Today on Engineering Newswire, we’re pouring beers with robots, preventing disasters with a floating gate, flying autonomous wings with onboard turbines, and riding a 1.3 million-dollar motorcycle that was designed to cut costs. This episode features:

• Honda is set to unveil a new production model of motorcycles by the end of 2013, and they only cost 1.3 million dollars, each. The RC213 V, one thousand cc V4 will have a level of power that will make it competitive in the 2014 FIM Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix Moto GP Class.
• Since the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami crippled Japan in March 2011, engineers at Kyoto University and machine maker Hitachi Zosen have worked on developing Flap Gate, a flood-prevention system that is actually powered by the disaster.
• Researchers at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab have created a robot that can predict human action in order to step in and offer a helping hand.
• After a year of mechanical design, fabrication, and testing, Makani Power, a company recently acquired by Google, has completed the first-ever fully autonomous flight of a kite power system.

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