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Miniature Origami Robot Self-folds, Walks, Swims, Etc.

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At ICRA 2015 in Seattle yesterday [that is, 5.27.15], researchers from MIT demonstrated an untethered miniature origami robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades. That’s the title of their paper, in fact, and they delivered on all of those promises: from a flat sheet with a magnet on it, their robot folds itself up in just a…

Business, Science/Nature, Technology

Test Flight of Blue Origin Spaceship

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Blue Origin, a private spaceflight company, tested its New Shepard spaceship yesterday.  The capsule tested properly, but the engineers were unable to recover the rocket booster (as they had hoped they would be able to do). Still, the launch alone demonstrates progress, and certainly impresses. See, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Launches Private Spaceship Test Flight…

Technology

Fixed! (I Think…)

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Thanks very much to those who wrote me about a problem with this site displaying on some browsers. Your messages have been very much appreciated. I think we’re back in business now, after disabling a pesky plugin that was doing the opposite of what it was supposed to do. One encounters glitches now and again,…

Technology

The New Tube for London

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London has plans for new subway trains. Goodness knows how much this will cost (estimates now say ten billion pounds at 2013 prices), but the design seems, at the least, technologically impressive:

Military, Technology

The Rise of the Robo-Cheetahs

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Well, we knew it had to happen someday. A DARPA-funded robotic cheetah has been released into the wild, so to speak. A new algorithm developed by MIT researchers now allows their quadruped to run and jump — while untethered — across a field of grass. The Pentagon, in an effort to investigate technologies that allow…

Film, Technology

The Death of Film: After Hollywood Goes Digital, What Happens to Movies?

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In this documentary, directors Jason Gwynn and Jay Sheldon interview film projectionists during their last days on the job at a soon-to-be-defunct movie theater. As Hollywood studios move toward digital distribution, many theaters are forced to abandon their 35mm projectors—and pay up to $150,000 for new projection technology. This change, as the documentary explains, is heartbreaking for the people responsible for…