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23 W ednesday , D ecem ber 15, 2010 O A KVILLE BEA V ER w w w .o akvillebeaver .co m 2011 Elantra loaded with almost every safety and drive aid available Continued from page 22 The 2011 Elantra is equipped with just about every safety and drive aid you can think of such as six airbags, electronic stability control with traction control and four-wheel disc brakes that stop it shorter than a Civic and Corolla according to Hyundai. The unibody chassis makes extensive use of high-strength steels. Did you know, by the way, Hyundai is the only automaker in the world with its own steel plant? As is usual with Hyundai, there are four basic trim levels (L, GL, GLS and Limited) starting with the base L, manual at $15,849. The volume leader will probably be the GL automatic with air and cruise at $19,999. With everything, and that includes leather and navigation/audio sys- tem, the most you can spend on the Elantra is $24,699 for the Limited with Navigation. In fact, prices for the 2011 mod- els are unchanged from 2010. As noted at the top, Hyundai has set itself a lofty goal of being number one in the compact car segment and that represents almost 50 per cent of total sales in this country. But if Ive learned anything about Hyundai over the years, is that once they set a target, they invariably achieve it. Hyundai has made huge leaps in interior design and use of materials which is shown on the 2011 Elantra. Human-like hands key to Robonaut 2s dexterity Metroland Media Carguide Magazine Elite athletes have them, and they are a standout characteristic of Robonaut 2. In fact, R2 (as he is known to his creators) is one of the most dexterous robots ever built because of his very human-like hands. Engineers from the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, MI and NASA's Johnson Space center in Houston collaborated to produce a robot that could work side-by-side with human astronauts at the International Space Station as well as future missions. Since all of the tools and equipment aboard the space station were designed for use by human hands, R2 had to be able to perform tasks using the same tools. R2's mechanical hands work very much like the human hands on which they were modeled, including a similar range of motion and precise control of both position and force. It is widely believed that the oppos- able thumb was one reason why early humans could develop the ability to use tools. R2's hand was designed to incorporate this capability. Unlike many previous humanoid robots, R2 has slim fingers and thumbs resembling those on human hands. Just as human tendons attach muscle to bone, R2 has ten- dons to connect the skeletal joints to sensors and actua- tors in the palm. This allows R2's control systems to pre- cisely sense the reaction forces and continuously adjust the grip of the hand for whatever task R2 is performing. While traditional industrial robots are designed to precisely place objects or follow a specific path, they don't handle unexpected objects or items slightly out of position very well. Humans have a much greater ability to adapt to vari- ation, and the design of R2's hands and control systems provide him with similar capabilities. R2 shows off this capability when he shakes hands with visitors. No mat- ter what size hand or the firmness of the grip, R2 auto- matically adjusts.