Meet the robot champion being house-trained in a Korean lab

THE last time I saw Hubo, it was zipping around an assault course on wheeled knees and hacking through walls with a saw. Today, its 80 kilograms hang lifeless from a bright yellow gantry, arms limp by its sides. It's been a year since Hubo won the DARPA Robotics Challenge – the hardest robotics competition ever staged – and I've come to the Korean Institute for the Advancement of Science and Technology to catch up with Hubo and its creator Jun-Ho Oh. Oh has been busy, getting his life-size humanoid robot ready for an even tougher challenge: making the leap from assault course to your home. An unassuming single-storey construction, Building N9, houses one of the most advanced robotics labs in the world.