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PETMAN Cometh Come on, Boston Dynamic! Who are you trying to kid? You tell us PETMAN is the latest evolution of your human-form android that uses similar tech to your military BigDog, and that he's a development from an earlier prototype that included just legs. You point out that by adding a torso, arms, realistic walking, running, crawling, push-ups, and staggering motions (to avoid a fall if pushed) as well as synthetic sweat glands, he's perfectly designed to test out military clothing and hardware in lab situations

Robot Fly Trap A professor at the University of Maine has made a robot version of a plant that in some ways is a robot all by itself...the Venus Fly Trap. The diminutive fly-grabber is partly made of a nanomaterial called ionic polymeric metal composite, which acts to replicate the tiny sensitive hairs inside a real trap that send a signal to the closing mechanism when stimulated by a fly landing inside--in this case the nanomaterial, when flexed, sends a tiny electrical signal through an amplifier to the two "leaves" of the trap, made out of the same material. When the bigger signal hits the leaves, they flex in reaction...and trap the fly.

Science and math won't improve U.S. job prospects

ASIMO Dances Honda's child-sized android may be the world's best-known real-world robot, even though his practical white paint job isn't as snazzy as C3PO's gold-plated goodness. Over the years, ASIMO's skills have gotten ever more spohisticated as Honda's research scientists look at improving his software, drive units, and sensors to give him better control over his body, and more artificial intelligence to let him manuever under his own control and navigate around unexpected objects (the kind of task androids will need to master if they're to help us in our homes or hospitals). But now the Automaton blog has seen a demonstration that ASIMO is now smart enough to copy your dance moves

Will we recognize our robot overlords when we meet them? “Say Cheese!” The burst of light to my right made me pause: my photo had just been taken

The little boats are used for ocean monitoring, but could be used for much more soon, thanks to the company's new hire, former astronaut and Googler Ed Lu.

Evolta's Triathlon Evolta is a tiny but deceptively complex little robot (actually a group of similar designs) that Panasonic uses to demonstrate the impressive staying power of its range of Evolta rechargeable batteries. The 'bot was designed by Robo-Garage and can be guided on its path by an infra-red signal emitter. He's already completed an impressive marathon and climbed the grand canyon but now it's been revealed he's going to undertake a triathlon event--including swimming, running and cycling for a combined distance of 230 km.

On the anniversary of September 11, Inc.com reflects on innovations that emerged out of the countrys most tragic event, from Meetup to One World Trade Center.

Do Astronauts Dream of Electric DEXTREs? Potentially evoking creepy memories of external circuit failures from the film 2001, an important circuit breaker aboard the ISS recently popped and had to be replaced. The thing is, it sits in an electronics sled outside the ISS, and would've necessitated an astronaut to perform a spacewalk to fix it--but this time the Canadian-made DEXTRE performed the task entirely by remote control, with mission controllers runnning the operation from Houston while the astronauts aboard the station slept

This and more important news from your Fast Company editors, with updates all day. Wikileaks Outs More Diplomatic Cables . As announced by a flurry of tweets from its Twitter account, Wikileaks has released another tranche of data from its secret diplomatic cables haul

This and more important news from your Fast Company editors, with updates all day. Cloud Music Gets Legal Thumbs-Up

While you were busy catapulting Angry Birds on your iPhone, scientists at Vanderbilt university were using the components inside your smartphone to create bionic limbs. The Vanderbilt leg , seven years in the making, anticipates the movements of the person wearing it, resulting in a more natural gait instead of the slight dragging experienced by most wearers.

Robots are ever closer to being clever enough, autonomous enough, and useful enough to actually become part of daily life. Here are the latest robo-developments

Soldiers are using a heavily modded version of America's Army to learn how to defuse bombs. While it may have been created as a game, the software's platform is proving versatile enough to use for battlefield training. The

Soldiers are using a heavily modded version of America's Army to learn how to defuse bombs. While it may have been created as a game, the software's platform is proving versatile enough to use for battlefield training. The