This Week In Bots: Dino Robots, Fish Robots, And The Future Of Self-Driving Cars

Let's do the weekly electric boogaloo through a menagerie of mechanical wonderthings. No humans required.

Bot Vid: Truss-Climber

Cornell boffins have put together an autonomous truss-climbing robot. It's not something you'll find navigating the inner clothing of William Shatner, instead being a demonstration of a machine that can climb up structures like scaffolding and actually reconfigure it as it goes. In the future swarms of robots like this may be useful for actually building the structure of habitable buildings. 

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Bot Vid: Robo Fish

Scientists from the University of Montpellier and the Polytechnic Institute of New York have developed upon earlier research into swimming a robot fish among real ones, and discovered that they can actually interact with the school, influencing its behavior as their robot swims. The golden shiners actually seem to follow the larger robo fish, instead of using it as mere cover. Interesting biologically speaking, the technology has some very high-minded ultimate uses--like automatically steering fish away from the sites of sea-borne human disasters like oil spills.

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Bot Vid: Drone Flights For Filming

As lawsuits develop seemingly at the same pace as the technology, filming from drone robots is becoming more common for people other than the military. As TechNewsDaily notes, there's some remarkable footage available from these endeavors, such as the aerial footage below--taken in Tallinn in Estonia this month during an anti-ACTA protest. The videos offer unique views on news events, and it won't be long before they start showing up in iReports on CNN, particularly if citizen journalists in war-torn locations start to use the tech.

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Bot News

Drexel Uni shows off seven humanoid robots. At a culmination of years of planning, Drexel University this week showed off all seven of its Korean HUBO androids on stage--in what the university is calling a first of its kind event. The droids...

[Source: Fast Company]