Hillsdale Middle School summer students lined up on opposite sides of the school cafeteria. They were getting into position to have a battle, one they had been preparing for through a summer of math, reading and problem solving activities. The battle would not be between the students but between robots, which the students programmed to turn and move in specific ways by writing code. The science, technology, engineering and mathematics teacher, Jenny Stump, counted down. While the actual battles -- there ended up being multiple rounds -- only lasted a few minutes each, weeks of preparation went into building the skills necessary to execute the activity.

Hillsdale Middle School summer students lined up on opposite sides of the school cafeteria. They were getting into position to have a battle, one they had been preparing for through a summer of math, reading and problem solving activities. The battle would not be between the students but between robots, which the students programmed to turn and move in specific ways by writing code. The science, technology, engineering and mathematics teacher, Jenny Stump, counted down. While the actual battles -- there ended up being multiple rounds -- only lasted a few minutes each, weeks of preparation went into building the skills necessary to execute the activity.

At first glance, you might mistake this enormous robot for a character from the latest Transformers blockbuster. But, the 16 foot (five meter) tall machine is an American robot called Eagle Prime that is now ready to take on Japan's Kuratas robot in the Megabots Giant Robot Dual league. An incredible video shows the Eagle Prime in action ahead of the dual - which will be the world's first giant robot battle - taking place tomorrow, Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 at 7pm PST (10pm EST). At first glance, you might mistake this enormous robot for a character from the latest Transformers blockbuster. A dual between an American robot called Eagle Prime and Japanese robot Kuratas will take place tomorrow, Tuesday October 17th.

At first glance, you might mistake this enormous robot for a character from the latest Transformers blockbuster. But the 16 foot (five metre) tall machine is a robot called Eagle Prime that is ready to take on Japan in the Megabots Giant Robot Dual league. An incredible video has been released which shows the Eagle Prime in action ahead of the dual - which will be the world's first giant robot battle - taking place this month. At first glance, you might mistake this enormous robot for a character from the latest Transformers blockbuster. The Eagle Prime stands at 16 feet (five metres tall), weighs 12 tons, and has 430 horsepower.

The artificial intelligence research behind bots_alive promises to usher in lifelike robots at affordable price points. Artificial intelligence is all the rage in robotics these days, and for good reason: Properly implemented, it has the potential to program'bots on the fly. But those toys and others react in predictable ways to changing contexts and situations. One startup, though, purports to have developed an algorithm capable of generating entirely new behaviors dynamically. It's called bots_alive, and it's the brainchild of Brad Knox.