No, we're still not up to the level of Luke's mechanical hand in Star Wars, but progress does seem to be accelerating. The i-LIMB, from Touch Bionics, debuted last year, and German researchers recently tested it against a new prototype, the Fluidhand. The researchers say both are more dexterous than the industry standard, given that the individual fingers of the mechanical hands can be controlled independently.

We've told you all about the Raytheon Sarcos XOS exoskeleton, the smart suit of armor that endows its wearer with super-human strength. Now see it in action, and meet the minds behind both Iron Men—real, and imaginary.

Afghanistan. A hidden bunker. Four men with rifles guard a thick, rusted steel door. Bam! A huge fist pounds against it—from inside. Bam! More blows dent the steel. The hinges strain. The guards cower, inching backward. Whatever's trying to break out is big. And angry.

We take about six months to create our annual list of the most impressive young scientists in the U.S., six months of quizzing academic department heads, professional organizations and journal editors about the most creative and important research in the country and the individuals making it happen. And every year, those leaders-a serious and measured group-nominate hundreds of candidates with barely contained excitement. "There is no doubt in my mind that his work will revolutionize the field," says one. "He has done something that, frankly, I thought was impossible," says another.

Click here for a photo gallery of our favorite bombshell fembots from television and film.

Fembots were a pop-culture staple long before Austin Powers battled them-witness the popularity of The Bionic Woman, The Stepford Wives and Blade Runner. But what is it about curvaceous cyborgs that stirs the imagination?

People don't usually become scientists expecting fame, glory or to have a line of sneakers named after them. But we at Popular Science believe that scientists are the true celebrities of our time. Their contributions enhance our lives and stretch our imaginations. For the fourth year running, we conducted a rigorous search to identify some of the most dynamic, promising young researchers at institutions around North America.

We sought nominations from university department heads, the organizations that award prizes for scientific merit, and the editors of prestigious journals.

Camel racing has long been popular in the Middle East, but the sport has come under scrutiny for its practice of employing little boys as jockeys. Many of these children were kidnapped or otherwise illegally brought into employment in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from foreign countries, including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Faced with pressure from human-rights groups, Qatar has outlawed the practice of hiring child jockeys and passed a law requiring all riders to be at least 18 years of age.

For a video of the soccer-playing bots in action, click here (WMV Format).

As World Cup soccer rages in Germany this month, 350 teams from around the world will convene in the city of Bremen to compete in the robotic equivalent, the 10th annual RoboCup World Championship. The goal, so to speak, of this event is highly ambitious: to create android athletes that could whip the human world-champion soccer team by the year 2050–and, along the way, advance the field of artificial intelligence.

Why: To patrol your home while you're away, capturing images you can access on any Web-connected device.

The Gear: Tablet PC, webcam, cable, battery pack, strong Velcro

How: Use the onboard PC to send the Roomba instructions to (roughly) follow a predetermined path around your pad. Set the webcam to snap a picture every few minutes and automatically upload it over your Wi-Fi network to a photo-sharing site such as Flickr, which you can log onto from anywhere. Advanced trick: Wire the battery pack to recharge when the Roomba hits the base station so that it can operate indefinitely.

Courtesy Gina Trapani

The Roomba's new serial interface lets you use the little vacuum for any robotics task you like, controllable through preprogrammed instructions or over Bluetooth from a laptop. We wrote about some 'bots you could make with this in the January issue's How 2.0 section, but the obvious outcome was finally realized last night at ETech: Roomba cockfighting. More photos as well as videos (including some from the Roomba's point of view) here.

—Mike Haney