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Anton Þórólfsson is working on letting you work from "home" ... or from the Amazon jungle, or from the moon. Well ... not the actual moon, or your real home, but a virtual one. His company, MURE VR (he sits today as co-founder and COO) is working on allowing indiviuals to interact with all of their computer programs in a totally virtual world, thanks to the help of the Oculus Rift.

Squishy Robot Uses Explosions to Jump

Soft robotics is a rapidly growing field and one of the latest designs is a squishy robot that can jump around. Spectrum.ieee.org details an innovative soft robot created by a research team at Harvard University that uses explosions to jump in the air. Presented at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), in Chicago last week, the soft bot is made from silicon and has three limbs. It has a built-in “explosive actuator” that uses a reaction between butane and oxygen to launch it into the air. The odd looking robot’s legs are pneumatically inflated to control the direction of the jump. It then gets an injection of fuel to a container on its underside. A spark is created to ignite the butane-oxygen mixture, creating a mini explosion. This launches the untethered device 0.6 meter into the air.

The human genome is the complete set of genetic data for human beings. The interpretation of the human genome sequence has been one of the major scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century. Since its initial release in 2001, our understanding of the sequence has deepened exponentially. By 2014, we had completely sequenced thousands of human genomes. The resulting information is used on a global scale, in fields as diverse as anthropology and forensics, and of course in biomedical science.

ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gherig’s disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that destroys nerves cells in the brain and spinal cord. As the nerve cells die, motor control is lost and the patient gradually becomes paralysed. ALS affects around 30,000 people in the United States, with 5,000 new cases each year.

MIT Develops Robot Cheetah

According to a report from My Science Academy, MIT recently designed a robotic cheetah that can run and jump autonomously and clear hurdles, reaching speeds of up to 10 mph. The research team, led by Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, devised an algorithm that enables the robotic feline to bound along. It functions because each of the robot’s legs is programmed to exert a specific amount of force in the precise second that each of its feet hit the ground. The bot has a sleek design comprised of a complex assemblage of gears, four legs, electric motors and batteries. All included, it weighs about as much as its real-life counterpart. The MIT team claims that with a few tweaks, they could get this model running at speeds of up to 30 mph.

Dr. Christoph Guger is founder of g.Tec, a company that focuses on creating devices and parts for the field of brain-machine interface. In this particular interview, Christoph shares with us the direction and progress of brain-machine interface, as well as explaining the concept of "embodiment," where a person truly "feels" that a device controlled by their thoughts is a part of themselves, and extension of themselves. Where might these technologies make their jump into the mainstream? Listen to Christoph's interview here.

Research in the field of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) dates back to the 1950s when National Institute of Health researcher John Lilly implanted a series of between 25 to 610 electrodes in the cortex of rhesus monkeys. By using the electrodes to stimulate the monkeys' cortex, Lilly was able to study the spread of motor function throughout the cortical tissue.

A group of scientists from the U.S., Spain and France may have gotten a step closer to mental telepathy. According to a report from The Financial Express, the scientists conducted a groundbreaking experiment to achieve the first transmission of information via a brain-to-brain link between two human beings.

A couple of months ago, a Emerj podcast featured Augmate CEO Pete Wassell predicting that the first mainstream uses of Augmented Reality might be a bit more "blue collar" than "Buck Rogers." And now, in addition to Augmate's digital eyeware, a new "Smart Helmet" from Daqri is helping to put AR to work in the workplace, wherever that work site may be.

Augmented reality, for the most part, is still relegated to smartphones and relatively novel headset experiences. We've come a long way in the last 15 years since Georgia Tech's Blair MacIntyre first got involved in AR, and in this episode he explains what the future might look like as we get closer and closer to an immersed AR experience.