Humanoid robot shows off advances in technology, dances to Gangnam Style

Our humanoid friends and help-mates have just celebrated National Robotics week - with special events such as a Robot Zoo, and a Robot Block Party.

They may be the stuff of science fiction, but robots are now widely used in industry. And more and more they take on such dangerous tasks as defusing bombs or flying aircraft over hostile territory.

Smoke billows at the Los Angeles Korean Festival, rising from enormous grills, skillets of dumplings, fried potato pancakes — for a one weekend a year, a small park in central Los Angeles becomes a fairground. Vendors sell food, Korean groceries, and makeup. And L.A.’s Korean population — the largest outside Korea — turns out by the thousands.

But in one corner, the hubbub is something quite different.

Two of Dennis Hong’s postgrad students take turns working on a...

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The Gangnam Style by the South Korean musician PSY has attracted  international attention. A couple of young researchers at a graduate school in the US are even making a humanoid robot mimic the moves of the dance.