not your typical zoo

Welcome to Robotarium X, a zoo for artificial life - robots!

dude, where's my flying car?

Terrafugia is building this prototype for a flying car. Will it ever make it to mass market production? Well, I doubt it: private airplanes are relatively inexpensive, and everyone who has a private airplane already has a car. Those people who want to fly will generally go for an airplane, as the performance will be much better than a flying car, and very few will accept a hybrid car/airplane if it means that the performance in either mode is lower than the performance of a regular airplane or a regular car. However, there may be a niche market for people with eclectic tastes.

news from SpaceX

SpaceX has posted the results of their DemoFlight 2 review. In all, eight anomalies were found, one of which (the upper stage control anomaly, likely caused by slosh in the LOX tank) led to the uncontrollable roll of the craft and the subsequent loss of the rocket. Upper stage slosh baffles, which will be included on all future launches, should solve this problem.

video of yesterday's shuttle launch

Carnival of Space

The sixth edition of the Carnival of Space is up at Music of the Spheres. When the Carnival of Space first started, I was skeptical, having seen how much work that the Red Ensign Standard or Carnival of Liberty entailed. However, it looks like Henry Cate has set up a much easier system for compiling carnivals than the one I had to use for the Red Ensign, so maybe I will have to host one of those Carnivals of Space one day.

self-reconfigurable robots

Google has an amazing series of lectures being given to their employees, which are then videotaped and uploaded to Google Video. The breadth of topics covered is astonishing, and always interesting. Today I'd like to share with you one of those lectures, on Self-Reconfigurable Robots and "Digital Hormones", given by Dr. Wei-Min Shen.


For a robotics geek like me, this stuff is just fascinating.