Tech Universe: Monday 14 February

The far side of the sun, taken with Nasa's STEREO probes. Photo / NASA

BLOW UP SPACE PODS: Bigelow Aerospace plans to mass produce inflatable habitats for orbit and lease out space on them to nations, businesses and researchers. They hope to base a commercial spaceport in Florida. Bigelow expect to launch the first operational outpost in orbit in 2015 and launch 25 missions per year. With strict rules, I hope, about leaving nothing behind but footprints.
Aviation week has more.

FAR SIDE OF THE SUN: NASA's two STEREO probes orbit the sun in the same path as the Earth. When they lined up on opposite sides of the sun recently they captured the first ever panoramic view showing the whole star at once. Coronal Mass Ejections from the sun can disrupt satellite-based technology such as GPS and even the power supply, but if they form on the side we can't see we have little warning. The STEREO probes will give up to 2 days warning of possible disruptions.
Not that we can actually do anything, but it's nice to know trouble's on its way. More here and video here.

ROBOSHUFFLE: CHARLI's walk looks more like dancing. This humanoid robot stands 1.4 metres tall, weighs 12 Kg and walks at around 300 millimetres per second, or about 1 Kilometre per hour. CHARLI's the creation of a team of students at Virginia Tech, and will play soccer in this year's RoboCup. I'm waiting for Dancing with the Robots. More details here and funky video here.

DUMB ROBOT: Not all of the US troops in Afghanistan are human, and we're not talking about the dogs. According to a US Marine Corps handler there are also more than 2,000 ground robots. They roll, they crawl but they're a bit dumb. Some robots defuse or detect mines, while others inspect vehicles and still others carry out classified missions. But they all need close supervision, especially to handle unexpected obstacles. So maybe they need RoboEarth. Wired has more, that's how they roll.

LEARN ROBOT LEARN: So how about letting robots learn from their peers? European scientists and engineers designed RoboEarth. It's a "World Wide Web for robots", collecting, collating and sharing information so robots can learn from one another. The system collects, stores and shares data for recognising objects, navigation, and tasks. It's kind of a WikiRobot, really. Details here and video on YouTube.