Plus: The New and Improved ASIMO Robot and Some Very Silly Space Walks.

Introducing the New and Improved ASIMO Robot

Honda this week unveiled a lighter, faster and more autonomous version of ASIMO, the super-advanced humanoid robot. According to an announcement from the automaker, the upgraded ASIMO has taken a step forward from being an operator-controlled “automatic machine” to an “autonomous machine” able to make decisions based on its surroundings, including the movements of people. When prompted, the new ASIMO can even kick a ball and hop.

For the latest model, Honda engineers addressed three key factors to make ASIMO autonomous. Honda’s criteria for the next ASIMO included a high level of balancing ability, the capability of recognizing movements of people in the surrounding area, and the ability to make predictions based on gathered information and determine the next movement without the aid of an operator.

ASIMO uses multiple sensors to scan its environment and respond accordingly. If a collision with a person or stationary object is predicted, ASIMO can recalculate its path to avoid a collision. ASIMO is able to recognize faces and voices, much like the latest digital cameras and in-car infotainment systems.

“ASIMO’s improved ‘intelligence’ makes it possible for the robot to track a conversation between different people, recognizing the faces and voices of everyone involved (even when several people speak simultaneously),” TechCrunch reports. “Another plus in the intelligence department: Asimo can now temporarily stop a certain action and resume it after performing a different task in between (for example, opening a can of beer and pouring it into a glass — something, which wasn’t possible before either).”

Why Employees Sabotage Co-Workers

New research suggests that envy alone isn’t enough to get one employee to undermine another. Instead, workplace sabotage — such as deliberately causing a colleague’s project to fail, publicly berating or second-guessing a co-worker, or fabricating complaints to supervisors as a means of bringing a colleague down — is often fueled by envy but is unleashed by disengagement.

Karl Aquino, a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), along with colleagues from the University of Minnesota, Clemson University and Georgia State University, conducted two studies to determine when employees were most likely to sabotage each other. In the first experiment, researchers conducted two surveys of 160 workers at an American hospital, asking about the workers’ perceptions of envy, their connections with their colleagues and their comfort level with acts that might be considered subversive, and then asking about specific things the workers might have done to make life more difficult for their colleagues.

According to the results, people who felt envious were significantly more likely to act on those feelings when their relationships with their co-workers were weak. Meanwhile, those who felt envious but who had strong relationships with their co-workers were less likely to undermine other employees.

The second experiment was similar, but used 247 business school students as participants. As the University of Minnesota notes, the students were divided into work groups for the year, and these groups often became close. During a single semester, they answered a series of surveys designed to determine how close they were to the other students in their work group, how envious they were of others, and if they had done anything to sabotage other students in their group.

“The results show that students who reported feelings of envy and low levels of identification with their work groups were significantly more likely to report committing acts of sabotage when they belonged to groups which reported high rates of sabotage as a whole,” the UBC said in an announcement of the findings. “The researchers point to this result as an indication that if a workplace seems to be permitting sabotage, those who are inclined toward subversive behavior will be more likely to follow through.”

The research, soon to be published in the Academy of Management Journal, shows that envy on its own is not necessarily a bad thing in the workplace. However, managers should consider team-building strategies to ensure their employees are engaged in the group.

Suited Astronauts Falling Down

In the five decades that humans have been traveling to space, the spacesuits changed very little, even though they haven’t always given astronauts the mobility they needed to work, or even walk, in outer space. Despite being brilliant feats of engineering design, spacesuits could be cumbersome for use on extraterrestrial surfaces due to their considerable mass, volume and complexity, considerably restricting the astronaut’s range of motion compared to an unsuited human.

This was particularly disadvantageous for extraterrestrial surface traversal where climbing, squatting and other such motions would be regularly performed — as exhibited in this silly compilation of astronauts falling on the moon:

Earlier: Watch NASA Test Old Spacesuits

Cheers.