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California-based company Anybots continues work on a telepresence robot that can take communication to a whole new level by eliminating the need for people to actually be present at board meetings or conferences. Because God knows executives work hard enough. The idea behind QA, the robot, is to interact with people, such as clients or partners, from anywhere in the world, which will save a lot of money on travel costs and different remote-communications equipment. Designed not unlike a sophisticated Skype program, QA relies on a Wi-Fi connection to allow users to interact through video, sound and diagrams projected from and onto the robot’s interface. With a sleek white exterior design, the armless 5-foot robot looks just about how you would expect a robot tailored for the boardroom to look. His rectangular-shaped face with two big eyes reminds a bit of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., so people should warm up to it fairly quickly.

Researchers from Leeds University are working on a camera and drill-weilding robot known as Djedi to solve the mystery of the blocked shafts inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. In 1992 and 2002, remote cameras were sent through the shaft under the watchful eye of antiquities master Dr. Zahi Hawass only to be stopped by limestone doors. Dr. Robert Richardson of the Mechanical Engineering department said their goal is to find out what is beyond the blocks and go as far as possible to discover the purpose of the shafts, all while doing minimal damage to the structure. Final preparations are being made now with hopes of sending the robot in before year's end. Place your bets now!

Japanese robotics company HiBot has unveiled a nimble snake bot capable of moving inside air ducts and other narrow places where people can't, or don't want to, go. The ACM-R4H robot, designed for remote inspection and surveillance in confined environments, uses small wheels to move but it can slither and undulate and even raise its head like a cobra. The new robot, which is half a meter long and weighs in at 4.5 kilograms, carries a camera and LEDs on its head for image acquisition and can be fitted with other end-effectors such as mechanical grippers or thermo/infrared vision systems. Despite its seemingly complex motion capabilities, "the control of the robot is quite simple and doesn't require too much training," says robotics engineer and HiBot cofounder Michele Guarnieri.

The Care-O-bot® research initiative aims at making Care-O-bot® 3 available as high-tech research platform. The main objectives to reach this goal are to provide a common open source repository for the hardware platform provide simulation models of hardware components provide remote access to the Care-O-bot® 3 hardware platform

Until now you can have big elaborate robots or very small microbots but it is very difficult to have both. A blog post from New Scientist (where this video is from) points out the research on microbots, very small machines that will move, navigate and perform simple tasks. The ability to remotely power a microbot, thus eliminating the need for onboard battery or fuel, is already proven and one of the methods is the application of an AC field to a liquid where the robot is located. This microbot is essentially a diode, a one-way electric conductor. The different electric charges at its ends force the neighboring ions to move thus creating a small thrust that propels the bot. The team of Rachita Sharma and Orlin Velev from North Carolina State University developed a method where a controlled application of an additional DC field changes the ion distribution around the microbot and this time the ion field creates a torque that rotates the microbot. The DC field is applied until the completion of a 180-degree turn. Then the microbot moves again, now in the opposite direction. It is only 1.3mm long and as claimed by other scientists like Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK this arrangement can be further scaled down where it can be useful for diagnostic and localized drug supply applications.