Something I will talk about quite a bit is the rise of global robotics. With japans rapidly aging retired community and lack of a young workforce, their progress has been fastest out of necessity for labor. Many human themed robots like Hondas ASIMO have been publicized and are truly amazing.  I think however the use of natures playbook rather than just what we have as humans is hands down the smarter approach, and this is a good example.

The video here is from newscientist.com

The robotic “rat” in this video has visual sensors but also whiskers that move back and forth and act as sensors to help the rat establish and navigate it’s environment.  This kind of sensory perception gives this particular robot an advantage in an area where light is unavailable rendering typical vision pretty much useless.  When you realize that other organisms in nature have to navigate the same world we do, but do so in a myriad of variations (bees see in infa-red, bats and dolphins independently evolved echolocation, sharks and rays sense other animals with electric sensors near their snouts, this list goes on) the possibilities for robotics becomes a much broader interesting field than just trying to create human-like robots.

Now as for robots taking over the world, that is another story…