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.

Do you think Twitter elected Donald Trump?" a high profile tech exec asked me moments after Trump won. Of course, Twitter didn't cast a vote -- people all around the country chose to elect Trump -- but it's impossible to look at this election without analyzing the internet's role in shaping it. There were fake news stories trending on Facebook; Twitter bots that trolled users by the thousands; and Wikileaks emails that showed how hackers can influence the election. Tech platforms took on a different shape and wielded a new power. There has never been a more important time for tech leaders to own their platforms, understand the implications of algorithms, and engage in the challenging conversations about exactly what their roles are. Justin Kan, Y Combinator partner and Twitch founder, acknowledged an insular mindset in Silicon Valley, one that has made it harder for tech leaders to understand or relate to those who feel disenfranchised. New technologies like self-driving cars will have a huge impact on people who worked as cabbies or truck drivers -- and Silicon Valley wasn't prepared to offer solutions. "Are those people going to lose their jobs?

For three decades, Mr. Phillips had focused on writing software to allow computers to understand human speech. In 2006, he had co-founded a voice recognition company, and eventually executives at Apple, Google and elsewhere proposed partnerships. Mr. Phillips's technology was even integrated into Siri itself before the digital assistant was absorbed into the iPhone. But in 2008, Mr. Phillips's company, Vlingo, had been contacted by a much larger voice recognition firm called Nuance. "I have patents that can prevent you from practicing in this market," Nuance's chief executive, Paul Ricci, told Mr. Phillips, according to executives involved in that conversation. Mr. Ricci issued an ultimatum: Mr. Phillips could sell his firm to Mr. Ricci or be sued for patent infringements. When Mr. Phillips refused to sell, Mr. Ricci's company filed the first of six lawsuits. Soon after, Apple and Google stopped returning phone calls. The company behind Siri switched its partnership from Mr. Phillips to Mr. Ricci's firm. And the millions of dollars Mr. Phillips had set aside for research and development were redirected to lawyers and court fees. When the first lawsuit went to trial last year, Mr. Phillips won.

PETMAN is an adult-sized humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics, the robotics firm best known for the BigDog quadruped. Today, the company is unveiling footage of the robot's latest capabilities. The humanoid, which will certainly be compared to the Terminator Series 800 model, can perform various movements and maintain its balance much like a real person. Boston Dynamics is building PETMAN, short for Protection Ensemble Test Mannequin, for the U.S. Army, which plans to use the robot to test chemical suits and other protective gear used by troops. It has to be capable of moving just like a soldier -- walking, running, bending, reaching, army crawling -- to test the suit's durability in a full range of motion.

UPDATE 9/28 10:55 a.m.: Looks like the embargo on the videos was broken. At least one person has posted videos on YouTube. UPDATE 9/28 12:26 p.m.: Videos were removed. Sorry, folks, we'll have to wait for the official vids. UPDATE 9/30 4:05 a.m.: Video of Boston Dynamics' new, bigger quadruped, called AlphaDog, is here.

We've seen all kinds of crazy jumping robots, from humanoids to grasshoppers to soft and flexible spheres. But when you start making small robots, like seriously small robots (on the millimeter scale), you have to find new ways to get them to jump, and the Army Research Laboratory has teamed up with the University of Maryland to develop a couple clever ideas. Pictured above is a four millimeter-long robot, complete with a power source, an integrated control system, and light sensors. To move, it relies on on the rapid conversion of stored chemical energy to gas in a chemical reaction, which is just a fancy way of saying either "rocket motor" or "controlled explosion." Underneath the robot is a small chip of nanoporous silicon that gets infused with a sodium perchlorate oxidizer, and when a current heats up the chip, it ignites, propelling the robot upward.

I am pleased to welcome you to our center. Our mission is to advance the state of the art in intelligent systems through the research and development of intelligent embodied agents such as autonomous robots. Current R&D includes skill learning for humanoid robots, perception learning for mobile robots, and memory structures for task learning for cognitive robots. Our center is collaborating with NASA-Johnson Space Center (Acquisition of Autonomous Behaviors by Robot Assistants), University of Massachusetts (Robot Skill Learning), and The University of Reading, UK (Cognitive Robotics and Control). Currently we are collaborating with the Emergency Department in Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Triage robotic system design and development).