We’ve all heard about DARPA’s grand robot challenge, but seems like Boston Dynamics already has this one in the bag. I mean come on, these guys have developed what are effectively artificial autonomic responses in machines – recognize, yo!

Most humanoid robots are just a set of legs with big flat feet balancing a dead-center torso doing an awkward slow-mo hula dance. But watch PETMAN. Really watch. It’s like witnessing a birth.

DARPA finally let Boston Dynamics bring it’s new toy out for show and tell.

“BigDog’s makers are working on a new quadruped that moves faster than any human and is agile enough to “chase and evade.” [VIA WIRED]

Next to Team SCHAFT’s new Google overlords withdrawing them from further competition, the poor showing of NASA’s Valkyrie robot might have seemed the DRC Trials’s biggest disappointment, but it’s nowhere near that simple: NASA JSC and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) are keeping the flame alive, and by flame we’re talking like…nuclear blow-torch.

In addition to the most visible and flashy robotics projects, there is a burgeoning world of robotics development out there set to spark the imaginations of another generation of nerd and engineering culture and beyond. This year, we will see some truly amazing things – things the media have barely touched on, and not all of it revolves around Google.

In many ways, technological utopianism is the heart and soul of the United States; it has driven our hyper-speed development and rise to global prominence. But, is the US rising or declining? Technologically speaking, does America still have “it?”