With the DARPA Robotics Challenge looming large on the horizon, it's easy to overlook robots that aren't taking part. One of them was Nino, a humanoid unveiled earlier this year by the National Taiwan University's Robotics Laboratory. Unlike the DARPA robots, Nino may not find itself performing tasks in dangerous situations any time soon. But this robot has some special skills: It is likely the first full-sized humanoid to demonstrate sign language. "Sign language has a high degree of difficulty, requiring the use of both arms, hands, and fingers as well as facial expressions," said Professor Han-Pang Huang, who leads NTU's Robotics Lab.

We've been incredibly excited to see the progress that Boston Dynamics has been making on ATLAS in preparation for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, but we had no idea what to expect from the challenge's Track A teams, each of whom will be designing and building their own robot with capabilities comparable to what we've seen ATLAS do. Today, October 24, is opening day for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, or DRC. The press release sums it up nicely: "over the next two years, teams will compete to develop and put to the test hardware and software designed to enable robots to assist humans in emergency response when a disaster strikes." The first half of this is the hardware: DARPA is promising that an "advanced variation" of ATLAS (which is what the above picture is showing) will be ready to go by June of 2013, and will be provided to the advancing Track B and C teams (see our previous post on the DRC for more details on the tracks). As for the simulation software (pictured above), OSRF has been working very, very hard, and the DRC Simulator is currently available in beta version 1.0.

We're running late today, and this is totally, completely Evan's fault. Evan, if you're reading this, dude, who said you could go on vacation and take time off from the blog? Er, now I remember, you told me about your vacation like a month ago, and I agreed to keep things going until you return. OutRunner is a bio-inspired legged robot that can reach speeds up to 32 kilometers per hour (20 miles per hour). It's self-balancing and has a battery life of 2 hours, and you control it with a smartphone.

Illustration of a disaster response scenario part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge: The robot on the right uses a power tool to break through a wall, and the one on the left turns a valve to close a leaking pipe. DARPA to the robotics community: the challenge is on. Today the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is announcing a bold new program aiming to advance robotics technology for disaster response. The DARPA Robotics Challenge is offering tens of million of dollars in funding to teams from anywhere in the world to build robots capable of performing complex mobility and manipulation tasks such as walking over rubble and operating power tools. It all will culminate with an audacious competition with robots driving trucks, breaking through walls, and attempting to perform repairs in a simulated industrial-disaster setting.

Its creators nicknamed it the "Luke Arm," after Luke Skywalker's ultra-advanced bionic limb. Now, after nearly eight years of development and testing, this robotic arm for amputees has been approved for commercialization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The "Luke Arm," whose official name is DEKA Arm System, is one of the most advanced robotic prostheses ever built. According to the FDA, this is the first prosthetic arm approved by the agency that "translates signals from a person's muscles to perform complex tasks." The DEKA Arm was created by famed inventor Dean Kamen and his team at DEKA Research and Development Corp., in Manchester, N.H., as part of DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.

"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).

As if engaged in a slow-motion dance, two mated satellites used a robot arm to draw apart, then come together again several hours later on Monday. It is the first step towards the mission's ultimate goal of separating completely and docking with each other autonomously from a distance of 7 kilometres away. The $300-million Orbital Express mission – run by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – uses two satellites. One, called ASTRO (Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Operations), is designed to dock with and test repairs on another, called NextSat. The 90-day mission is meant to test autonomous operations in a spacecraft so that one day, a fix-it satellite might be deployed to fuel, inspect or even repair a wounded satellite without help from human controllers.

Will robots ever be able to learn the way humans do? After all, gathering data about one's environment is the easy part; the difficult part is being able to evaluate that information and adjust one's response to it. Answering the call to address this highly complicated and technical question is 31-year-old Ayanna Howard (pictured left), senior member of the Telerobotics Research and Applications Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She is developing a software program system that emulates human behavior for use in a Mars robot rover. The robot will search the surface of the Red Planet for evidence of water and life and will pave the way for human exploration.

Semester exams are looming, with an extended holiday break on their heels. But before Dr. Andrea Thomaz closes the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the season, the lab hosted a few more visitors last week for the final experiment of the semester. The lab welcomes guests to interact with Simon, a humanoid robot developed with seed funds from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). These interactions allow student-researchers to adjust software models for Simon's learning and behavior generation. And it all starts once Thomaz and her team wake the resting robot.