It has shaped the way we interact with the companies and businesses we patronize, either through chat assistance, e-mail spam algorithms, or fraud security monitoring for suspicious activity. Every second the world as we know it is changing for the better and for the worse. This perception varies person to person, city to city, and state to state and can spark endless debates on how to keep our children, our family and our world safe. In step with our ever evolving world is the lightning fast speed in which technology science has immersed itself into our everyday activities. Specifically, it is the way in which the complex phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence Technology (AIT) has become a subconscious normal interaction in our daily lives. It has shaped the way we interact with the companies and businesses we patronize, either through chat assistance, e-mail spam algorithms, or fraud security monitoring for suspicious activity.

Tedrake, a robotics researcher at MIT, has taken part in the challenge, and describes how hard it is to even get a robot in a car. What do you think about RoboSimian and its smooth yet creepy way of exiting a vehicle? And how do you think "Clyde" compares to Boston Dynamics' Atlas? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Robots can drive on the plains and craters of Mars, but what if we could explore cliffs, polar caps and other hard-to-reach places on the Red Planet and beyond? Designed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, a four-limbed robot named LEMUR (Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot) can scale rock walls, gripping with hundreds of tiny fishhooks in each of its 16 fingers and using artificial intelligence (AI) to find its way around obstacles. In its last field test in Death Valley, California, in early 2019, LEMUR chose a route up a cliff while scanning the rock for ancient fossils from the sea that once filled the area. For Climbing Robots, the Sky's the Limit: The climbing robot LEMUR rests after scaling a cliff in Death Valley, California. The robot uses special gripping technology that has helped lead to a series of new, off-roading robots that can explore other worlds.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech LEMUR was originally conceived as a repair robot for the International Space Station.

Humanoids are supposed to be best suited for a world that's engineered for humans. They can climb stairs, open doors and drive cars. At DARPA Robotics Challenge, most of the participating humanoids succeeded in completing those tasks, but when it came to walking, they were clumsier than the species they were designed to emulate. Getting a machine to put one foot in front of the other has been a priority for roboticists for decades. Bipedal locomotion would presumably make it easier for robots to navigate a man-made world and perhaps make them more relatable.

Not all robots are built for war and destruction. In fact, at this year's DARPA Robotics Challenge, professor Katie Byl and her team from the UC Santa Barbara Robotics Lab showed off RoboSimian -- a multi-limbed, ape-like robot built for rescue missions. Unlike its bipedal and humanoid robot competitors who found themselves falling over like drunk robots, RoboSimian used its four limbs to give it both balance and strength. "When you think about what you would want in a rescue scenario, it's things like stability," Byl said in this video from Tested. "So RoboSimian is designed with four limbs and strength. This is a robot that's really designed to do pull ups; to clamor around on a jungle gym, as opposed to being a little more delicate and human like in form."

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.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has designed the ape-like robot RoboSimian The disaster-response robot is competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals RoboSimian has four limbs, no head and multiple cameras NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has designed the ape-like robot RoboSimian When we imagine the robots of the future, they often look and move like humans, standing up on two legs and using a pair of arms to grab and move objects. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on a different kind of robot for disaster response that's designed to move like an ape. Headless but covered with seven cameras that act as "eyes," the RobotSimian has four identical limbs that do double duty as arms and legs. Together, they ably move the robot across rough terrain and rubble but can also pick up and manipulate objects. It has wheels it can coast on if the surface is smooth enough.

On June 14, 2016, four researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were preparing to ship a waist-high, ape-like robot named RoboSimian off-site. They had built the bot to rescue people from dangerous situations that human rescuers can't hack. The scientists swapped one lithium-ion battery for a fresh one, then left for lunch to let the new power supply charge. Left alone in the lab, RoboSimian's battery did what such batteries famously do: went boom. Plumes of smoke vented from the robot's exposed torso, followed by a burst of flame.