Hasta La Gadget!

As 2010 nears its end, it’s time to start getting all nostalgic. There were a lot of ups and downs in the world of tech this year, and as we take a look at some of our top stories for the calendar, it’s impossible not to notice just how diverse the selection is.

We start this first of a two-part retrospective with a surprisingly popular “sex robot” and cap it off with a bit of bad press for Apple in what was largely a pretty decent year for Jobs and co.

[Above, sorry, a little Bieber couldn’t be helped.]

A guitar that never goes out of tune, condom for children, a bra made out of gas mask, a smartphone that never dies, and a familiar meat dress all made this year’s New York Times Year in Ideas list.

The paper published its 10th annual list featuring “innovations and insights from a spectrum of fields, including economics, biology, engineering, medicine, literature, sports, music and, of course, raw-meat clothing.”

The list includes the controversial “Youth Condom,” a smaller-than-standard prophylactic targeted at youth in Sweden after a study found that kids had problems fitting into regular ones. “Relaxation Drinks,” meanwhile, promise to offer an alternative to he Red Bulls of the world, helping consumers slow down a bit.

The “Bra Mask” is a bra comprised of two gas masks, designed by a Ukrainian science to help women reduce their intake of radiation. The “Armored T-Shirt” is dipped in boron carbide, the stuff they make bulletproof vests out of. A British firm introduced the world to the concept of the Revive smartphone, a phone that evolves over time so the user never has to but a new one.

The “Guitar That Stays in Tune” uses a series of levers and strings to save the player precious tuning time. The Concept 1 basketball shoes, meanwhile, promise to add four inches to a player’s leap. And the “Meat Dress?” Well, you saw the footage from the MTV Video Music Awards, right?

Robots are among our most polarizing technological innovations. Some of us love and openly embrace bots, while others live in near constant fear of an android coup. When I hear, “robot learns to run like humans,” I imagine robot races and bipedal bots bounding over hills to help save us. The fearful, however, see their worst fears realized: “Now robots can actually chase and catch us.”

Robot researchers like Ryuma Niiyama (currently working in MIT’s Robot Locomotion Group) couldn’t care less about your fears. According to a report in IEEE Spectrum, Niiyama is building a biped robot called “Athlete” that uses artificial muscles and prosthetic feet to run at speeds and in a style more akin to human locomotion. Previous humanoid robots like the Honda Asimo use a complex array of motors, sensor and actuators to walk and even, in the case of Asimo, “run.” However, anyone who has seen Asimo dash around a stage knows that the bot’s motion doesn’t look entirely natural.

Niiyama’s robot mimics some aspects of human running to achieve a more natural gait. The robot’s artificial muscles reside entirely above the “knees”. Below that it’s all prosthetic elastic blades that some double amputees use for running. As a result, the robot springs forward with each step–as humans do– and uses its muscles and sensors to maintain balance as it races forward; again, pretty much as people do when they’re running.

So far, Niiyama and his team have only been partially successful. Athlete runs a few unaided steps but then falls over. Watch the video below, which charts Athlete’s development from an early 2007 model to today’s elastic-blade-fitted Athlete.

Video after the jump.

These days man and stork-kind get along pretty well. They deliver our babies and promote our pickles and in return, we don’t eat them at Thanksgiving. Tens of thousands of years ago, however, things weren’t quite so simple. Remember those “hobbit” fossils that scientists found on an Indonesia island, back in 2003? Turns out that they may have been delicious appetizers for a species of giant storks.

Scientist also discovered fossils of giant birds alongside the diminutive human remains. The leg and wing bones date back 20,000 to 50,000 years ago. The birds in question were likely around six-feet-tall–far taller than the humans they shared the cave with.

“From the size of its bones, we initially were expecting a giant raptor, which are commonly found on islands, not a stork,” one of the paleontologists told MSNBC.

The storks likely grew to that size due to a lack of lack of mammal predators like wolves, lions, and hyenas. The stork most likely did most of its hunting on land, due to its large size, thick bones, and weight, which is estimated to be around 35 pounds. Its diet most likely consisted of fish, birds, and lizards.

There may well have been some juvenile hobbits in the stork food pyramid, as well, “although we have no evidence for that,” said the scientist, adding, “these birds are opportunistic carnivores — if you give them plenty of prey items, they’ll hunt all of them.”

According to the scientists, there is no evidence that the storks were hunted by the tiny humans either.