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Robots get smooth moves
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/03/2026
» The subject of the week is robots. The amount of news on these keeps growing and growing. South Korea is first up here with their KAIST Humanoid. In the field test, the robot was shown running across a soccer pitch, jumping, taking shots on goal, and even doing dance moves akin to the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Many robot demonstrations still look a bit stiff but these moves were quite smooth. The robot can run at about 12kph on flat ground with the next goal at 14kph. It can climb a ladder with 40cm steps and the knees can generate 320 Newton metres of peak torque so it can push heavier objects. The current model is based on the lower human half but the goal is for a full humanoid form that can work with people in industrial environments.
AI learning versus human creativity is a real battle
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/02/2026
» If you’ve been reading these columns long enough, you’ll probably know that I write music and I’ve written some books. With the advent of artificial intelligence, the concept of copyright and private property has blurred. The standard rule was, what you have worked hard on to create, belongs to you. As musicians and authors, ideally, we create, we write and we invent. In the world of AI, it will draw a picture, write a book and create music for you based on a simple text prompt that itself may have also been written for you by AI.
Marketeers have simple choices
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/02/2026
» If you use a mobile phone for playing any games, then typically along with that comes all of the advertisements and marketing presentations. First however, there is the "free download", this means you can download it for free, install and run it. After that, things may not be free at all. This is to be expected as advertising is one of the few ways to make any income from the games being played by millions of people across the planet.