Firefighting robots have been a hot topic recently, and the U.S. Navy seems particularly interested in getting shipboard robots to be able to help humans deal with flaming emergencies. They've already commissioned their own custom humanoid, but until that's ready to go, they're teaching Octavia how to team up with humans to find (and extinguish) real fires. The focus of this project is less about the actual fire extinguishing, and more about how Octavia interacts with a human partner to get to that point. She's already a pro with a fancy Macaw Compressed Air Foam anti-fire cannon, but she has to learn how to track a person, identify them, understand what they say, understand any gestures they make, recognize a fire when she sees one, and then accurately and efficiently put it out. Not a simple process, to be sure, but she seems to have it down, and notice in this video how her facial expressions communicate what she's thinking to her human partner: All of this, of course, assumes that the human part of the human-robot team is acting in a calm and logical manner, as opposed to running around screaming "FIRE!"

Based on every horror/sci-fi movie I've ever seen, squishing an actual fleshy human brain into a robot would make it unstoppable. Sooner or later, I'm sure someone is going try it for real. Until they do, what's almost as good is letting a robot borrow an actual fleshy human brain to help it balance and complete tasks requiring sensing and dexterity. It's like teleoperation, except the user's brain and body are controlling the robot directly, from inside a haptic suit. HERMES is a disaster response robot from MIT based on the Cheetah Robot, developed by Professor Sangbae Kim and his group at the MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab.

Editor's Note: This is part of IEEE Spectrum's ongoing coverage of Japan's earthquake and nuclear emergency. An anonymous worker at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has written dozens of blog posts describing the ups and downs of his experience as one of the lead robot operators at the crippled facility. His blog provides a window into the complex and dangerous work environment faced by the operators, a small group of young technicians who, like other front-line personnel, must approach areas of high radiation, deploying remote-controlled robots to assist with efforts to further stabilize and shut down the plant's four troubled reactors. The blog posts, which have recently been deleted, depict the operators' extensive robot training exercises, as well as actual missions, including surveying damage and contamination in and around the reactors and improvising a robotic vacuum to suck up radioactive dust. The author, who goes by the initials S.H., also used the blog to vent ...

This is the fifth post in our Startup Spotlight series featuring new robotics companies from around the world. We're inviting representatives from these startups to describe their technologies and how they see the marketplace. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. Researchers have long been trying to build robotic hands that mimic the extraordinary capabilities of the human hand. The goal has been a device with size and weight similar to our own hands, capable of performing multiple grasping motions, and powered by advanced controllers.

I really need him back on the blog. We first wrote about Roombots three years ago, and back then the researchers at the EPFL Biorobotics Lab, led by Professor Auke Ijspeert, were just getting started with their self-assembling robotic furniture. Now the researchers have some real robots to show off. As Ijspeert himself puts it, this is a "crazy project" to create adaptive furniture that can change shape and functionality and even move around. His group has built robotic modules that can attach to one another and use onboard motors to change their shape.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. Last month, over 1,000 robotics and artificial intelligence researchers signed an open letter calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons, putting new energy into an already spirited debate about the role of autonomy in weapons of the future. These researchers join an ongoing conversation among lawyers, ethicists, academics, activists, and defense professionals on potential future weapons that would select, engage, and destroy targets without a human in the loop. As AI experts, the authors of the letter can help militaries better understand the risks associated with increasingly intelligent and autonomous systems, and we welcome their contribution to the discussion.

We live in a world of sounds, full of beautiful music, birds chirping, and the voices of our friends. The sound of a door opening can alert us to a friend's arrival, and a door slamming can alert us to an impending argument. HEARBO (HEAR-ing roBOt) is a robot developed at Honda Research Institute–Japan (HRI-JP), and its job is to understand this world of sound, in a field called Computational Auditory Scene Analysis. At the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems and RO-MAN this year, several papers describing HEARBO's latest functionalities were introduced. With the dream of the futuristic robotic butler, researchers are trying to make robots understand our voice commands, a bit like Apple's Siri but from 2 meters away.

The robots intelligence had a strong effect on the users' hesitation to switch it off, in particular if the robot acted agreeable. Participants hesitated almost three times as long to switch off an intelligent and agreeable robot (34.5 seconds) compared to an unintelligent and non agreeable robot (11.8 seconds).

"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).