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The word 'robot' generally has negative connotations attached to it, but MIT's mini cheetah robots are absolutely adorable. MITBiomimetic Robotics students recently took the dog-sized robots out for a play on the university lawn, and the result was way cuter than we expected. The robots aren't designed to just be cute and play soccer - they were built with the purpose to save lives with elderly care, deliveries and emergency response. 

The mini cheetahs can run up to 5 miles per hour, flip themselves over if fallen, and they're relatively cheap to make and repair. Controlled with remotes, the agility of these robots has not been seen in robotics before. The next hurdle for the team is to build cameras onto the robots, enabling them to walk around without being remotely controlled by humans. But for now, they're delighful to watch. 

Researchers have just discovered that the microphone in your smart speaker is able to be hacked by a simple laser. While it's concerning, don't worry: there's a way to get around it. Turns out even technology has fails. 

Contrary to what science fiction predicted robotics in 2019 would be like, robots are nowhere near being autonomous yet (although they are able to do some pretty cool things). It's taken researchers a long time to get robots to be able to walk like humans - so getting them to respond to different environments with fast reflexes is even further away than our hopeful ancestors imagined. But these researchers are looking at things in a different way, and a robot that can walk and balance like a human may be closer than we thought it was. 

Facebook has been under fire recently over privacy-related issues, in particular, facial recognition. But Facebook has just released a new AI that can 'hide' people from facial recognition in real time. This is good news for anyone who values their privacy. 

A restaurant in San Francisco has changed the face of fast food: instead of employing cooks to flip burgers, they invented a robot. It slices the vegetables, grates the cheese, grills the meat and arranges your burger for you before your eyes. The future of fast food is here, and it looks tasty as heck. 

Most of the time, life doesn't go as smoothly as we want it to. Life has nasty little surprises around the corner. But there are some things that will always work like clockwork: machines. There are no nasty surprises with machines. No getting caught in the rain without an umbrella. No parking fines on your windscreen. No dropping your toast on the floor face down. None of that. Mechanical things are dependable. Predictable. So here are ten mechanical GIFs of things working that will satisfy your innate desire for order. 

AI seems to be moving forward in leaps and bounds these days (sometimes literally). In the latest advancement of robotics, OpenAI has just released footage of Dactyl, it's AI powered robot (which has just one humanoid hand) solving a Rubik's cube. It's not about the speed, but rather the dexterity required to solve a Rubik's cube one-handed (heck, even solving a Rubik's cube with both hands is difficult for me). The most impressive thing is that the robot learnt to solve it all by itself. 

In preparation for the 2024 Artemis mission, NASA just revealed the new spacesuits that male and female astronauts will wear. They look pretty cool, but the astronauts will still have to wear diapers while hopping around the moon. 

3D printing has really taken off in the past few years. What started off small scale is now expanding to being able to print rockets. Not just parts - entire rockets. That's what the folks over at Relativity Space have been working on, and they may just revolutionize the rocket industry - both on Earth and in space. If things go well, the startup is hoping that their AI will be able to oversee the building of rockets on Mars. Life is starting to sound a lot like science fiction...

It might sound like a miracle, but it's actually technology: a man who was paralyzed four years ago was able to walk for the first time since then, with the help of an exoskeleton that can read his mind. 

Most of us see the moon almost every night, but few people have seen a decent high-res picture of the moon, let alone a high-res picture of the dark side of the moon. To be able to see the moon - every side of it - in detail would really require being in space and flying around it. And 99.9% of us Earthlings don't have that opportunity (yet). So once again, NASA has come to the rescue, this time providing us with an amazing 3D map of the whole moon for computer graphics artists to use to their heart's content. For the first time, we can explore the moon (digitally). And it's incredible. If you want to see some more amazing photos from NASA, check out these new photos of Mars. 

Boston Dynamics has done it again. By 'it', I mean surprising the heck out of everyone with their latest show-off of technology: Atlas, their humanoid robot, can now do parkour. 

Although driverless cars are still a long way off from being mainstream, it's a different story for driverless mining trucks in the outback of Australia. And this technology could be a key component for NASA's 2024 moon mission. 

With space technology increasing rapidly, we're learning more than ever about the planets in our galaxies. In the latest news, radar evidence shows that one of Saturn's moons is snowing. Yep, snow isn't only an Earth thing. And the weirder part? It's snow is falling onto the other moons of Saturn too. I had no idea that could even happen.

It looks like Spidermanwas onto something. Police in the US have started using mechanical lassos (but not made from spiderweb) in place of tasers, which caused 49 deaths in America last year. This could potentially be the end of tasers.

Although the speed at which today's technology is developing may scare some people, it has a huge potential to create life-saving machines. This is one of them. The 'robo-thread' is a small, snake-like robot that can glide through the brain's blood vessels and deliver clot-reducing drugs to treat strokes or aneurysms. Although the idea of a robot snake crawling through your brain isn't the most pleasant of thoughts, this little robot is promising to save lives and replace open brain surgery.