Pop-up Fabrication of the Harvard Monolithic Bee (Mobee)

The Harvard Monolithic Bee is a millimeter-scale flapping wing robotic insect produced using Printed Circuit MEMS (PC-MEMS) techniques. This video describes the manufacturing process, including pop-up book inspired assembly. This work was funded by the NSF, the Wyss Institute, and the ASEE. Music: D-Song by Bonobo

See "Monolithic fabrication of millimeter-scale machines" and "Popup-book MEMS":
https://micro.seas.harvard.edu/publications.html

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors

Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics.

Flight Assembled Architecture

The first use of the Flying Machine Enabled Construction paradigm is the installation titled “Flight Assembled Architecture” at the FRAC Centre, Orleans. This installation was developed jointly with architects Gramazio & Kohler. Flight Assembled Architecture is the first installation to be built by flying machines. Conceived as an architectural structure at a scale of a 600 m high “vertical village”, the installation addresses radical new ways of thinking and materializing architecture as a physical process of dynamic formation.

via Geekosystem

and Eth

Spherical Flying Machine

Incredible spherical flying machine developed by the Japanese Ministry of Defense:

"Because the exterior is round, this machine can land in all kinds of attitudes, and move along the ground. It can also keep in contact with a wall while flying. Because it's round, it can just roll along the ground, but to move it in the desired direction, we've brought the control surfaces, which are at the rear in an ordinary airplane, to the front.

In horizontal flight, the propeller provides the propulsive force, while the wings provide lift. For the machine to take off or land in that state, it faces upward. When it does so, the propeller provides buoyancy. At that time, too, the control surfaces provide attitude control. After landing, the machine moves along the ground using the control surfaces and propeller.

In our aircraft R&D, we have a plane that can stand up vertically after flying horizontally. But the problem with that plane is, take-off and landing are very difficult. As one idea to solve that problem, we thought of making the exterior round, or changing the method of attitude control. That's how we came up with this machine, to test the idea.

All we've done is build this from commercially available parts, and test whether it can fly in its round form. So its performance as such has absolutely no significance. But we think it can hover for eight minutes continuously, and its speed can go from zero, when it's hovering, to 60 km/h."

Quantum Levitation

Tel-Aviv University demos quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field.

Video courtesy of Association of Science - Technology Centers (ASTC), representing the science centre and museum field worldwide. To learn more, visit http://www.astc.org/

Artificial bird and flock of seagulls

Demo flight of an artificial bird by Festo at TEDGlobal 2011.

Ultra-realistic bionic bird

A robot modelled on the herring gull sets a new standard for realistic flying machines.

via New Scientist

US firm unveils hummingbird robot

Using 3D Printing to print the wing of an Airbus

Rapid prototyping, or 3-D printing, has been used to create all kinds of amazing objects in a variety of media, but a team working under EADS in the UK wants to print something heretofore unheard of: the entire wing of an airliner. Working at the same facility where Concordes were once built, researchers there are already printing landing gear brackets and other aircraft components in hopes that one day they’ll be able to print out many of the critical parts for an entire aircraft.

via The Economist

Aspiring innovator Schuyler St. Leger explains below that there’s a lot to love about the explosion of 3-D printing technology.

Pentagon resurrects 'Blackswift' hypersonic bomber program

In 2007, DARPA committed to funding the development of a prototype unmanned aircraft called "Blackswift" that would be able to take off from a runway unassisted and be anywhere in the world within a few hours. The program was canceled just a year later, but now, it's back.



via DangerRoom

Bill Stone explores the world's deepest caves

Bill Stone, a maverick cave explorer who has plumbed Earth’s deepest abysses, discusses his efforts to mine lunar ice for space fuel and to build an autonomous robot for studying Jupiter’s moon Europa.

via TED

Scenes From a Drone Trade Show

When most people think "trade show," what comes to mind are harsh fluorescent lights and hollow convention halls, all filled with corporate drones (of the human variety) idly wandering through booths hyping the latest in office paper technology, stopping only to hover over bowls of stale candy and cheap swag.

The annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) event in Denver, Co. is also a trade show, down to the expansive halls and harsh lights. But instead of the latest in corporate nothingness, its booths are filled with something far more interesting: the state-of-the-art in flying robots.

via PopSci

NASA Solar Probe Sets Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Literally

In a mission to learn more about the sun’s inner workings, NASA is planning to launch a specially shielded spacecraft in 2018 that will plunge into the solar atmosphere. The car-sized Solar Probe Plus will explore an area just 4 million miles from the star’s surface, the last region of the solar system to be explored by humans.

via Nasa

China Executes Mysterious, Secret In-Orbit Satellite Rendezvous

Though the world found out about it through a Russian media outlet, China has been conducting complicated space maneuvers with two of its science satellites over the past few months, directing two of its "Shi Jian" (practice) satellites to rendezvous some 370 miles above the Earth, and possibly even touch. But the fact that China has been so hush-hush about the close encounter has some wondering what it plans to use such technology for. It could be used to build a peaceful space station, but also for interfering with other nations' satellites.

Russian space observer Igor Lissov first noticed the rendezvous buried in publicly available U.S. military data on global satellite positions. In turn it was picked up by Russian media -- and only then by Xinhua, China's state media outlet -- which brought it to the attention of the international community. The data show that between June 12 and August 16 of this year, Chinese satellite SJ-12, a science satellite launched in June, made a series of maneuvers to position itself closer to SJ-06F, an older science satellite launched in October of 2008.

via TheSpaceReview

Unmanned Helicopter With a Grabbing Hand

Researchers at Yale's Grab Lab aren't about to let the nuances of rotary-wing flight restrict what unmanned aerial vehicles can do. A team there has developed a hand-like modular grasping and manipulation platform that can be fitted to the bellies of UAVs to provide them with extra functionality without overly taxing their flight capabilities.

Yale

First night flight ever by a solar plane!

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA, with André Borschberg at its controls, successfully landed this morning at 09:00, to the cheers of a crowd of supporters who came to celebrate this great milestone.

For more than 26 hours, André Borschberg expertly piloted the aircraft with its 64 meter wingspan. The plane was up in the air yesterday for the whole day, then through the entire night, flying solely on solar energy. This flight is the longest and highest in the history of solar aviation!

via Solar Impulse

Meet Taranis, The Semi-Autonomous Stealth Unmanned Aircraft

BAE Systems today unveiled Taranis, an advanced stealth unmanned aircraft that can carry its deadly payload deep into enemy territory without a pilot. It can also think for itself. It's part awesome, part Cylon Raider

via Jalopnik

Unmanned golf carts: The latest in military battle vehicles

By 2015, the government wants 30 percent of all military vehicles to be unmanned. With advances in AI and lightweight, long-lasting computer systems, this goal isn't as sci-fi as it sounds. We've covered the coming of these automated battle machines before, and now there's a new one being tested by the U.S. Marines.

via CNET Crave

Boeing's robot helicopter almost ready to resupply tomorrow's military

Boeing's A160T "Hummingbird" robotic helicopter looks like it's almost ready for prime time, as the company tested its military vehicle in a series of mock resupply tests. The 'bird performed a variety of maneuvers over seven test flights, including hovering at 12,000 feet with a load of 1,250 pounds carried by a sling.

via cnet

Engage the x drive: Ten ways to traverse deep space

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to reach outer space. Eight years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the surface of the moon. And that is as far as any of us has ventured.

Apart from the mundane problems of budgets and political will, the major roadblock is that our dominant space-flight technology – chemically fuelled rockets – just isn't up to the distances involved. We can send robot probes to the outer planets, but they take years to get there.

And as for visiting other stars, forget it. As an example of why, the Apollo 10 moon probe is currently listed as the fastest manned vehicle in history, having reached a maximum speed of 39,895 kilometres per hour. At this speed, it would take 120,000 years to cover the 4 light years to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system.

So if we want to explore the depths of deep space and journey to Alpha Centauri and beyond, we're going to need some new technologies. Here, we look at 10 of the most intriguing.

The technologies range widely in their plausibility. Some, we could more or less build tomorrow if we wanted to, while others may well be fundamentally impossible.

Read more here