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Robots, robots everywhere, and they're even starting to think. Here's our round-up of the news about our coming robot overlor--we mean, servants--that has surfaced this week

Fitting a gasoline-powered car engine with frikkin' laser spark plugs may seem like one sci-fi step too far, but since it improves the combustion and cleans-up the exhaust, it may be the gas engine's last gasp before the electric revolution comes. The design of the spark plug really hasn't changed very much since the gasoline engine was invented--they're a device that creates an electric spark across a very precise small gap to ignite the fuel mixture in each cylinder, and apart from improving their materials and reliability there's not much you can do to tweak that. The problem with spark plugs is that they're not particularly good at their raison d'être.

If every company institutionally implemented innovation practices, we might all be just as successful as Pixar, Apple, or 3M.

A fleet should be ready by the London Olympics in 2012. Zero-emission cabs are officially on their way to London.

As the ongoing nuclear saga in Japan plays out, a spotlight is being thrown on the reactor technology at the heart of it.

The eco-friendly hybrid scooter recently passed a regulatory hurdle in the EU--the first vehicle of its kind to do so. This scooter from Suzuki, the Suzuki Burgman Fuel-Cell Scooter, recently revved closer to the showroom floor

Helicopters and fire trucks proved unsuccessful at replenishing damaged nuclear fuel pools at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant on Thursday. The spent-fuel pools contain a large amount of radioactive material that is not contained as well as that in the reactor cores. And although information has been spotty, nuclear experts worry that this fuel--which should be submerged in circulating water to keep it from overheating--has been at least partly exposed in the pools belonging to reactors Nos.