Hate to say it, but Pleo ain't got nothing on Sparky. Created by five interaction design master students, this robodog actually responds in sensible ways to positive / negative scenarios going on around it. For instance, the creature will drop its head, whimper and collapse down if faced with "carbon monoxide, cigarette smoke, alcohol, too much dark lighting, hitting and yelling." Consequently, he'll perk up and show signs of excitement when standing in broad daylight or going on walks. All the pluses of having your own pet, minus the excrement and doggy daycare costs -- brilliant! Peep Sparky's day out on the town after the jump.

While robot / human relations seem to be fairly solid at the moment, it looks like the fight has long since been on between canines and their robotic counterparts. Some researchers at Saint Louis University compared Sony's AIBO with a mutt named Sparky at three different nursing homes, to see how residents would respond. Maybe Sparky just isn't that affable, but the researchers found that AIBO and his living breathing competition were both equally successful in alleviating loneliness. AIBO also has the added advantage of, erm, cleanliness, and is easier for senior citizens to take care of, so it looks like Sparky is pretty much out of a job. Get used to it, buddy, it's called outsourcing.

[Via Tech Digest]

Who knew 2007 would be such a boom year for prosthetic ankles? Surely not us, but what a year it's been, with MIT's artificial foot and ankle design we saw last month, and the ankle exoskeleton we saw the University of Michigan working on in February. Today's "ankle flavor of the week" comes to us from Arizona State University, where some doctoral students have created "SPARKy," which they expect to "revolutionize prosthetics" and plan for it to be "especially helpful for military personnel wounded in active duty." SPARKy stands for "Spring Ankle with Regenerative Kinetics," and is meant to allow amputees a more traditional walk, instead of having to compensate with other muscles and work 20 to 30 percent harder to get where they're going. The concept is pretty straight forward: "What we hope to create is a robotic tendon that actively stretches springs when the ankle rolls over the foot, thus allowing the springs to thrust or propel the artificial foot forward for the next step." There's a lightweight motor involved, but apparently this method is much less obtrusive than other such projects, which use large motors or high pressure. The robotic tendon should be ready for its first phase of demonstration in December of this year.

[Via Medgadget]