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Giant Avatar-style robot takes first steps in South Korea

A giant South Korean-built manned robot that walks like a human but makes the ground shake under its weight has taken its first baby steps.

www.telegraph.co.uk

The hulking human-like creation bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie "Avatar".

It is claimed as a world first by its creators at Hankook Mirae Technology, a South Korean robotics company, where about 30 engineers were hard at work conducting initial tests Tuesday afternoon.

"Our robot is the world's first manned bipedal robot and is built to work in extreme hazardous areas where humans cannot go (unprotected)," said company chairman Yang Jin-Ho.

news.nationalgeographic.com

After a faster-than-expected 70-minute ascent, James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub exploded up through the surface of the western Pacific minutes ago, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.