ROBOTS

This has been a great year for robotics, but not all robotics are equal.

The cyborg-like HAL robot has been approved for testing as a medical device for disabled people in Europe.

Despite a big budget and plenty of robot action, "Pacific Rim" underperformed slightly at the box office, losing out to "Grown Ups 2" and "Despicable Me 2."

Atlas, a new humanoid robot from DARPA, looks ready to become self-aware and kill us all.

NASA's Curiosity was chosen to become an official LEGO product.

A new Cambridge University research center will focus on investigating potential threats to humanity, ranging from global warming to hostile robots.

Sex robots will be the wave of the future, according to two New Zealand researchers who say robot prostitutes will revolutionize the sex industry by 2050. But the future is already here with RoxxxyPillow - a discreet, new sex robot that you don't need deep pockets to own.

Sex robots may take over the world by 2050. If they do, all the credit goes to the first sex robot, Roxxxy, for paving the way for their dominance.

Are sex robots a threat to real prostitues? A pair of New Zealand researchers say yes, finding that robot prostitutes will revolutionize the sex tourism business by 2050.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have announced a five-year research initiative that will eventually enable people to design personalized robots, then have those robots built using three-dimensional printers.

The futuristic warplanes and weapons, the Na'vis, the sentient extraterrestrial humanoids inhabiting the fictional moon Pandora in the movie 'Avatar's had to battle against, is set to become a reality, thanks to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which plans to make an army of 'Avatar'- style surrogate robots to reduce the dangers posed to military soldiers in the battlefield, featuring telepresence and remote operation of a ground system.

Robots, not jockeys ride camels now in the annual International Camel Race in Kuwait, and the tiny sentinels are powered by remote control as the camel owners race along side in their Jeeps. The annual race occurs outside Kuwait City in the tiny Persian Gulf nation, and organizers switched to robots in 2005 after it was found some of the owners were using children from overseas due to their smaller size.

Robotics researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed small flying machines called nano quadrotors capable of insect-like maneuverability in the air.

Besides smart TVs, waterproof gadgets, gaming, tablets and smartphones, robots have become a major draw at CES 2012 in Las Vegas. While pop sensation Justin Bieber showed off a dancing robot mRobot at CES on Wednesday, the latest version of Murata Electronics' ECO MURATA BOY, a bicycle riding robot, demonstrated its balancing skills.

Las Vegas -- Although it might not been much different from robots we've seen in the past, the dancing robot by the TP-LINK section stole the first day of the 2012 International CES.

Scientists at the Intelligent Autonomous System Group of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed two robots which are capable of making and serving snacks, sandwiches, coffee and much more, it has been reported.

NASA plans to launch its next-generation Mars rover, the Curiosity, to scope out the red planet in a highly-anticipated liftoff scheduled for Saturday.

Mohsen Shahinpoor, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maine, and a team at Seoul National University in South Korea led by Seung-Won Kim have both independently invented prototypes of robots that snap shut in response to stimuli and trap insects in the manner of the carnivorous Venus flytrap plant (Dionaea muscipula).

Fraunhofer researchers have created a flexible assembly-line concept for aircraft that features robots working in the same way they do in automotive production.

In an effort to explore how robots can help humans experiment and live in space more efficiently, NASA sent two Android-powered Nexus S phones on the last manned space shuttle Atlantis as part of the STS-135 mission.

MABEL, a two-legged robot that runs like a human being, is believed to be the world's fastest bipedal robot with knees, hitting a peak pace of 6.8 miles per hour.