* Astronomy

Military robot 'hops' over walls
Video footage has been released of a robot that can leap over obstacles more than 7.5m high.
Most of the time, the shoebox-sized robot - which is being developed for the US military - uses its four wheels to get around.
But the Precision Urban Hopper can use a piston-actuated "leg" to launch it over obstacles such as walls or fences.

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Cornell's robotic submarine wins international competition
For the Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team, months of meticulous testing, refining and retesting has paid off: With a flawless 11.5-minute run through a complex course of underwater tasks in the final round, the team's autonomous submarine beat the competition and earned first place in the 12th annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (UVSI) competition in San Diego Aug. 2.

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An international debate is needed on the use of autonomous military robots, a leading academic has said.
Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said that a push toward more robotic technology used in warfare would put civilian life at grave risk.
Technology capable of distinguishing friend from foe reliably was at least 50 years away, he added.

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In a pair of small laboratories in Prague, a swarm of tens of millions of robots is being prepared, to be set loose en masse.
It is only fitting that here, in the town where the word robot was coined by author Karel Capek, the next generation of robotics should be envisioned.
But these won't be typical robots with gears and motors; they will instead be made of carefully designed chemical shells-within-shells, with receptors on their surface.
Instead of software and processors to guide them, their instructions will be written into the chemistry of their constituent parts. They are chemical robots, or as the 1.6m euro project's title has it, chobots.

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