Robot avatars will provide a new level of freedom and interaction for the disabled, elderly or bed-ridden, say inventors. Robot avatars will provide a new level of freedom and interaction for the disabled, elderly, or bed-ridden that they do not currently enjoy -- some even controlled by a user's thoughts, say scientists, inventors and enthusiasts. These avatars will "fill in" for those who are not able to physically attend -- communicating for them, said science fiction author Robert Sawyer. "This is liberating for the person [who is disabled]," Sawyer told FoxNews.com. "A human being feels helpless when he or she has to ask another person to get something off a high shelf for them or help them with their hygiene. But we don't feel we're imposing on robots; we're empowered when we have one."

Read about the world's tallest building, the longest bicycle, the most modern tractor and a discovered time capsule that cannot be opened until the year 2957. Shoe manufacturer New Balance is stepping onto the 3-D printing platform with a new running shoe that incorporates a 3-D printed midsole that can be customized to each runner. New Balance is making the shoe available for the first time in Boston in April, 2016 -- timed to coincide with the Boston Marathon. It's difficult to believe that with all of the unrest in Iraq, a company such as AMBS Architects would propose building a skyscraper to rival Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which stands 830-meters high. But here it is: the 1,152-meter-tall Bride's tower.

Peck and his team asked study participants to wear headbands fitted with two functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) probes that measured activity in the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that plays a critical role in the emotion and reasoning behind decision-making. Each person was given a list of films culled from IMDB's lineup of the 250 best movies and the 100 worst movies and asked to pick the top and bottom three movies. The participants were then shown slides of each selection, while the fNIRS probes measured the person's neural patterns that correlated with preference and opposition. "We try to get an idea of what the patterns in the brain look like for things they like or don't like," said Peck. Preference patterns were then fed into a brain-computer recommendation system -- a series of filters and machine-learning algorithms -- that interpreted those patterns to make recommendations as subjects watched a fresh series of movie slides.

For everyone who recycles their batteries, good for you! Your efforts won't be wasted, at least not in Sweden and the U.K., where a machine with artificial intelligence is being developed to sort all of those batteries so they can be sold for their still-usable components. University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, has a camera and a computerized brain that runs on a neural network. That kind of system works more like a human brain in that it can learn to "see" patterns and respond to them. It's an ability that's important for sorting batteries, which come in a range of different sizes and shapes and contain materials, such as lead, cadmium and steel, that need to be distinguished from one another because they're valuable for resale. At the recycling plant, batteries are fed to the machine on a conveyor belt.

Oh, what the future has in store. Above: Polish architect Krzysztof Kotala, owner of 8 8 Concept Studio in Warsaw, wants to build a tennis court off the coast of Dubai, a proving ground for audacious feats of engineering. The dome-shaped structure would accommodate seven courts as well as a rooftop coral reef to attract sea life. Critics say there are too many technical challenges to overcome, such as manufacturing much larger sheets of glass than exist today in order to reduce the number of joints. But come on, it's Dubai, home to the tallest building in the world, artificial islands, and an indoor ski resort.

Today's technological frontiers are paving the way for real Robocop patrols in the future. If perfected, face recognition technology could aid law enforcement with spotting known terrorists or other criminals walking through a mall or an airport, for example. So far, however, the technology has not been perfected. Even the best systems available today only work well using photographs taken in good light without shadows. But now researchers have developed a face recognition technology that works in utter darkness.

When it comes to creative design, there's something to be said for just getting your ideas up and out there. New designs are rendered and posted each week in various categories: Road & Urban, Aviation & Space, Marine, Powersports and Transportation. An all-season vehicle for traversing swamps or arctic terrains, the Maskek is also an amphibious vehicle that can cross bodies of water when needed. Inspired by the Light Cycles in the sci-fi franchise "Tron," the One of the busiest research areas in artificial intelligence concerns teaching machines to truly see and comprehend their surroundings. Massively complex neural network systems are working on the issue in labs all over the planet.

With Angry Birds supposedly coming out on Facebook this month, its popularity shows no signs of slowing down, and it's even gaining fans among robots. OptoFidelity, a machine-vision company based in Finland like Rovio Mobile, recently designed a robot that can play the avian-flinging game automatically, and quite well. It can get three stars on every level. The PR video below shows a two-fingered screen-testing robot going up against a human competitor and defeating him. It's unclear how good the robot really is, but there's also a behind-the-scenes account of how they made the video here.

For a robot, Don-8r looks a little pathetic. That's fine because people can't stop opening their wallets to help this automated panhandler. Tim Pryde is a design student at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He created the 2-foot bot to collect cash for charity, and it's been out taking donations for the Dundee Science Centre, which is branded on the machine. Constructed of vacuum-formed plastic and simple electronics (see the build details here), Don-8r rolls along the ground waving its flag until it flashes a red light and asks passersby for help; coins can be inserted in a slot.

European research group Fraunhofer has developed an inertial sensor system which, together with a handheld remote control, lets people program the movement of a robotic arm simply by moving their own arms, in a sort of "follow the leader" fashion. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing, Engineering, and Automation in Stuttgart, Germany, devised algorithms governing the interactions of inertial sensors in the input device, which can be used to control the six-jointed robot arm. The algorithms "fuse the data of individual sensors and identify a pattern of movement. That means we can detect movements in free space," the institute's Bernhard Kleiner said in a release. Potential applications include easier programming of industrial robots: instead of teaching an assembly robot what to do by guiding it with a baton that it follows with laser tracking, workers could instruct the robot by simply moving their own arms.