The Intel's way ...

Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner agrees with futurist Ray Kurzweil's assessment that the "singularity," when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, is high.
To provide some evidence that technology is moving in that direction, he showed a number of advancements in robotics, communication, and other areas in a keynote speech Thursday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.Here, Rattner snatches an apple from the grasp of a robot arm and hand that can sense objects purely by changes in the surrounding electric field.

Alanson Sample, an Intel Research Seattle intern, shows off the apparatus for a Massachusetts Institute of Technology idea called wireless resonant energy link (WREL) that can transmit power with no wires and without so much of the loss of energy that afflicts other wireless power transmission technologies such as induction.

The technology was used to transmit 60 watts of power to illuminate a light bulb; it has 75 percent efficiency.

Siddartha Srinivasan of Intel Research Pittsburgh shows off a mobile robot that is able to create a 3D model of its world, moving through it without bumping into objects and grasping items, such as mugs, on the way.

The Intel robot, called Herb, moves a mug without tipping it. Had it been full of a liquid, that might have kept it from spilling--up until the point when the robot unceremoniously dropped the mug it into its storage bin.