As micro-molding gives way to "nano-molding," processors will need creative answers to the problems of handling flyspeck-sized parts. Farms may replace oil wells as the source of new plastics. Biopolymers made from cornstarch or other renewable feedstocks will supple-ment petrochemical-derived polymers in a wide range of applications. What if you could change the color of every part right at the machine? Instant color changes may be part of the coming era of "mass customization." New methods of polymer production will allow custom materials to be "programmed" for individual applications. Say Hello to Nano Molding The new frontier of injection molding is "shrinking," says Carl Schiffer, managing partner at Dr. Boy GmbH in Germany. Miniaturization in electronic and medical parts will help push today's micro-molding toward "nano"-size parts. Machinery will need to evolve to meet the "nano" challenge. Shot sizes must become smaller, and screw diameters are already shrinking from the standard lower limit of 14 mm.

"People love the wizards in Harry Potter or'Lord of the Rings,' but this is real," said Gary Bradski, a Silicon Valley artificial intelligence specialist and a co-founder of Industrial Perception Inc., a company that is building a robot able to load and unload trucks. "A new species, Robo sapiens, are emerging," he said. The debut of Atlas on Thursday was a striking example of how computers are beginning to grow legs and move around in the physical world. Although robotic planes already fill the air and self-driving cars are being tested on public roads, many specialists in robotics believe that the learning curve toward useful humanoid robots will be steep. Still, many see them fulfilling the needs of humans -- and the dreams of science fiction lovers -- sooner rather than later.

Robots are composed of several systems working together: the controller is the robot's brain, which controls its movements; the body is the robot's physical appearance related to the job it performs; mobility, or how the robot moves, depends on the job it performs (for example, a robot uses propellers and rudders in the water, and legs or wheels on land); power is used to fuel the robot (electric solar cells are one example, such as the solar-powered robots described here); sensors provide signals to give robots a perceptual understanding of their environment so they can alter their behavior based on that information; and tools are unique to the task the robot performs. Just as robots are made of several systems, the field of AI requires a collaboration of many different disciplines to be successful. Engineering is clearly useful, but I know people who have a background in biology, psychology, physics, and computer science. What's most important is a willingness to learn a lot of new things from a variety of disciplines.

Weather forecasters could find themselves pushed out of a job by an artificial intelligence system designed to write clearer, less ambiguous reports. Computer scientists at the University of Aberdeen, UK, were asked to generate an "artificial weatherperson" by operators of offshore oil rigs, who wanted more clarity in their forecasts. The vocabulary used by different forecasters can be vague and highly variable, says Ehud Reiter, who led the Aberdeen team. While this is simply an irritation to most of us, it can be a big headache for the offshore oil industry, where unexpected bad weather can damage equipment and threaten safety. When Reiter and his team compared past weather bulletins with the raw forecast data on which they were based, they found a striking variability in the choice of words used by different forecasters.

Fraud punished A Parkinson's disease researcher in Australia pleaded guilty to research fraud and was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence by a court in Brisbane on 31 March. Bruce Murdoch, formerly of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, was found to have falsified results published in the European Journal of Neurology in 2011; three of his papers have been retracted. In a statement to the blog Retraction Watch, University of Queensland vice-chancellor Peter Høj said that the university had reimbursed around Aus$175,000 (US$132,000) to funding bodies associated with Murdoch's work. Ice wall to stem Fukushima leak The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on 31 March began freezing the soil surrounding reactors 1 to 4 of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A refrigeration system (pictured) is creating a 30-metre deep, 1.5-kilometre-long wall of frozen ground that aims to stop groundwater from flowing under the plant and carrying radioactive isotopes into the sea.

Automated control technology has already been applied to drilling operations, allowing an operator to set up and operate the equipment remotely. This removes the operator from potentially dangerous zones on the drill rig, open cut or underground mine and increases overall efficiency of the mining operation. Driverless haulage trucks are being developed for open pit mines. Artificial intelligence – incorporating GPS systems, wireless communication and object avoidance sensors enable these trucks to either drive themselves or be driven by an operator at a computer panel away from the mine site. Computer systems that provide information about the velocity and position of the vehicle can prevent accidents and increase the lifetime of the machine.

Hendrik Hamann is into cloud computing -- as in real clouds, those puffy things in the sky. Working at IBM alongside some of the computer giant's most advanced systems, Hamann and his team seek a breakthrough in cloud-cover forecasting. They're aiming to help ease the introduction of solar electricity into the nation's major power grids, as solar-generated power is increasingly being loaded onto the grid, propelled by government mandates and solar-technology price declines. There's a big problem with solar power that the IBM team is trying to solve: You can't pump out much electricity on a cloudy day. Another source of power has to take its place.

Japan is set to accelerate its development of robots to secure a lead over rival nations, including the United States and Germany, as a new industrial revolution beckons. The world is "on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution, a paradigm shift caused by robotics and artificial intelligence," said Takuro Morinaga, a professor at Dokkyo University. "A country that has a hold on the revolution will control the world." The first industrial revolution was propelled by steam engines, the second by electric power and the third by computers. There was considerable anticipation for the field at a symposium on the future of robotics, held in June at the Tokyo International Exhibition Center and attended by more than 1,000 people.

Green-eyed and diminutive, Pepper works the crowd hard as he sings, dances and tries out his small talk. "You guys seem to be foreigners – where are you from?" he asks. When we tell him we're Irish, he says: "Gosh, Europe has so many interesting countries. I'd like to go there some day." Pepper is the latest in a long line of made-in-Japan battery-powered bipeds.

Rather than single organisms, some of today's smart machines can be like an'exploded body' where the body parts send signals to a remote brain to analyze. For example, a power company with 1,000 smart wind turbines that send information to a centralized brain (computer algorithm). The turbines can tell the brain how they're running so if there's not much wind, it might spin up some diesel turbines. The wind turbines can also report on usage patterns for their sensitive internal mechanisms and the brain can predict likely impending failures and schedule a proactive maintenance call. The remote brain behaves in a manner that resembles instinct in nature - with an automatic response, rather than a thoughtful one.