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LONDON (Reuters) - Killer robots could become the weapon of choice for militants, a British expert said on Wednesday. Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield said he believed falling costs would soon make robots a realistic option for extremist groups.

When you ask a man on the street where revolutionary advanced robots are being developed, he is likely to name Japan and the United States. Japan is well known for such amazing mechanical creations as ASIMO and HRP, as well as robots that dance, engage in martial arts, transform, and play musical instruments. In the United States, the success of iRobot in both military and consumer markets is legendary. The DARPA Grand Challenge demonstrated advanced work on autonomous vehicles. GM has its own autonomous vehicle and expects driverless cars to be on the roads in a few years. (Lexus...

Devices made of heart tissue could screen drug candidates and be used to power implantable robots. In a fourth-floor lab at Harvard University, Adam Feinberg is peering through a low-magnification microscope and using a scalpel to cut out triangles and rectangles from a thin polymer. What's impossible to see with the naked eye is a one-cell-thick layer of heart tissue coating each shape. When Feinberg connects the petri dish holding the triangles and rectangles to a pacemaker, the tissue begins to rhythmically contract, and the shapes come alive--twisting, pinching, and even swimming through a solution. The pieces of "muscular thin...

Scientists Invent Robots That Lie, Real Bender Closer Than Ever Holy crap! The Age of The Machines is nigh: a bunch of scientists in Switzerland have created learning robots that can lie to each other. Okay, so they don't swill beer or put bends in girders—they just communicate to each other with benign flashing lights, thank goodness, instead of using lasers to destroy humans: The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices to work in groups and hunt for "food" targets nearby while avoiding "poison." Imagine their surprise...

Japanese Robot Eats Snow, Poops Out Bricks of Ice Wednesday, January 02, 2008 What's cute, yellow, eats snow and poops out bricks of ice? Meet Yuki-taro, a Japanese robot built to quickly clear roads after heavy snows. The cute little guy, about 5 feet long and 2 and a half feet high, simply plows into snowbanks, taking in the white stuff, compressing it and neatly stacking it in two-foot-long bricks on his rear bed. Created by a consortium of private companies, municipal governments and university researchers, Yuki-taro is equipped with two video cameras in his "eyes" as well as a...

Do robots deserve rights? The question is less ridiculous than it sounds. As scientists develop ever more sophisticated robots, we are faced with an ethical dilemma: When does artificial intelligence demand humane treatment? In the last month, Japanese scientists have unveiled robots capable of serving food and even playing the violin and trumpet. These aren't self-aware robots – many scientists deride the notion of ever creating a robot capable of self-awareness – but self-awareness isn't the sole qualifier for rights. Certain severely brain-damaged human beings and newborns lack general self-awareness, but there is little doubt that they have rights, no...

TOKYO (AP) - As if the idea of having one robot to serve you wasn't unusual enough, Honda says its humanoids are now ready to work in pairs - and they can even serve drinks. At a demonstration Tuesday at its Tokyo headquarters, automaker Honda Motor Co. (HMC) showed off two of the child-sized Asimo robots serving tea and performing other tasks in coordination with one another. The bubble-headed robots seemed to pick their steps carefully as they made their way around the room, picking up and putting down drink trays and pushing around a refreshments cart. Honda said it...

Warning sounded over 'flirting robots' by Ina Fried Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen. A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools. The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report...

It may not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character, but robots designed to tote automatic weapons could give a key advantage to American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soaring demand for a bomb disposal robot called Talon in Iraq has helped QinetiQ to post a strong rise in profits, despite a slowdown in overall defence spending by Britain. QinetiQ has sold more than 1,000 Talon robots, with about a third of those heading for Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday it announced that it had received more than $175 million (£84.5 million) of orders in the first half of the year....

The sniper nests and IED-laced roads of Iraq have posed deadly challenges for the U.S. military. The result has been speedy development of soldiers that know nothing about fear or danger: the combat robot. "It's a tremendous capability to put a robot where you do not want to put a man," said Jim Braden, of the Army's Joint Robotics Program. Never before have robots played such a wide role in a ground war, reports CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell. Five thousand robots are working alongside U.S. forces, finding booby traps or searching for the enemy. "The real trend right now...

I can't say I'm much of a gardener. It's all a bit too much like hard work, especially wasting hot summer days mowing the lawn into neat little lines - I'd much rather get the deckchair out and crack open a can. And now I can - and get the lawn cut with the Automower from Husqvarna. It's a gardener's dream, cutting grass automatically without being pushed or guided - even if there's a tree or two to negotiate. Use the perimiter wire to cordon off flower beds, young trees, ponds and swimming pools and automower does the rest. As...

Robots versus pirates—it’s not as stupid, or unlikely, as it sounds. Piracy has exploded in the waters near Somalia, where this past week United States warships have fired on two pirate skiffs, and are currently in pursuit of a hijacked Japanese-owned vessel. At least four other ships in the region remain under pirate control, and the problem appears to be going global: The International Maritime Bureau is tracking a 14-percent increase in worldwide pirate attacks this year. < >For years now, law enforcement agencies across the high seas have proposed robotic boats, or unmanned surface vessels (USVs), as a...

Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows. "My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it. At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it...

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners. Levy's conclusion was based on about 450 publications in the fields of psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction. The...

WASHINGTON — Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an anti-war rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up, and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects." Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. "I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' " That...

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Robot warriors have already seen action in Iraq, and the US Army plans to replace one-third of its armored vehicles and weapons with robots by 2015. These killing machines may one day come equipped with an artificial conscience -- even to the extent of disobeying immoral orders. The US Army's latest recruits are 1 meter (about 3 feet) tall, wear desert camouflage and are armed with black M249 machine guns. They also move on caterpillar tracks and -- thanks to five camera eyes -- can even see in the dark. The fearless fighters are three robot soldiers who, unnoticed by...

South Korea, at the forefront of the drive to develop robots which can do anything from guarding the border to caring for the elderly, is now drawing up a code of ethics for them. The nation, which has set an ambitious goal of a robot in every home by 2013, has launched a project to write what it believes will be the world's first Robot Ethics Charter. It will be released by year's end. "We are setting rules on how far robotic technology can go and how humans live together with robots," said Kim Dae-Won, a professor at Myongji University...

FOB KALSU — They are small and lightweight, yet their tiny bodies can carry a great burden. The PackBot and Talon robots, industrial robots designed by the iRobot Co., are tactical mobile robots used by the military for search, reconnaissance and bomb-disposal missions. "Robots give us the ability to do procedures on improvised explosive devices without risking Soldiers," said.1st Sgt Dean Smith, 705th Ordnance Company, Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. "They are tools we use to save lives – ours and others." While the robots on today's battlefield might be a long way from the Terminator, RoboCop or C3PO of science...

FLAGSTAFF — The University of Arizona and the state's space prowess, both in astronomy and in NASA's manned and robotic missions, began in the high pines above this mountain town 113 years ago. In 1894, wealthy citizen scientist Percival Lowell sent his man Andrew Ellicott Douglass west from Boston to scope out the best Arizona site for an astronomical observatory. Douglass traversed the state by train and horse-drawn wagon, dragging a pair of coffin-sized crates holding Lowell's telescope to high spots in Tempe (that rock pile behind Arizona State University's stadium), Tucson ("A" Mountain) and Tombstone (site unknown). He ultimately...