In Pictures: The year in madly cool robots

From giants to itsy-bitsy shape shifters, robots are hot

A free-swimming robot submarine, which is carried aboard the Australian Antarctic Division's icebreaker, Aurora Australis, is suspended from a crane in Eastern Antarctica. The team of scientists from eight countries have used a robot submarine to chart a frozen and inverted world of mountains and valleys, allowing accurate measurements of the crucial thickness of Antarctic sea ice.

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