** Disclaimer – This has nothing to do with real estate but I GUARANTEE you’ll be impressed once you’ve watched the video.

I’ve mentioned Dr. Dennis Hong here on the blog before – you might remember that he was the professor at Virginia Tech who won the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award for his work with Whole Skin Locomotion.  Right … who hasn’t won that award?  I kid.  His RoMeLa (Robotics
& Mechanisms Lab) at Virginia Tech is literally on the cutting edge of Robotics and locomotion. When he said that robots probably take over the machinery work soon then I thought about my brother. He is working with forklifts and he used to explain me types of forklifts used in warehouses, but he is going out of business soon if robots take over this part of the business. 

I ran into Dr. Hong and his wife yesterday at lunch, and he was telling me about what he and his team at RoMeLa are working on.  He said something along the lines of "we’re working on a three-legged walking machine that exploits the concept of actuated passive dynamic locomotion to walk with high energy efficiency and minimal control.  At the same time, we’re increasingly adding more complex movements to our dynamic anthropomorphic robot with intelligence (DARwin).  At the same time, our Whole Skin Locomotion project is growing leaps and bounds by mimicking the motion of the cytoplasmic streaming ectoplasmic tube in amoebae … It’s really COOL!"  That last part was what I understood. 

But then he sent me this video last night.  Dr. Hong has been on any number of national shows over the years, demonstrating his lab’s extraordinary work.  The most recent show was from Discovery Channel – check this out.  I love the video about the four-minute mark … the fact that a robot can recognize a win or a loss in dice is fascinating to me!