Watch a rolling robot transform into a helicopter
Wheeled robots are nothing new. Flying bots are old-hat, too. But this is new: a dumbbell-shaped hybrid bot that can roll on thin, end-mounted wheels … and fly with two sets of counter-rotating chopper blades. Switching between the two modes involves a Rube Goldberg-esque series of maneuvers and contraptions. It ain’t elegant, but it works.…
Can humans survive in a completely self-sufficient closed environment?
Not yet, though we’ve been trying to do so since at least the 1970s. Fabricating an environment that needs no power other than the sun and is a closed system (where waste gets broken down and reused) is extremely difficult. One of the first attempts at a CELSS-Controlled Ecological Life Support System-was Bios-3, which was…
In 1987, Roger Ebert predicted movies on demand (and an art film revolution)
OMNI magazine interviewed Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert about the future of movies for their June, 1987 issue. Ebert makes some bold and accurate predictions about how a revolution in the delivery and distribution of movies will open up the “art film” market, allowing people greater access to movies that may not make financial sense…