Typically a battery functions with lithium ions flowing between a negatively charged anode, usually graphite, and the positively charged cathode, usually cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. But three years ago, an MIT team reported that it had engineered viruses that could build an anode by coating themselves with cobalt oxide and gold and self-assembling to form a nanowire. The “virus batteries” have the energy capacity and power performance similar to rechargeable batteries.

The prototype battery is a coin battery, but the idea is that cell and larger batteries could be made from this process and that one day it will power cars, boats and everything else. As it stands right now, it can go at least 100 charges before performance goes down. That will change of course.

Robot gardeners? Students and researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed robots that actually tend to tomato plants, with no human intervention. The plants have soil sensors and can network with the robots, which is a great way of letting them know when they need water or nutrients. The robots are equipped with watering pumps and robotic arms that are gentle enough to pick cherry tomatoes without bruising them.

And so we enslave the plant kingdom with their new robot overlords. It’s a great way to see how it works out with plants first. If you start seeing a bunch of squished tomatoes, plants blackened and burnt, and greenhouses that look like a hurricane hit them, than we will know what they have in store for us.

If a Gremlin had sex with a bird, then decided to have a threesome with Keepon, then a Furby wandered by delivering a pizza and getting in on the action, this would be their bastard lovechild. It’s name is TOFU, a “squash and stretch” robot with OLED eyes developed by the boffins at the MIT Media Lab.

Tofu uses techniques of social expression that have been employed by 2D animators for ages, to explore the impact on robotics. One thing is for sure. That bot knows how to groove and puts most humans to shame with it’s dancing skills. The video above shows off his moves, which are strangely very pimp-like.

MIT thinks that the world needs an emo robot. That’s why they created this next-generation tiny humanoid robot called Nexi. It’s an ‘emotional robot’ designed by roboticist Cynthia Breazeal’s group at the MIT Media Lab. It’s known as an MDS (Mobile/Dexterous/Social) robot, which basically means it can move it’s body, hands, and face in a way that suggests human emotions. Its arms, wrists, and hands are fully adaptable to clutch and raise up to 10 pounds and by the looks of it this thing is probably a cutter too.

It possesses changeable features including eyes, eyebrows, eyelids, and mouth movement. It creeps us out in a whole new cartoon way. It also moves on a pair of animatedly self-balancing wheels. So, if you hurt it’s feelings, it will have no problem chasing you down and killing you.

Now here is something you don’t see every day. This Siftables prototype designed by David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi at MIT was created to give some physical interaction between you and your information and media. These guys jumped right past moving things around on the screen “Minority Report” style, and provided these little independent devices each with their own display that interact with each other and you computer.

Each device also contains a 3-axis accelerometer to sense movement and it’s current position, Bluetooth, Flash memory, its own processor, infrared, a touch sensitivity and a little battery battery. According to the designers, the Siftables take advantage of the humans ability to sift and sort through a number of small items with their hands, while at the same time keeping their mind on the larger goal.