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Man against machine. The unbelievably fast KUKA robot faces off against one of the best table tennis players of all time. Who has the best technique?

Finally they slammed the deck, and sailors ran out to chock the wheels. The pilot spooled down the rotors, going through his post-flight checklist. The co-pilot, a swarthy, olive-skinned man, clapped the pilot on the back and said, "What took you so long?" The pilot's green eyes smiled. He checked the dial of his orange Doxa dive watch, and replied with an air of a man who'd just pulled a suburban cruiser into his driveway after a leisurely commute, "We're thirty minutes early, pal."

This ping pong robot took two years to develop, and finally plays like a worthy opponent! The 'UHTTR-1? plays the ball back independently with quick response time. Now you can tell those friends you hate to get the hell out of your garage, you don't need them anymore!

Captain Dave Anderson of Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari in Dana Point, California, at great personal risk, has recently filmed and edited a 5-minute video that contains some of the most beautiful, jaw-dropping, footage ever taken with a drone from the air of a huge mega-pod of thousands of common dolphins stampeding off Dana Point, California, three gray whales migrating together down the coast off San Clemente, California, and heartwarming close-ups hovering over a newborn Humpback whale calf snuggling and playing with its mom as an escort whale stands guard nearby, filmed recently in Maui.

Gravity is a major contender at the Academy Awards this year, carrying a muscular 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, for a sci-fi epic that really raised the bar. VFX company Framestore's special effects work already promises to change sci-fi film making for years to come.

On Patrol with Dubai Police Special Car Unite

Project Tango is an exploration into giving mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion. So cool!

Watch Richard Ambrose and Jonny Phillips quickly construct a building made of concrete canvas-a material that has all the elements of concrete, but is flexible enough to be turned into any shape. This technology allows people to erect permanent structures in a fraction of the time needed for traditional building techniques.

Csemer Boglarka sings about resisting the power of various fashion labels like Chanel, Gucci, Cartier, and Kenzo, while showing viewers what it looks like to get totally retouched using special effects.

The music industry has sometimes struggled to find its feet in the digital world. In this lovely talk, TED Fellow Ryan Holladay tells us why he is experimenting with what he describes as "location-aware music." This programming and musical feat involves hundreds of geotagged segments of sounds that only play when a listener is physically nearby.

Nest builds products like this thermostat that can be remotely set via your smartphone or tablet to automatically adjust to a particular temperature. It also connects to Wi-Fi to analyze and compare the outside weather with your indoor environment in real-time. The thermostat even has a sensor with a 150-degree range to detect when you're not home, so it can adjust the temperature accordingly, and save energy.

Watch never-before-seen videos of an MIT-developed lubricant called LiquiGlide that makes anything--syrup, ketchup, paint--slide right out of the bottle so you don't waste a drop. The applications start in the kitchen, but they extend into almost every industry. More Videos

Have you thought about how much of life goes missing from your memories? Many fantastic and special moments become blurred together after a while and it feels like life just rushes by, too fast for us to grasp. The team at Narrative wanted to find a way to relive more of our lives in the future - and enjoy the present as it happens. Narrative Website

Parrot MiniDrone: A miniature drone piloted in Bluetooth Smart with a Smartphone or a tablet, that flies... and rolls from floor to ceiling. Parrot Jumping Sumo: The first robot-insect, controlled in Wi-Fi 2.4 or 5GHz with a Smartphone or a tablet that spins, jumps up to 80 cm and takes 90 degree turns.

Droplets, pellets, a stick of wood, nuts, screws, diodes, if the object in question is small enough, than this machine can not only lift them into the air and hold it in place, but move them around on all three axes

Tesla Motors has kicked off production of the gorgeous Model S into overdrive, cranking out some 400 cars a week on one of the world's most advanced automotive production lines.

Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions.

WildCat is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain. So far WildCat has run at about 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits.

The Super Awesome Micro Project: A full sized Lego car, with an engine made from Lego that runs on air.

Zeitgeist 2013. Discover what the world searched for with Google's year in review Google Zeitgeist

A model boat floating on sulfur hexafluoride (gas significantly denser than air) at the Physikshow of the University of Bonn!