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iCandy: Imitation of Life

Robots run, swim, act, and fight like us

Willie D. Jones

19 Oct 2011

Now anyone can swim with the sharks. A film with a deep-sea exploration theme amazed audiences at the Haichang Backdrop Cinema in Yantai, China. The theater shows films on a 360-degree holographic movie canopy that puts viewers at the center of the action. The fish you could (almost) reach out and touch were the result of 3-D simulation technology combined with an LED lattice and a digital holographic sound system.
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Photo: DreamWorks Studio

In a scene from the movie Real Steel, actor Hugh Jackman stands ringside, giving last-minute instructions to his fighting robot. Jackman’s character, a former boxer, ends up teaching everything he knows about the “sweet science” to a hulking automaton capable of mimicking his movements and remembering punch combinations.
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Photos: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images (3)

The smallest competitor at this month’s Ironman Triathlon, in Hawaii, is the Panasonic Evolta robot. The 17-centimeter-long robot, powered by two AA batteries, is expected to complete the 3.8-kilometer swim, 180-km bicycle ride, and 42-km run in about a week. (Humans, on average, complete the endurance test in about 8 hours.) The robot is running inside a modified hamster wheel and pedaling a bike with training wheels.
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Photos: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images (3)

The smallest competitor at this month’s Ironman Triathlon, in Hawaii, is the Panasonic Evolta robot. The 17-centimeter-long robot, powered by two AA batteries, is expected to complete the 3.8-kilometer swim, 180-km bicycle ride, and 42-km run in about a week. (Humans, on average, complete the endurance test in about 8 hours.) The robot is running inside a modified hamster wheel and pedaling a bike with training wheels.
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Photos: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images (3)

The smallest competitor at this month’s Ironman Triathlon, in Hawaii, is the Panasonic Evolta robot. The 17-centimeter-long robot, powered by two AA batteries, is expected to complete the 3.8-kilometer swim, 180-km bicycle ride, and 42-km run in about a week. (Humans, on average, complete the endurance test in about 8 hours.) The robot is running inside a modified hamster wheel and pedaling a bike with training wheels.
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Photo: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

An engineer at Hitachi shows off a portable brain-machine interface that uses an optical sensor to detect changes in blood flow in the prefrontal cortex. Researchers at the electronics firm and at Japan’s Tohoku University developed the neuroimaging device with the aim of giving people the ability to control electronic gadgets with their thoughts. The researchers expect a commercial version to be available within five years.
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Photo: Rex Features/AP Photo

Prostheses have come a long way since the days of metal pincers that drew unwanted attention. This looks like the real thing—right down to the painted fingernails, freckles, and hair. It’s an example of the lifelike limbs turned out by Touch Bionics of Livingstone, Scotland, which uses an imaging system that accurately captures such features as skin tone and wrinkles.
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Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant disaster has led to heightened interest in detecting the presence of radiation. To that end, engineers at NTT DoCoMo have developed a smartphone case called the Sensor Jacket, which turns the handset into a mini Geiger counter. The company unveiled the device at the CEATEC Japan 2011 electronics show but have yet to set a price or date for its commercial introduction.
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Photo: Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

These radiologists at Timone Hospital in Marseille, France, are looking at digital images of a corpse. The scans, obtained using computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and sonography, will allow pathologists to conduct virtual autopsies from anywhere in the world. The technique makes it possible to noninvasively deduce the cause of death and will also make images used for police investigations more helpful.
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China’s first domestically developed space module equipped for laboratory experiments took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in late September. The Tiangong-1 space module rode on the back of a Long March 2F two-stage rocket with four strap-on boosters. Over the next few months, the Tiangong-1 and modules from subsequent launches will be used to practice docking maneuvers in anticipation of the introduction of China’s space station.
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The actress on the left is a naturalistic robot brought to life by engineers at Osaka University and Kokoro Co. The automaton, named Geminoid F, gets her superrealistic skin, hair, and teeth from a sophisticated scanning system. Her dozens of servomotors make her appear to display emotion; raised eyebrows, blinks, and gestures make it hard to tell that “she” was born in a factory.
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This man in China prepares for a test flight of a flying machine that he designed and built himself—with no engineering training. During the test flight last month, the 5.5-meter-diameter aircraft, which features eight rotors, each powered by motorcycle engines, hovered 1 meter above the ground for 10 seconds.
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Willie D. Jones

Willie Jones is an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum. In addition to editing and planning daily coverage, he manages several of Spectrum's newsletters and contributes regularly to the monthly Big Picture section that appears in the print edition.