For example, NASA and General Motors built the 300 pound Robonaut2 - or R2 - a robot that is capable of using the same tools as humans and now works alongside them in space onboard the International Space Station. R2 can use its hands to do work beyond the scope of prior humanoid machines and can easily work safely alongside people, a necessity both on Earth and in space, NASA stated. It is also stronger: able to lift, not just hold, a 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body. Granted the robot takes up valuable space station space, but it doesn't have to be fed or go to the bathroom - major advantages in space. Other robots such as the Octoroach being developed by UC Berkeley researchers can crawl into all manner of super-secret surveillance or emergency recovery applications that the human body just could not.

Robin John Popplestone, one of the early pioneers in Robotics and Computer Programming Languages, died on 14th April 2004 in Glasgow, Scotland, after a 10-year battle with prostate cancer. Robin was born in Bristol in 1938. After the war his family moved to Belfast, where he grew up. He was educated at Queen's University Belfast, receiving an honours degree in mathematics in 1960. He first worked with computing while studying for a PhD initially at Manchester University and then at Leeds University.

Examples include creating systems which respond in an emotionally-aware way to the user, systems which modify their behaviour in response to affective cues, et cetera. Examples include how emotion might be added to virtual environments, the effect of affect on computer-mediated learning environments or collaborative computer games. Examples include attempts to add emotions to AI-systems, attempts to simulate emotions in computers, systems that are inspired by the physiological basis of emotion, studies which aim to understand the role that affective processes play in reasoning, and computational slants on theories of emotion. In particular studies which use computer simulation to understand affective processes. Examples include creating systems which respond in an emotionally-aware way to the user, systems which modify their behaviour in response to affective cues, et cetera.

Between the global economic downturn and stubborn unemployment, the last few years have not been kind to the workforce. At just five feet tall and 86 pounds, the HRP-4 may be the office grunt of tomorrow. The humanoid robot, developed by Tokyo-based Kawada Industries and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology, is programmed to deliver mail, pour coffee, and recognize its co-workers' faces. On Jan. 28, Kawada will begin selling it to research institutions and universities around the world for about $350,000. While that price may seem steep, consider that the HRP-4 doesn't goof around on Facebook, spend hours tweaking its fantasy football roster, or require a lunch break. Noriyuki Kanehira, the robotic systems manager at Kawada, believes the HRP-4 could easily take on a "secretarial role...in the near future."

It is a route that first brought the Pilgrims from England to Plymouth in 1620. Now, the route of the Mayflower is set to be followed again - by a entirely autonomous high tech ship. Called the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS), the unmanned ship runs entirely on renewable energy, and will sail on the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims' voyage from England to America. Researches have revived the Mayflower for another journey across the Atlantic, but its design has a modern twist. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) is set to sail in 2020 and take the same route as the pilgrims did in 1620.

A huge telescope in Chile is going to be modified so that it can look for aliens. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope will be altered so that it can better look for potentially habitable and habited planets in Alpha Centauri, the star system that is closest to Earth. The modifications are part of a deal between the ESO and Breakthrough Starshot, a huge venture that eventually hopes to send out tiny spacecraft deep into space, among other projects. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

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In a demonstration conducted this fall in the lower Chesapeake Bay, a fleet of small, human-free boats collectively patrolled a harbor, detected intruders, and even chased them away from the area they were protecting ... The new exercise highlighted the progress the vessels have made: expanding their coverage area, collaborating on strategy, improving tactical maneuvering, and getting better at spotting hostile parties.

Autonomous vehicles have infiltrated much of the military, from airborne surveillance to all manner of ground-based operations. But the Navy remains a mostly human-controlled operation--with the demand for robotic tech focused on conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it simply hasn't trickled down to aquatic operations yet. But the Office of Naval Research thinks autonomous boats can have a major impact on the military's ocean-going efficiency and effectiveness. In a demonstration conducted this fall in the lower Chesapeake Bay, a fleet of small, human-free boats collectively patrolled a harbor, detected intruders, and even chased them away from the area they were protecting. The Navy first demonstrated the swarm in 2014, when the vessels were tasked with protecting a single ship.

Just as Skype revolutionized the way we communicate, and TransferWise found a way to break worn patterns in the financial world, Estonia is about to make a transforming difference in the dynamic field of robotics too. Besides the country being a Mecca for data and tech-driven startups, more and more Estonians, in addition to excelling in code writing and software development, are thrusting their hands deep into the wiring and metal of robots. Imagine a vacuum-cleaner-sized, yellow'turtle' diving elegantly down hundreds of metres to probe ship wrecks, thus gathering valuable data for archaeologists and maybe even finding lost treasures buried somewhere deep under the sea. But this intelligent'turtle' is actually a robot. Equipped with a camera and a searchlight, the relatively cheap and highly manoeuvrable U-CAT (Underwater Curious Archaeology Turtle) locomotion principle is similar to that of the sea turtles of the natural world.