A web app interface made available for free to qualifying cat shelters around the country allows people from all over the world to queue up and interact with feline friends in need of entertainment.

Users can engage different toys and cause them to move in various directions, occupying the time of kitties waiting for adoption and encouraging participants to become adopters as well.

Cats may not care too much about whether their owner is around, but they do need stimulation and interaction, hence the development of iPet Companion. Anyone interested in playing this uniquely ‘real’ game can check out the list of participating shelters and humane societies on their website.

The technology can also be employed by cat owners looking to stay connected to their pets from work or distant travel destinations. More from the company: “iPet Companion is the world’s first interactive, web-based pet toy. We Allow users from anywhere in the world the ability to play with animals awaiting adoption in humane societies located across America by controlling a camera and moving toys, in real-time, right from their computer. We aim to improve the lives of shelter pets with a more active lifestyle, higher adoption rates, and increased donations to shelters.”

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A gentle giant with an almost disturbingly friendly face, this robotic bear (Robear) is designed to supplement nursing care, helping caregivers with tasks that require a balance of strength and delicacy like lifting patients.

Developed by scientists at RIKEN and sumitomo riko company limited, this robot can carry people, help them stand and assist with other basic tasks. Weighing in at 300 pounds it may sound heavy but is actually close to twice as light as its predecessors and competition.

Powerful but gentle, the Robear sprouts out of a small base that makes it easy to maneuver through doorways and otherwise cramped spaces – its extendable legs get it a variable height for more versatile needs and allow it to distribute its weight more safely as well.

The “robot has a number of features that enable it to exert force in a new, gentle way. the main one, with its very low gear ratio, is the actuator units which allow the joints to move very quickly, yet precisely. the caring movements provided ensures that the machine can perform power-intensive tasks, such as lifting patients, without endangering them.”

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A little like Iron Man armor but much lighter and free from external power sources, these ankle-enhancing add-ons represent a step in a new direction toward practical and easily removable exoskeletons.

They may not have built-in boosters to let you fly, but by reducing the work required to walk by 7% the Walking Assist Clutch provides the equivalent improvement of taking off a ten-pound backpack, lightening the load of ordinary walkers or injured persons (stroke victims or the partially paralyzed, for instance). “I’ll tell you, it feels really cool,” Sawicki said. “There’s a comfortable sort of squishiness for the first 10 minutes. But then it becomes totally transparent. Your body just integrates it.”

As the WashingtonPost reports, “According to study co-author Gregory Sawicki, a biomedical engineer and locomotion physiologist in the joint NC State/University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering, people using the braces don’t really notice the difference — until it’s gone.”

“Instead of adding an energy source to allow your muscles to expend less energy themselves, you’re just building a system that uses less energy as a whole. But the challenge is what drew us to the problem. After 7 million years of evolution as bipeds and some tens of thousands of hours of practice throughout a lifetime, is it even possible to reduce the energy of walking?” It turns out that it is, and for far cheaper than what more high-tech mechanical suits cost. While still definitely a prototype, the production of these augmentations is already much less expensive than powered competitors, raising the question of what other enhancements could be created that utilize the body’s own energies more efficiently rather than requiring external electrical assistance.

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