It's the 21st century, and robots are supposed to be doing everything for us now. As with personal jet packs, that hasn't happened. But Evolution Robotics' Mint is one of a number of floor-cleaning robots designed to lighten the housework load. Announced at CES earlier this year and shipping this fall, Mint is an automatic floor cleaner--not a vacuum like iRobot's Roomba. You put a wet or dry dust cloth on the removable cleaning pad, push a button, and Mint gets to work.

How do you send a robot to space? When Robonaut 2 heads to the International Space Station this fall, it won't be strapped into a seat like its astronaut companions. Instead, it will be carefully packed inside dense foam and an aluminum frame that's specially designed to withstand the intense vibrations and gravity forces the bot will experience during its ascent into orbit. Engineers have spent several months devising the best way to secure the humanoid, nicknamed R2, so it arrives at the ISS unharmed. The engineers concocted a plan to attach the robot to a base plate with its back and shoulders supported.

The Negotiator, another tactical mobile robot that can climb stairs, seems to be a pared down, civilian version of the PackBot. Like the PackBot, the Negotiator can climb stairs, work by remote control, and be outfitted with tools for reconnaissance and chemical detection. While some municipalities have adopted it, the PackBot hasn't exactly become a common sight at your local police station. It seems that iRobot has finally realized that the PackBot, while fine for military units with large budgets, was just too expensive for local government agencies to adopt. "We believe that the low entry price point for iRobot Negotiator will help make it accessible to local, state and federal agencies that would not have been able to afford a robot otherwise," Joe Dyer, president of iRobot's Government and Industrial Robots division, said in a statement.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Experts in fields such as regenerative medicine; personalized health; information and data-driven health; and neuromedicine are gathering here this week for several days of discussions about the future of medicine. Organized under the appropriate rubric of "FutureMed," leaders in these fields, plus nearly 70 paying participants, are taking part in Singularity University's first FutureMed executive program. For two years, Singularity University (SU)--created by futurist Ray Kurzweil and X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis--has been bringing people together at NASA Ames Research Center here to discuss what are called "exponentially growing" technologies--things like 3D printing, self-organizing molecular circuits, advanced robotics, and more. But over two 10-week summer courses with graduate-student level participants and several 10-day programs aimed at successful executives, the institution has spread its focus across a wide variety of disciplines. FutureMed is SU's first attempt at homing in on a single field and having top-level discussions about where that field is heading and how it may change the world.

PALM DESERT, Calif.--If you're going to spend the cash to charter a private jet, shouldn't it be easy to book the plane? You would think the industry would simplify things for the wealthy, but that's not the case, according to start-up FlyRuby, which unveiled its service at the Demo Spring conference here today. Indeed, company CEO Michael Leek says that it can often take hours to figure out a suitable private plane charter between two cities. That's where FlyRuby comes in, Leek said. A former U.S. Marine with a passion for the aviation industry, Leek said he wanted to identify the inefficiencies in the industry--and he realized that one of the biggest was that there was no simple way to quickly identify the specific plane that makes the most sense for a flight.

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've never seen a robot climb straight up an entirely flat vertical wall, I dare you not to be impressed the first time you do. That was my certainly experience when I watched a wall-climbing robot do its thing at SRI International here the other day. Indeed, my host, who had been with me through several product and project demonstrations over about three hours, noticed how excited I was by watching this little device go straight up the wall, and, I think, began to wonder if I was actually interested in any of the other things I'd seen. In fact, she shouldn't have worried. I was at SRI as part of my ongoing Road Trip at Home series and was getting a rapid-fire lay of the land at this Silicon Valley research and development--and incubation--powerhouse.

Its car, a Volkswagen Touareg nicknamed "Stanley", has become the first self-navigating vehicle to successfully complete the gruelling 131.6 mile (211km) cross-country Darpa Grand Challenge, a race for autonomous robot vehicles held in Nevada's Mojave desert.

Robert Engelmore, a computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer, died March 25 during a family vacation in Kauai. He was a former executive director of the Knowledge Systems Laboratory who applied expert systems technology in scientific, industrial and military domains. Engelmore, 68, had been swimming in a rock-rimmed shoreline pool with his 5-year-old grandson, Jack, when they and other swimmers were overwhelmed by giant waves. Engelmore helped lift the child to safety but was pulled out to sea by currents. By the time lifeguards reached him, his heart had stopped beating.

From left, graduate students Ashutosh Saxena and Morgan Quigley and Assistant Professor Andrew Ng were part of a large effort to develop a robot to see an unfamiliar object and ascertain the best spot to grasp it. Stanford scientists plan to make a robot capable of performing everyday tasks, such as unloading the dishwasher. By programming the robot with "intelligent" software that enables it to pick up objects it has never seen before, the scientists are one step closer to creating a real life Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons cartoon show. "Within a decade we hope to develop the technology that will make it useful to put a robot in every home and office," said Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science who is leading the wireless Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (STAIR) project. "Imagine you are having a dinner party at home and having your robot come in and tidy up your living room, finding the cups that your guests left behind your couch, picking up and putting away your trash and loading the dishwasher," Ng said.

The scientists and engineers spearheading the creation of artificial beings and bionic people are responding to the magnetism of the technological imperative, the pull of a scientific problem as challenging as any imaginable. Fascinating scientific puzzle though it is, the creation of artificial beings is also expected to meet important needs for society and individuals. Industrial robots are already widely used in factories and on assembly lines. Robots for hazardous duty, from dealing with terrorist threats to exploring hostile environments, including distant planets, are in place or on the drawing boards. Such duty could include military postings because there is a longstanding interest in self-guided battlefield mechanisms that reduce the exposure of human soldiers, and in artificially enhanced soldiers with increased combat effectiveness.