In Pictures: The year in madly cool robots

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

Researchers showed off the latest incarnation of the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL), a full body suit that could eventually be used by workers dismantling the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. HAL — the name of the evil supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" — has a network of sensors that monitor the electric signals coming from the wearer's brain.

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