Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon in Greek mythology. NASA has chosen her to personify its path back to the moon, which will see astronauts return to the lunar surface by 2025 - including the first woman and the next man. Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the moon and Mars. Artemis 1 will be the first integrated flight test of NASA's deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed flight that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the moon and beyond.

Do you know that the future of technology could repair wounds? The technological design of robots has been geared towards optimizing size and capacity as well as increasing efficiency. One of the latest innovations in robotics is the creation of microscopic robots that can pass through the eye of a needle, making the miniature robot small enough to enter the body by injection. The army robot is about the size of the width of a human hair, which is invisible to the naked eye. The robot moves with the aid of designed legs controlled by an actuator.

Researchers have designed miniature robots that are inspired by cells and steered by ultrasound that could one day navigate the human body and help deliver drugs to certain parts of it. These'rocket ships,' as described by scientists at Cornell University, have a design that is inspired by both bacteria and sperm cells. The robots, which could navigate through the human body are controlled remotely and could take advantage of some features of sperm and bacteria cells, including the fact that bacteria can swim 10 times their body length and sperm can go against the flow. 'We can make airplanes that are better than birds nowadays,' said study co-author, Mingming Wu, professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell, in a statement. 'But at the smallest scale, there are many situations that nature is doing much better than us.

The research team created the miniature robots by embedding magnetic microparticles into biocompatible polymers -- non-toxic materials that are harmless to humans. The robots are'programmed' to execute their desired functionalities when magnetic fields are applied. The made-in-NTU robots improve on many existing small-scale robots by optimizing their ability to move in six degrees-of-freedom (DoF) -- that is, translational movement along the three spatial axes, and rotational movement about those three axes, commonly known as roll, pitch and yaw angles. While researchers have previously created six DoF miniature robots, the new NTU miniature robots can rotate 43 times faster than them in the critical sixth DoF when their orientation is precisely controlled. They can also be made with'soft' materials and thus can replicate important mechanical qualities -- one type can'swim' like a jellyfish, and another has a gripping ability that can precisely pick and place miniature objects.

MIT CSAIL's origami robot is packaged in an ingestible ice pill. In 2013, University of Sheffield roboticist Dana Damian was doing postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School affiliate Boston Children's Hospital when she learned of a procedure called the Foker technique. The surgery, performed on children with a rare congenital lung defect, calls for doctors to attach sutures to part of an infant's esophagus, then tie them off on the baby's back. Over time, the sutures lengthen the esophagus by pulling on it, stimulating tissue growth. Although the technique can be effective, the risk of infection and complication is high, and the baby must remain under sedation for weeks.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. We already posted about the unveiling of Sony's new Aibo, but here's a bit of extra video from the event showing the little robotic dog in live action: In this video we show a compilation of our research for the last 4 years on autonomous navigation of bipedal robots. It is part of the DFG-founded project "Versatile and Robust Walking in Uneven Terrain" (German Research Foundation) and includes development in environment perception and modeling, motion planning and stability control.

It dazzled technology fans when it launched last September. But, despite appearing to be unstoppable with its ability to climb fences and open doors, it seems The Ghost Minitaur does have a weakness. Recently-released footage of the device reveals that ice causes it to freeze in its tracks - albeit only temporarily. A video uploaded by Philadelphia-based Ghost Robotics shows it effortlessly striding over various terrains, before reaching a stumbling block on the frozen water. There, it skids and slides - momentarily losing its stability - before showing an impressive ability to re-balance and continue.