CNet: “Robots kiss, but don’t go to second base (yet).” “With robots now doing everything from strutting the fashion catwalk to greeting hotel guests, it was only a matter of time before our humanoid friends started engaging in public displays of affection. Exhibit A: Thomas and Janet, two performance bots who made out publicly in front of hundreds during a December 2008 robotic production of “Phantom of the Opera” in Taiwan (racy robot lip-lock video is only making the rounds now). A team at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology spent three years developing and programming the smooching bots, which with the help of servo motors that pull at the face and mouth, can form six expressions–fewer than the highly expressive Einstein Robot, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for romance. The team used manual molding, non-contact 3D face scanning, and 3D face morphing to make the movements realistic.”

Wired (Bruce Sterling): “Augmented Reality: Augmented Traffic Views.” “Even by the rough-and-ready standards of AR viral-youtube product, this one’s pretty ragged. Love the eager offscreen babbling of the developer’s tot in the early part of this video. It’s like the Voice of the Industry.”

New York Times: “Could Auto Battery Advances Lead to Better Robots?“ “Perhaps more than any other factor, the life span of batteries has limited the infiltration of robotics into daily life. As computer processing and sensors have become cheaper and more powerful by the year, batteries, woefully inefficient and slow to recharge, have slogged behind, leaving engineers to dream of a day when they’ll have the juice to give life to their boldest creations.”