the trophys visit to america was brief; it was

An engineering professor who combines mechanical know

On a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York three years ago, Dennis Hong was captivated not by the giant blue whale, or the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, but by the ankle bone of a timid prehistoric deer.

The "double pulley" ankle gave the creature more bounce in its stride, an evolutionary advantage that enables today's suburban deer to bound gracefully over vegetable garden fences.

Another time, Hong watched a mother braid her daughter's hair and wondered whether a robot could move in the same way. That led to the Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags development of a three legged walking machine that maneuvers about with the same braiding motion.

A Chinese water tube toy inspired Hong to create a species of robots that move by continuously turning themselves inside out. A cowboy's lasso spurred him to build a robot that wraps around surfaces like rope.

And that prehistoric deer's ankle? It replica louis vuitton bags from china became a knee bone for CHARLI, Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence, America's first full size, two legged, walking humanoid robot.

Hong, 40, the son of a famed Korean aeronautical engineer, is the Leonardo da Vinci of robots. Leonardo saw birds in flight and imagined a human flying machine. He studied human anatomy and in 1495 sketched what is considered the world's first robot.

Like the artist, Hong innovates by connecting things that less creative types meaning most people might see as completely unrelated. His visions of pulleys and gears spring to life in a workshop in the basement of the mechanical engineering Perfect Quality Louis Vuitton Replica building at 1:1 replica handbags Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg.

That's where Hong and a tight posse of 18 engineering students operate the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), a relatively new and audacious entrant to the robotics field. News World Report. Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Penn all field bigger, older, better funded robotics programs.

But none of them has Hong.

He arrived at Virginia Tech in 2003, still in his early 30s, with a baby face and a thick shock of black hair. cheap replica handbags There, working with a small team of bleary eyed graduate students and replica louis vuitton bags a shoestring budget, high quality designer replica handbags wholesale Hong built several of the most compelling designs to emerge in American robotics.

Hong and his students "are really trying to change the world," said Daniel Lee, a robotics researcher at Penn who collaborates with Hong.

Hong's dream, though, has always been to win RoboCup, a little known international competition that is one of the premier academic events in robotics.

RoboCup is an annual soccer tournament for robots. Designing a cheap louis vuitton bags from china robot that can find and kick a soccer ball is termed the ultimate challenge in robot design; not long ago, no humanoid robot on Earth could do it. The goal is to field a robot team by 2050 that can beat the human World Cup champions.

Victory at RoboCup would place Virginia Tech and the United States at the symbolic forefront of humanoid robotics, a field that is already adding anthropomorphic machines to battlefields and hospitals and may one day put them in American homes.

Hong first glimpsed the coveted Louis Vuitton Humanoid Cup in summer 2007, during a disastrous trip to Atlanta for that year's RoboCup. The trophy's visit to America was brief; it was headed back to Japan, where it had sat for five consecutive years.

replica louis vuitton "I looked at that trophy. I said, 'This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, except my wife,' " Hong said.

As they gazed at high quality replica handbags china the cup, Hong promised his students, "We're going to bring it home."

Czech artist Josef Capek coined the term "robot" in the 1920s; his brother Karel later popularized it in a production of "Rossum's Universal Robots," with human actors playing the robot parts. The first industrial robot appeared by the 1960s, and factory robots were commonplace by the 1980s.

But it is the idea of a robot based on the human body that has always captivated Hong and the public. The first humanoid robot, called Wabot 1, was built at Tokyo's Waseda University in 1973, the year Dennis Hong learned to speak in sentences.

Humanoid robots have progressed much more quickly on celluloid than in reality, particularly in America; Rosie, the robot maid of television's fake designer bags "The Jetsons," remains a distant dream. Here, most of the money and, thus, the interest lies in military applications such as disarming bombs and conducting surveillance.

But Korea and Japan have made producing humanoid robots a national priority the Honda motor company's ASIMO can run, dance and conduct symphony orchestras.

The difference in priorities is partly rooted in popular culture. In America, robots are often cast as villains, while Asian countries tend to view them as heroes.

"If you ask the typical American how they view humanoid robots, their first reaction is to think of Hollywood films like 'Terminator,' " said Lee, the Penn scientist, who would collaborate with Hong on RoboCup. "Whereas, if you go to Korea or Japan, their concept of robots is more like 'Astroboy.'"

A 2006 report by the World Technology Evaluation Center surveyed the robotics field and concluded that the United States was "in danger of losing its leading position" in what few areas it led.

Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley company, tops the field of "personal robotics" in aaa replica designer handbags this country and has developed a robot that can fold shirts, bake cookies and fetch drinks. Eleven PR2s are on loan to universities and research institutions. A private citizen can buy one for $400,000.

"Where the difficult part comes," said CEO Steve Cousins, "is where you ask, 'Are you really willing to pay $400,000 for a robot to get you beer?' ".