robot revolution

When some people think about robots, they fear the worst: machines on an unstoppable march toward global domination. Bots may not be taking over yet, but this year was a big year for our mechanical cousins — from being able to hunt or feel pain, robots picked up some impressive new skills in 2016. Here's a roundup of some of the coolest or scariest, depending on how you feel) abilities machines added to their repertoire in the last year.

Soft robotics is a rapidly growing discipline, but until this year, the devices still relied on some rigid parts. Now, scientists have created the first completely soft-bodied robot that looks like an octopus and can propel itself. The device is made of silicone and uses gas from a small reservoir of hydrogen peroxide to pneumatically power its tentacles. The researchers are now working on adding sensors so the bot can navigate its environment.

The world's first autonomous robotic surgery took place this year. The procedure was carried out on a pig intestine, but the Star robot appeared to perform slightly better than skilled human surgeons at stitching up the animal’s intestines, according to the research published in May in the journal Science Translational Medicine. It's not unusual for robotic arms to assist doctors in surgeries these days, but this year, the tiny Preceyes surgical robot was used to operate inside a human eye for the first time. The bot acts like a mechanical hand controlled by a joystick that filters out tremors from the surgeon. Elsewhere, researchers created an ingestible robot from dried pig intestines and a magnet that can be guided through the body using a magnetic field to remove a battery, or other foreign object, from a person's stomach lining.

Borrowing principles from small primates known as bush babies, researchers built a robot called Salto that can spring off walls to gain height faster than any previous robot. Salto uses a latex spring and a carefully designed single leg to leap 3.2 feet (1 meter) high from a standing position. The robot can then readjust in midair to push off from a wall, something previous designs have not been able to do. The researchers said this could lead to robots that can quickly traverse rubble in disaster zones looking for survivors.

and all looking for what is coming up next in 2017 from new invention and technology