Alt-week 6.29.13: DARPA's robot finalists, the IRIS solar mission and empathetic computers

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days. Sure, DARPA is slightly sinister, but it's so into robots that we're willing to let that slide. In fact, last year it launched the DARPA Robotics Challenge, and it just announced the top six nine seven teams to advance. But if just the idea of figuring out robotics frustrates you, NC State's face tracking program literally gets that, and NASA just launched the IRIS solar probe from the belly of a tra...