The document discusses 7 robots that will change lives: 1) HAL suit gives wearers superhuman strength and endurance but needs recharging every 5 hours, 2) Packbot bomb disposal robots sell for $100,000 after starting as roombas, 3) Pleo toy dinosaur robot will be sold for $250 next year, 4) DaVinci robot helps with surgery costing $1.5 million, 5) Stanley self-driving car won a desert race without a driver, 6) StickyBot climbs walls like a gecko using tiny stalks, 7) Lego Mindstorms NXT kit improved with Bluetooth and software for $250.

1. 7 Amazing Robots that Will Change Your Life ROBOTICS

2. Rise of the Cyborg Yoshiyuki Sankai's H ybrid A ssisted L imb ( yes, that's a nod to the haywire computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey ) is suit that gives its wearer ‘superpowers’: the ability to lift an extra 88 pounds or walk long distances without tiring. The catch--the suit's battery needs to be charged every five hours. Sankai's Cyberdyne plans to rent HAL suits for $1,000 a month.

3. Packbot iRobot founders Colin Angle and Helen Greiner wanted to make robots that made money. The Roomba, their best-known offering, has done that, moving 2 million floor-cleaning units since 2002. The more ambitious PackBots, which take on such tasks as bomb disposal in Iraq, sell for $100,000. Next up: a bomb-sniffing robot and a robot lawn mower.

4. Pleo Former street mime Caleb Chung co-created the Furby, a $30 fuzzy toy that "learned" over time--and sold 50 million units. Next year he plans to start selling his next bot: Pleo, a lovable minidinosaur. Pleo was a hit at tech conferences early this year, stoking demand for the $250 toy.

5. DaVinci Robot John Hopkins engineering professor Russell Taylor's star pupil is Da Vinci, a 1,200-pound, $1.5 million set of mechanical arms that help out surgeons doing prostate removals and other procedures. Sleeker, more capable instruments are emerging from his lab.

6. Stanley Last year Stanley, Sebastian Thrun's souped-up Volkswagen Touraeg, won $2 million by winning a 131-mile race across the Mojave Desert--without a driver. Next up: In November 2007 Thrun will modify a Volkswagen Passat and let it drive itself through a 60-mile race in a city yet to be named.

7. StickyBot- Gecko meets Spiderman. Biologist Robert J. Full and engineer Mark Cutkosky teamed up to create Stickybot, a 2-foot robot that climbs windows and other vertical surfaces at 1.5 inches a second. The robotic gecko uses hundreds of tiny (10 microns long) stalks in each toe to help it cling to walls.

8. Lego NXT Soren Lund oversees Lego Mindstorms, the world's most popular line of robot tool kits. His new Mindstorms NXT retails for $250 and boasts better software as well as a Bluetooth wireless connection. More impressive are the engineers who put the new version together--a hundred hackers who fell in love with the original version.