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Robots in movies may be evil more often than good, but they're becoming part of our lives. And their tech is evolving so that they "feel" more like we do. This happened recently, and we had to show it to you

We wrote about a lot of machines in 2011. Here are the best of our future (dancing!) robot overlords. Robo Profs One of the most impressive, and perhaps most challenging developments in robotics (because it treads very close indeed to sensitivities about artificial people) is demonstrated by the Geminoid line--a group of highly advanced puppets that have been designed to replicate their human model right down to hair color, eye movements, and shrugs

AlphaDog If Boston Dynamics' BigDog quadruped robot gives you the willies with its amazingly animal-like skills at tromping across difficult land at speed, then don't watch the video of BD's newest iteration of its military assistant robot, AlphaDog. [youtube SSbZrQp-HOk] BigDog was really the development prototype for AlphaDog, suffering from an enormously noisy engine and fairly limited operating range and payload powers. AlphaDog, on the other hand, is closer to a production dog droid that could actually accompany troops on the battlefield: It's quieter, can carry 400 pounds and run 20 miles without needing more gas, versus BigDog's 340 pounds and 12-mile range.

Quadrocopters Landing On Quadrocopters ... And So On Ad-Infinitum We know quadrocopters are maneuverable in extremis, and we know that they can move in ever-smarter aerial ballets with other units, flying in unison...but the team at UPenn's GRASP Lab has pulled off something rather amazing: They've designed a way for a smaller quadrocopter to land on a bigger one--which will act as a flying landing pad of sorts.

Today's robots may be astonishing , scary, or militarily useful , but they rarely move with all the occasional grace, jitters, and other subtle quirks that humans have.

How would you feel if you met Danish Professor Henrik Scharfe and then moments later were introduced to another Henrik Scharfe, this time an almost identical android? A new Geminoid bot makes this possible