn't want a message from work disrupting their day at the beach. But Eric Horvitz was so happy when it happened to him that he took out a camera and captured the moment in a photo. The e-mail message had been singled out and sent to the Microsoft senior researcher's mobile phone by a special program that he and others in his group developed. The program examined the message's contents, determined its importance and decided it warranted interrupting him during a family outing on Whidbey Island. The moment perfectly illustrated Horvitz's long-term vision for technology in the information age -- as something to augment and assist people, not overwhelm them.

It is important to divide the overall understanding process into manageable pieces.

Hanson Robotics is showing its new humanoid robot boy that belongs in its Robokind portfolio of robots, a 2012 reincarnation of its earlier cartoonlike Zeno boy but this time more humanoid with an array of gestures and eye movements. Made in China, the boy-like robot stands 27 inches tall. The most commanding feature of the new Zeno is its head, made out of what creator David Hanson calls Frubber. The material, as the word sound suggests in melding flesh with rubber, is a spongy, structured elastic polymer that can mimic facial movements, contracting and folding like human skin. The material is also described as biomimetic polymer.

Brooks, R.A, "Kunstliche Intelligenz und Roboter-Entwicklung (translation: Artificial Intelligence and Robot Development"), Proceedings of the Heinz Nixdorf Museum Paderborn Podium- Computer Gehirn: Was kann der Mensch? Was Konnen die Computer?, Ferdinand Shoningh Press, October, 2001, pp. Brooks, R.A. and Charles Rosenberg, "L –A Common Lisp for Embedded Systems", Association of Lisp Users Meeting and Workshop LUV'95, August, 1995. Brooks, R. A., "Challenges for Complete Creature Architectures", First International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, Paris, France, September 1990, pp. 434–443. Mataric, M. J. and R. A. Brooks, "Learning a Distributed Map Representation Based on Navigation Behaviors", Japan–USA Symposium on Flexible Automation, Kyoto, Japan, July 1990, pp. 499–506.

A panel of robotics experts at the South by Southwest conference couldn't reach a consensus Tuesday on whether machines would soon take over the Earth. But they agreed that the advances in artificial intelligence are well-nigh unstoppable. In fact, they said, machines are already demonstrating the ability to learn and to solve problems that humans couldn't. The discussion was seasoned with more than a dash of whimsy, and like much of what goes on at South by Southwest, it was closer to a brainstorming session than an academic presentation. Nevertheless, the speakers offered enough anecdotal evidence to make their visions of the future compelling, if not necessarily prescient. Two of the three -- Daniel Wilson and William Hertling -- are authors of novels about apocalyptic conflicts between machines and humans, so their comments need to be taken with a grain of salt.