Robot Roundup: Smart and reproductive bots

The GLObal Robotic-telescopes Intelligent Array — or GLORIA — opens next year. You’ll be able to operate 17 telescopes on four continents on your computer.

From GLORIA’s website:

GLORIA will be the first free and open- access network of robotic  telescopes of the world. It will be a Web 2.0 environment where users can do research in astronomy by observing with robotic telescopes, and/or analyzing data that other users have acquired with GLORIA, or from other free access databases, like the European Virtual Observatory

Robots are reproducing. University of Pennsylvania built a bot that sprays foam onto other robot parts, so they can form one big robot.

And a robot can solve the Rubik’s cube faster than any human. The human record is 5.66 seconds. The CubeStormer II can solve it in 5.35 seconds. Watch the video in the left sidebar.