This is a common misconception. In academia, "humanoid" will usually refer to a robot with _some_ humanoid features (eg. two arms). If you look at the "Humanoids" conference, you'll see that there are a healthy mix of legged and wheeled designs. So I thought specificity was good in this case...

Uhm... I'm pretty sure that every single one of the Intuitive Surgical DaVinci robot workstations are 3D for the operator -- and we all know that hundreds of surgeries are performed with these every day.. In this video of researchers playing "Operation" (the board game) with a DaVinci robot, you can see the operator console with separate eye pieces to give 3D effects. I personally got to play with a DaVinci at IROS (robotics conference) last year, and the operator console was definitely in 3D -- though the observer consoles are just normal 2D TVs. I was told that this had been standard for a _long_ time.

Javascript is broken in a number of ways. Just watch this video: WAT.

The fact that commutativity does not hold for "[] + {}" is just wrong! I understand the need for "pretty graphics" and "instant gratification", but a different language would have been appreciated. Heck... a background in python would at least set them up for a lifetime of scientific computing.

FYI, there was a TED talk about Ekso (formerly Berkeley Bionics): http://www.ted.com/talks/eythor_bender_demos_human_exoskeletons.html

I understand that they can communicate using reflective infrared light. My TV remote can do the same thing to reach a non-line of sight receiver. I believe they also use the reflected IR light for rudimentary distance sensing -- much like the Sharp IR sensor modules. What I'm trying to say: the hardware aspects of this project are fairly well-established -- as far as I can tell, there are no new "hardware" technologies (but I am a fan of readily-available low-cost robots). The Harvard group's big contribution (re:research) is in swarm algorithms.

There's a long history of home-made steerable vibrobots. You can probably make one of these from parts readily available in your junkbox.

A quick tangent: I've seen these in person. They're pretty cool, but I'm not sure what "technology" Harvard is licensing. Perhaps just the PCB design and code?

So a few brief items (that are updated in the Hizook article): The collaborator at Stanford is Manu Prakash; the inflatable actuators actually contract (not expand); they can be powered by either pneumatics or hydraulics; and Ant-Roach can probably support up to 1000 lbs (a bit more than just a few riders).

Please revise the text as below: I'm really excited about inflatable robots... they have the potential to be low-cost, lightweight, extremely powerful, and yet "human safe" -- ie. perfect for many robotics applications. With that in mind, I would like to introduce you to two new inflatable robots: a 15-foot-long walking robot (a Pneubot named Ant-Roach) and a complete, inflatable robot arm (plus hand). Both of these robots were developed by Otherlab as part of their "pneubotics" project (in collaboration with Meka Robotics and Manu Prakash at Stanford University), with some funding from DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. These robots use textile-based, inflatable actuators that contract upon inflation into specially-designed shapes to effect motion. Since these robots are built out of lightweight fabric-and-air structural members and powered via pneumatics or hydraulics, they exhibit large strength-to-weight ratios. For example, Ant-Roach is less than 70 lbs and can probably support up to 1000 lbs; the inflatable robot arm is less than 2 lbs and can lift a few hundred pounds at 50-60 psi. Be sure to read on for details and lots of videos!

Bah! The exoskeleton wasn't "called" Iron Man... I meant to say "akin to" Iron Man. The early force / torque control that they developed strongly reminds me of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Incidentally, GE's Hardiman actually predated that novel!

In 1958 GE made a full-body exoskeleton called (no kidding) Iron Man. It was capable of picking up refrigerators! To quote Hizook:

I too was once an ardent pi supporter. However, I have seen the light... let us eliminate spurious factors of two everywhere and embrace a more reasonable transcendental number: tau